Chapter 05: Love and the Will to Power
Oddly enough, this dolphin, being from Earth, could not have
his body resurrected, of course, since the planet Earth no longer existed after
the sun went nova and swallowed it up. While the dolphin was on Earth, he had
an encounter with a shark and lost a good deal of his rear fin. The body he had
now was the same one he had had on Earth, but the damage sustained in his past
life was gone.
I checked on this and found that all life forms who had had
some form of irregularity were corrected. Anyone who did not have their sight
could now see. Those who had lost the ability to use one of their limbs were
now able to use all limbs freely. This was true for all the life that were
assembled on this one new planet. I found that a great deal of the life forms
were not as confused as we had expected.
Most took it philosophically. They felt that although it was
not the planet they had once known and some of the things they were asked to do
were strange for their culture, at least they were alive. There were, of
course, a larger number who were from a period of time which held beliefs in
some sort of mythological creator or some form of god. Those life forms opted
to continue on to their destination point, whatever it was.
I continued interviewing and met many other fascinating
creatures. There is one I would like to share with you. Although for most of
the life forms on the new planet, the home that they had lived in just before
they died was returned to them, this particular man’s home was not returned to
him.
Chuck was a criminal of his time. His crime was brutal
murder. For some reason, he felt that murder was the only way through which he
could feel the power he thought he needed. When I interviewed him, he said that
he would try to live as we had asked. But in his mind, he did not feel the love
that we felt.
So I decided to keep a close eye on him. He returned to an
apartment that he had once lived in just before he was captured. It was a
sleazy apartment with hot and cold running rats. Each of the rats had
volunteered to live there for this man.
Chuck hid like a rat for several days, being afraid and not
understanding how it was that he was placed in this time. He expected the
police or some other manifestation of law and order to come and get him.
One day, he decided that he had had enough of hiding and
went out to see what he could find. He wondered what kind of trouble he could
start before these fools would lock him up. At this point, the area he was
living in had become populated by a great number of those from my time. Because
the planet was so large and the fraction of life forms from the past was small,
most of them would get to know how we lived.
Chuck came to a park area near his apartment where he found
the usual things: a swing set, a sandbox, and two young lovers. The lovers were
life from my time, so both knew he was coming to kill them. He had no way of
knowing that they knew. He felt that he came upon them in the park just
watching the stars or each other and would not notice him until it was too
late.
He jumped out from behind the bench and grabbed the young
woman. He felt the woman would be weaker than the man. Taking the young woman’s
head in one hand, he pulled it back and quickly slit her throat. As the knife
glided in his hand, he could feel emanating from her a strange thought: “I let
you do this because I love you.” He also felt the same thought coming from the
young man, and he did not understand this.
Although it was explained to him that he could communicate
through thought, he did not believe it. As the thoughts of his two victims
touched his mind, his anger burned brighter. He could not stand the thought of
someone loving him. They were taking away his power. He had to stop this love
that he felt and replace it with fear.
Chuck took his knife and plunged it deep into the man’s arm,
not so deep as to kill, but deep enough to cause severe pain in payment for the
love being given him. Once the knife was in, he twisted it in the man’s flesh
to evoke the most painful experience possible for this person.
Although the man was screaming with the terror that was
expected by the murderer, Chuck could still feel the thought: “I let you do
this because I love you.” In a final attempt to stop this love, Chuck removed
his blade from the man’s arm and pushed it deep into the man’s chest. Suddenly,
the thought stopped and the young man lay there dead.
Chuck ran in terror, expecting a chase. It was the way of
our people to provide a chase for him, although we would never catch him.
During the chase, I played a special role. I was, for the
first time in my life, a reporter covering a “crime.” I wrote many stories
regarding these two brutal murders, telling the world how this man had to be
stopped, but all the time knowing that it was the one thing we would not do. To
stop him would make us more important than he.
After several weeks of hiding, Chuck knew that the search
for him had failed and he had escaped. He could once more go out and impose his
will on someone else, providing him with the sense of power he needed.
He went out and came to a street with no cars on it because
they floated above the road. As they raced to their various stops, he wondered
what he could do to be more powerful than this mob.
He reached into his pocket and found a primitive laser
weapon. How the weapon got there is a mystery to me to this day. The people of
our time had no need for such weapons and had none for years, but now Chuck
held one in his hand and it was in perfect working order. He saw several
vehicles coming toward him as they raced on their merry way. He leveled the
weapon at the first one nearest him and gently squeezed the trigger. As he
aimed the gun, the beings in the vehicle and the vehicle itself began to think,
“I let you do this because I love you.”
This totally enraged him. Chuck did not want love because it
stripped him of the power he wanted. He went on a shooting spree there in the
street with his newfound weapon, fulfilling his need to gain power through the
blood of others. He was firing at anything that moved, killing over one hundred
life forms. Suddenly, he took off in terror of the chase that he knew would
begin.
Once again, the chase was on. I wrote the story describing
the brutal acts in the midst of this striving city. As before, the search was
futile.
This time, Chuck remained hidden for nearly a month. After
that time, he came out and found a house. It was a cute house with green
shutters and a white picket fence. This was a house where he could be the lord
of death and cause the pain he wanted.
Originally, he broke into the house to find some food, but
he found that the house had four children in it. The two little boys were about
eight years old and the two little girls were six. Their parents had gone out
on an errand.
Chuck took the four children and bound them like pigs ready
for the slaughter. As he was tightening the last knots, he could sense the
thought, “I let you do this because I love you.” Once again, this thought made
him even angrier at the whole universe.
Chuck stood there looking at them and then took the young
girl, choosing her because in his time it was believed that girls were easier
to scare than boys. He took out the knife he had used on the young lady in the
park. He held it to the girl’s throat and cut a slow incision just below the
jaw, going upward and then out, exposing the jawbone and letting the girl’s
tongue hang through the opening. He then took one of her arms and slowly
removed all the skin with his knife.
Throughout this, the child was screaming in agony, but all
the while the thought came from her: “I let you do this because I love you.”
Chuck stepped back and watched as the child slowly bled to death. When she
died, one of the voices he heard in his mind stopped.
Then he took a gun out of his pocket. Like the laser, the
gun was not in his pocket a moment before. When his mind cried out for a gun,
it was granted. How this occurred, I do not know. The gun was an old .38
caliber revolver. He removed all the bullets but one from the chambers and spun
the chambers. He placed the three remaining children, one girl and two boys, in
a single line next to each other. He aimed the gun at one of the boys and
pulled the trigger. In that split second between the time he pulled the trigger
and the hammer fell safely into place, the one thing that kept going through
his mind was the thought coming from the child: “I let you do this because I
love you.”
Chuck placed the gun to the head of the second little girl.
Both of the remaining children were emitting the thought, “I let you do this
because I love you.” This time, when he pulled the trigger, it seemed that
there was no lag between the trigger being pulled and the hammer falling
against the bullet, stopping the two voices from touching his mind. The bullet
went through the brain of one child and then lodged in the brain of the other,
killing both instantly.
The last little boy sat there acting just as terrorized as
Chuck could have hoped. This poor little boy sat there in the grip of fear
while the murderer laughed. Chuck then took the child up to a basin. Next to
the basin was a pile of clean clothes. He wiped his hands on them and laughed
as he thought about the mother finding her children dead and her wash ruined.
Chuck filled the basin with water and pushed the child’s
head beneath the water. This madman did not want to kill the little boy right
away, but wanted to make the boy die slowly. He wanted him to suffer first to
stop him from loving. Just before the boy would have passed out, he withdrew
the head from the water and watched the child gasp for air. Even through this
torture, Chuck could still sense the mind of the child saying, “I let you do
this because I love you.” The boy simply would not be broken.
The one thing the murderer wanted from these children was
their terror and to be in control over them. The one thing he got was their
love. Instead of power, he received their compassion.
Finally, Chuck could not take any more. He pushed the head
under the water in an attempt to stop the love. When the voice stopped, the
child was dead.
Chuck realized that he had been in the house too long and
was looking for a shootout. Of course, he received what he wanted.
I was with the assault team to provide news coverage of the
event. The shootout was what some might call interesting, but I find no joy in
open warfare of this sort. It was just what the murderer wanted. At the end, he
escaped, which was something he did not expect.
It was at this point that my assignment on this new planet
ended. I had to return home to Kak and my children.
Nearly a hundred years later, I was assigned to do a
follow-up. I was in on the most incredible event concerning Chuck’s life.
He had continued killing, which was no surprise to me. He
had killed literally thousands of life forms without a thought to what they
might have been or who cared for them. But always the thoughts of love that
reached his mind ate away at him. He could not understand it and did not want
it, but it was there.
On this day, I was in the news office on the planet. I was
searching with my mind for this man and received an interesting set of
thoughts. Chuck was in a room with an old lady, although how it was that there
could be an old lady in the Mega-Universe of perfect health, I do not know. The
old lady sat there terrified. This time, as he had done many times since the
time I left the murder scenes, he was going to kill with his bare hands.
He was about to kill the old lady when suddenly something
inside the murderer snapped. Something finally cracked and he fell to the
ground screaming in agony.
For the first time, Chuck knew what he had done. He took the
gun out of his pocket, leveled it at his own head, and pulled the trigger. The
gun did not fire after a hundred years of sitting in his pocket. No firearm
could. Then he took out the laser gun and placed it against his head and pulled
the trigger. Instantly, a huge hole developed in the wall of the building, but
not in his skull. The beam had passed through him without causing any damage.
Finally, he grabbed the knife and slit his wrists. Even this was to no avail.
The wrists healed as soon as they were cut.
Chuck screamed out in agony to the being which he did not
believe existed. “Oh dear God, why don’t you let me die? What I have done
throughout my life is so wrong,” he cried, “so terrible that I should at least
be allowed to die to pay for my crimes. I have removed many lives from the
world. There is no way that their lives can be restored. There is no sacrifice
that I can make that is great enough for what I have done, except to surrender
my life and rot in hell for the evil that I have done.”
At this point, the being that called itself God made itself
known to Chuck and said, “So you have finally learned the way of the
Mega-Universe. I am very glad for you and myself.”
Chuck said, “I do not deserve to live, not after what I have
done.”
God answered, “Why not? Do you feel that you have taken
these lives without their permission? Do you feel that you could have done
that? You received lives that were given to you, but you did not take them.
Those who died at your hands died by their own will to let you kill them.
Through their love for you, you were able to kill them so that you would live
and learn. What you have now learned is the way of love and the life that it
alone can give.”
“But what of those people?” Chuck asked. “Their lives have
been destroyed, wiped out, and they will never exist again.”
Once again, God answered, “Their lives will never exist
again? Was there not a time that you felt that this was true even of your own
life? When you sat in that electric chair so long ago, did you not know that
your life would not exist again? Now it does. By the same power that brought
you back, I can bring back all of these life forms.”
Suddenly, I could feel in the room with the murderer and the
being who called itself God a large number of life forms. The thousands that
Chuck had killed were suddenly there and in one great voice said, “We let you
do this because we love you!”
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