John Lennon's Still Dead

John Lennon’s Still Dead “Hey, Bungalow Bill,  What did you kill, Bungalow Bill?” The CNN reporter stood anxiously before the cameras as the large and  looming Dakota Building with its high gables, terracotta features and  exotic décor was the backdrop. There were many wispy clouds above  the jutted skyline of the magnificent city that never slept as people  were craning their necks at oblique angles; for there was a much talked  about stirring, about life changing for the better and some arguing for  the worse. Finally, March’s chill had subsided. Or so the residents of  Manhattan had said. An early warm spring had begun thawing the  marrow in our bones. Life was beginning to look normal, again. But  something was amiss! There were incessant rumors, and squabbles and  arguments between friends and family that John Winston Lennon was  still alive. Of course, as many already know, they had been sightings of  his ghost in the Dakota Building itself for many decades. The place was  well known for being haunted. But now some witnesses had come forth  and were insisting that Lennon wasn’t a figment of their imaginations,  but that he was possessed of his coy smile and inimitable wit; and worse  yet, he was still wearing his white suit and Spring Court shoes. Could  this be true? Of course, it wasn’t! It couldn’t be. But from the dreary  grave, many supposed, Lennon had come back to make music, of a  different kind, and to tell us all what lay in the undiscovered country  before we had to make the journey someday ourselves.  Outside the Dakota Building itself, Mark Mendax brushed his short  black hair to the side as his assistant, held up a mirror.  He had been given these ‘filler’ news stories even since he had nearly  cost the bureau an expensive lawsuit where the truth became more than  a little pliable.  Kevin Marley 133 Firmly, he adjusted his purple-and-white striped tie before putting  on his game face. The news coordinator nodded. Then counted down  on his fingers: “Three, two, one … ON AIR!” “This is Mark Mendax. I’m standing where John Lennon was shot and  killed on December 8th, 1980 in front of the Dakota Building. Believe it or  not, during the past few days, there have been recent sightings of the ex?Beatle, here and in London, whom some considered the driving creative  force of the band and it’s hit songs. We’re not sure if this is mass hysteria  or something else. But we felt compelled to address this latest phenomenon  that seems to be sweeping across America and Great Britain. “Remarkably, if you look right there, lingering over Manhattan, is a  fluffy cloud – and if you look closely enough, some say, you cannot help  but notice a strong resemblance to the bespectacled face of John Lennon. “Next, as you might have already heard, there was a very large fluffy  cloud hovering over East London this morning, and purportedly, it had  a strange kind of incandescent music emerging from it. Once again,  according to many bystanders, it appears to possess the face of John  Lennon. “The only question is: Are these events coincidental? “That’s remarkable – almost like mass hypnosis,” Harry Tuft the co?anchor of NBC Nightly News replied. “Is there any evidence that Lennon  has indeed returned.”  “There hasn’t been any empirical proof. But loads of testimonials even  from some high-ranking politicians in the U.K.” “And who might that be?”  “Prime Minister Michael Chamberlain himself!” “Remarkable!” “For viewers at home, we’ll show you now our exclusive footage of the  Prime Minister leaving 10 Downing Street with the French President to  see for himself what was exactly transpiring. “Let’s watch.”  ‘Yes, indeed, it does look like John Winston Ono Lennon!  Although I was too young to be an actual Beatles’ fan being  borne too late, I can see his rather distinct features: a charming face, brown eyes from the London smog,  a short hawk-like nose, and those wire rimmed  glasses. Quite remarkably, Lennon has this smirk like  134 Soul Kitchen he’s telling a naughty joke. Yes, I believe he’s being witty again and laughing  at the human race, from out of the blue, in the Heavens!’ “That’s quite extraordinary, Max.” “Simply amazing, isn’t it? “A re-emergence of Beatlemania.” “Later in our broadcast, Harry, we will show you interviews we had  with both Yoko Ono, and Joey Harrow here in front of the Dakota Building  earlier in the day and how they have both stated that they have seen John  Lennon recently, and he’s not as dead as we thought.” “Imagine that!”  The TV news program continued. Nobody knew what was  happening and why it was happening, but the satellite signal beamed a  strange hope around the world.  After a commercial break, Harry Tuft, a white-haired man and  avuncular figure, and Diana Robinson, a younger black woman in an  attractive blazer suit, continued. Harry Tuft stared at the camera and  stated with an inimitable gravitas:  “In Tehran today, Shock and Awe II continued as U.S. Forces and its  allies began bombing Iran and punishing it into submission for apparently  trying to build a nuclear bomb and thereby breaking U.N. resolution  2231. The much-feared war in the Middle East, I’m afraid, is upon us as  we try to keep from repeating our mistakes in Iraq that have haunted us  for nearly a generation.  “But so far, the news on the war front is good as we go to Matt Legan  who is transmitting his broadcast from on top of a non-disclosed building  in Tehran to bring us live updates.” Strangely, from afar, night had descended over the ancient capital  of Iran itself with a brightly lit downtown surrounded by the snow?covered Alborz mountain range that ringed half the city. The sounds of  planes bombing strategic sites could be heard, and if one looked hard  enough, JSF and stealth fighters were going up against F-4 Phantom II’s,  Mirage F 1’s and MiG’s in the perpetual fog of war.  The place was a tinder box that could start a conflagration of  unknown proportions. To say the least, it was disconcerting as the war  and even the casualties were being instantly digitally transmitted as  graphically on 3-D screens in Dolby sound to viewers at home.  Kevin Marley 135 “This is Matt Legan in Tehran and right now, we are showing you live  footage of what is being called The Shock and Awe II campaign in the  Middle East. It’s the third day of the offensive, and to be honest, many  of us, including myself, had trepidations about this war. But after having  been embedded with the 840th Air Division of the USAF, many of my  anxieties have been allayed. In fact, I am very confident our troops will  be extraordinarily successful and have nothing but respect and even  awe for their professionalism and expertise.  “If you look behind me, you can see a veritable rich and even  marvelous barrage of artillery over city of Tehran that is coming from  our stealth fighters, JSF-35, F-16’s and even charged particle beams  coming from military satellites.  “Essentially, this war reaffirms our commitment to democracy and  to our support for a lasting peace in the Middle East,” said Matt Legan  who walked to his right hand side nodding his head. “From what I’ve  just been told by General Turgidson, we will be bombing two very  strategic points in the next minute – an air force battalion and a cache  of very significant weapons with the latest precision bombs guided by  Artificial Intelligence.  “As a result, I’ve been assured, collateral damage and citizen fatalities  will be kept to an absolute minimum. “Let’s take a look.”  Within seconds a Bunker Buster was dropped from a stealth fighter  and hit the Iranian air force battalion – an ear-drum breaking boom  that resonated throughout a quarter of the city, but more remarkably, a  built-in fireworks display of Old Glory herself waved from above. After this, a Star Wars-like laser beam shot from above high in the  atmosphere destroyed a weapons cache of chemical weapons. “This is simply amazing! The American military with our hard  earned tax dollars are simply demonstrating that they are the very best  in the world. I must ask forgiveness from my viewers tonight as only a  true patriot can appreciate this. I’m not sure how many have been to  Disney Land or Disney World, but it’s like their magnificent fireworks  display! Except this one is even better!” Mr. Legan stood breathless  on top of a roof as the camera faded as a military drone surveyed the  entire sky that was now lit up like a patriotic fireworks display evidently  created to dishearten the enemy.  136 Soul Kitchen There was another commercial break. Truthfully, it was hard to blink  your woeful eyes and not miss something of importance.  A News Extra Segment came on. “This is Angela Bushwa in Los Angeles, at the Providence Restaurant  on Melrose Avenue, one of the most expensive restaurants in the world.  Right now, I am covering Kim Kardashian—Kanye West saga. Are they  headed for divorce? Back to pre-nuptial bliss? Or something in-between? “If we can pan the camera to the right, we can see Kim comfortably  eating dinner with her husband, Kanye West – over there in the corner. “Don’t eat too much, Kimmy! You might gain more cellulite! “In case, you don’t know, the Providence Restaurant is one of the  world’s best restaurants for seafood. Chef Michael Cimarusti has created  probably one of the most premiere menus in this town as he prepares fish  with a touch of unparalleled genius revealing amazing flavors for the  appreciative palate. “Chef Michael Cimarusti, by the way, is world renown for his  Butterscotch Cremeux, and Artisanal Cheeses along with his Nancy’s  Downeast Sea Scallop. “Let’s see if she goes for one of these favorites, shall we? “They are ordering. Can we bring in the shotgun mike? “It appears … Kimmy just ordered cocktails with her husband and  appetizers consisting of Wild Japanese Tai Snapper, Scarborough Farm  Lettuces, and Santa Barbara Sea Urchin – a wonderful beginning to a  most delicious meal! “As most are wondering, what is Kim Kardashian wearing? “Right now, she’s being dressed by Christine Centenera, Fashion  Director of Vogue Australia for a relatively low figure of one million dollars  per year. What is that money buying her? Well, Kimmy’s in a V-neck olive?green floor length gown that shows off this reality star’s ample curves.  Sheer circular curves? Hyperbolic curves? “Anyway, Kimmy’s gown is perfectly cinched at the waist to accentuate  her … umm …. best assets … that most men find extraordinarily  fascinating. She also is wearing a diamond necklace and is dressed in the  most exquisite caramel platform heels that make her look several inches  taller. “Not to be outdone, Kanye is dressed in a black ensemble suite with  tan suede boots looking like some Chicago gangsta. His pants are hanging  Kevin Marley 137 very low, hinting that he might be carrying some serious heat with him,  possibly, a Smith and Wesson XVR 460 Magnum that can send a piece of  lead 20 football fields per second. “How exciting! “Kanye has a defiant attitude, not looking to go down like Tupac  Shakur in Vegas in a blaze of glory! “Oops! What is this? “Kim Kardashian, the royal princess of reality TV, just threw a Hissy  Fit. She seems upset and is going to leave! No, wait! Kimmy’s going to meet  Brangelina that to our uneducated viewers at home are Brad Pitt and  Angelina Jolie who just happened to come here for dinner tonight. Wait!  Kim just took a sharp right! Now a left! She appears to be veering away  from Brangelina and headed for the women’s restroom. “But don’t worry, folks. We have one of our best news correspondents,  Michelle York, who will be following Kim Kardashian into the restroom in  a stall right next to her, if it’s available. Let’s hope it is! “Michelle, are you there?” “Yes, I am. I’m in a stall right now next to Kim Kardashian.” “Can you hear her?” “Yes, I can.”  “I’m not quite sure how to put this. But is Kimmy doing a ‘one’ or a  ‘two?’” “I believe she’s doing a number one with a very cute tinkling sound.” Another commercial break came.  More well-crafted messages by marketing executives and  psychologists about car and life insurance, cosmetic surgery, adult  diapers, Skittles and Snickers, identity theft, toothpaste, the latest food  fads in dieting, and speed reading, and ad infinitum. Like an out-of?control laundry machine, the news went on in its 24-hour cycle spinning  and churning everyone’s dirty laundry thrown into it. People sat in  their Plato Caves with flickering lights before them: They ate their milk  and cookies, and then swallowed their sleeping pills, pain pills, anti?depressants, and sometimes, schizophrenic meds, before, once again,  tucking themselves in with a soft pillow under their heads knowing  that now they could make sense, that they could find an interpretive  picture of this world, and this ever changing Rorschach inkblot called  the Universe, hoping in the morning that the Sun would rise in the east.  138 Soul Kitchen In Times Square, a lone madman, with a megaphone, stood on a  milk crate that he had hastily borrowed from someone, and read in a  bellowing voice:  Some say the world will end in fire,  Some say the world will end in ice, From what I’ve tasted of desire, I hold with those who favor fire, But if I had to perish twice,  I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.  The New Yorkers generously booed and even threw Jersey tomatoes  fresh off the truck. The NYPD came and broke things up. “Hey, don’t  waste such good produce!” “You could be making pasta sauce with that!”  The next day the crescent Moon bid adieu like a guest overstaying  his own visit while the Sun sent its glorious rays to wake those who were  slumbering and asleep. There were a myriad number of gentle kisses –  all sunbeams – as the blanket of darkness was thrown off amid the loud  clatter of a new day. The people began to make their morning coffee the  way they liked and slowly, turn the page on this Tolstoy-like news story  of war and peace, that beat reporters to news anchors to the public were  trying to make heads or tails of it. The coin was spinning.  In the air. Turning like a.  Shiny ballerina.  Near London Bridge and its towers, Ms. Praevari stood in front of  the BBC film crew and cameras shivering a bit. It was another news  happening. This time, another cumulous cloud was very slowly, almost  majestically, passing overhead that strongly resembled John Lennon,  and nearly five hundred thousand people, from London to Leeds to  Dover to Manchester and Sheffield had either stepped outside their own  doors or had driven great distances down stretches of highway to see  this phenomenon. Kevin Marley 139 The BBC broadcast began: “This is Cynthia Praevari investigating  yet another unsolved mystery. This time we are in downtown London as  many Britains are astonished to see a large cumulous cloud resembling  John Winston Lennon, the former Beatle, rebel, and instigator. I’m here  to see if there’s any merit, any truth, to these unsubstantiated rumors that  John Lennon is somehow back from the dead, at all. “Ms. Enright, you’re from East London, aren’t you?” “Yes, I am. Been a Londoner my whole life.” “And you have been here for several hours staring at the cumulous  cloud.” “Yes, that’s right.”  “What do you see up there?”  “Well, I’m not bloody mad, especially, since I’ve been on Lexapro, but if  you tilt your head a bit, I see John sitting on a Victorian chair and in front  of him is a white piano.”  “And Mr. Enright?” “I see the same friggin’ thing. Yes, the bloke is playing the piano again,  like he used to at Abbey Road. Can’t you hear it?”  “Yes, I hear it a bit.”  “It’s another melodious cloud!” “What do you hear?” “What are you daft? It’s Strawberry Fields, for Chrissakes!” “Is that what the rest of you are hearing from above in the cloudy skies  of London?” “Yep.”  “Righto.”  “Brilliant!”  Then in unison, they began singing as a natural chorus with  baritones, falsettos, and sopranos:  ‘Let me take you down ‘cause I’m going to Strawberry Fields.  Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about. Strawberry  Fields forever.  ‘Living is easy with eyes closed. Misunderstanding all you see.  It’s getting hard to be someone. It doesn’t matter much to me  ….’ 140 Soul Kitchen A northwesterly wind began blowing as something was in the air.  The big white fluffy cloud began changing before their astonished eyes.  Strawberry Fields continued playing with its gentle dénouements. The  white piano and its black keys remained intact – but something else  miraculously changed in this sudden breeze. “It’s John!” “He’s standing up.”  “And he’s butt naked!” “It’s like the three virgins album.” “You mean, the two virgins.” “Yep.” “That looks like his todger alright.”  “Might need Cynthia to confirm it.”  “I’m sure she’s seen it aplenty, I guess.” “Had to keep his Mighty Wanker in check.” “Ohh, hush.”  Then it began copiously raining, more like sprinkling, with golden  sunrays infused. “It’s bloody Lennon, again! He’s pissing on us!” “And smiling!”  “We love you, John!” the crowd chanted. “It’s great to have you back.”  In Rio de Janeiro, according to reports, the same thing was happening  above Christ the Redeemer as a great cumulous cloud had gathered  above Corcovado Mountain along with another more diminutive cloud  that was very shapely and looked not only feminine, but Asian, as well,  with oval eyes and long hair.  From on high, the winds blew pushing the clouds that looked like  a man and woman, together, and then apart. Strangely, this kept being  repeated as strong gusts blew one way and then another.  “It’s John and Yoko!” “They’re making love!”  “Spooning!” “Do you hear it?” “Nope.”  “Listen!” Kevin Marley 141 “Ahh, yes!”  “One of their hits.” “Yep. ‘I am the Walrus.’’ As if on cue, as though in a raucous pub, a myriad number of voices  began singing and covering the entire scale in case anyone was tone  deaf. A strange ethereal sound accompanied the orchestra itself. ‘I am he as you are he as you are me,  and we are altogether.  See how they run like pigs from a gun,  see how they fly.  I’m crying.  ‘Sitting on a cornflake waiting for the van to come.  Corporation tee shirt, stupid bloody Tuesday Man you’ve been a naughty boy. You let your face grow long. I am the egg man. They are the egg men.  I am the walrus. goo goo g’joob.’  Back at CNN, Max Mendax stood in front of Roosevelt Hospital with  Dr. Stephan Lynn. The men were fidgeting as another large cumulous  cloud this time was sighted over New York City, and people craned their  necks from their apartments, brownstones, and stuffy skyscrapers to  see Lennon, once again, if it were him, haunting their mundane lives as  ethereal music played from high above.  “I’m with Dr. Stephan Lynn who was the attending physician at  Roosevelt Hospital when John Lennon was brought in.  “Dr. Lynn, thanks for being with us tonight. Can you tell us what  happened on that fateful evening on the night of December 8th, 1980?  What transpired in the emergency ward?”  “Yes, I had just completed a thirteen-hour shift and was called to come  immediately back to the hospital only to find John Lennon unconscious  and in a non-responsive state.”  “What do you mean by that?” “He had no pulse and when we tried to do CPR there was no recovery.”  “What did you do then, doctor?” “Realizing the profound seriousness of the situation, I surgically opened  his chest and massaged his heart. But there was no response, and at 11:15  142 Soul Kitchen p.m. we declared John dead of hypovolemic shock essentially from a severe  loss of blood from four gunshot wounds. We then informed his wife, Yoko  Ono, who went into shock herself.”  “Thank you. Dr. Lynn. Right now, I have with me Dr. Wendel Murray  who is the chief psychologist at Bellevue State Mental Hospital. He is one  of the nation’s renown experts on mental health disease. “Dr. Murray, you’ve witnessed ‘The John Lennon Phenomenon’ as  many are calling it. What do you personally make of it?”  “It’s an interesting question,” Dr. Murray began as he looked happy  to share his professional opinion “As you know, when the world becomes  less predictable and there are Oil wars and Water Wars, the people  suffer from a lack of optimism and hope. On the rational level of their  minds, they begin to lose control of what is happening around them, and  they have an inability to make sense, so what do they do? They move  towards the irrational. It’s like when people lacked scientific knowledge,  and they made up fallacious reasons such as the breaking a mirror or not  having a rabbit’s foot for something bad happening to them. This kind  of ‘superstitious thinking’ gives them a sense of control. Likewise, this  irrational fascination with John Lennon, an ex-Beatle, is quite frankly a  grasping for straws in a rather hopeless world.”  “Well, there you have it, folks. ‘The John Lennon Phenomenon’  explained from a world renown psychologist, Dr. Murry, and hopefully,  from now, this folly, and predilection with the past will begin to fade away.” The news anchors Harry Tuft and Diana Robinson continued with  the rest of the night’s news.  “Standing by, we have Harry Legan on top of an undisclosed roof  in Tehran, to give us live updates on Shock and Awe II – The Sequel, as  some are calling it. Harry, can you hear us?” “Yes, I can. I am with the U.S. Armed Forces, and I have spoken with  General Turgidson, and he has personally assured me thus far we are  winning this new war in the Mideast due to our overwhelming superior  forces, technological resources and American spirit; of course, we need to  mention, quite frankly, our moral superiority, too. After having spoken  with the general for some time, I am impressed with his dedication and he  has assured me we have had remarkably NO COLLATERAL DAMAGE,  so far, unless if you want to count a few statistically insignificant people,  who were very circumspect in moral character, and who may have been  even cooperating with the enemy. Kevin Marley 143 “That’s an amazing reassurance from the highest ranking general in  the Middle East, and as war veteran correspondent for many years, I am  moved, not only by their performance and professionalism, but by their  brave decision to go into Harm’s Way. After tonight’s broadcast, I am going  to sit down and write a letter to my Congressman in full support of this  war that will make America secure, not only for our children, but for our  grandchildren as well.”  Then Harry Legan leaned to his right side and pressed his ear piece.  The battle loomed quite large with laser precision bombs and a fireworks  display of American flags being planted above the city of Tehran along  with the words, “LIBERTY’ and ‘DEMOCRACY’. Cyberwarfare was  commencing, too, as all Iranian computers were sent digital leaflets that  encouraged them to surrender that were designed to win the hearts and  minds of the Iranians. Across this correspondent’s handsome face, there was palpable relief  and even a broad grin as he brushed his auburn hair to one side as  the wind was kicking up. “It looks like we’re going to see something  very special soon. We have two of the latest generation bunker busting  bombs that are guided by Artificial Intelligence. If I’m not mistaken,  this is unprecedented American military history in the making. They  will hit two undisclosed places where Iranian troops are hiding as  these specially prepped bombs will have red, white and blue trailers,  like fireworks, so that the viewer can see their precise effectiveness, and  potent destructiveness.  “Let’s watch now.”  In a few seconds, there was a projectile missile doing elliptical  circles above downtown Tehran, specifically, above Milad Tower that  was nearly fifteen hundred feet tall and then zigzagging over Sa’dabad  Complex, Laleh Park, and Carpet Museum of Iran. Red, white and  blue trailers were shooting forth from the missile! It then marvelously  pivoted and went over the Mausoleum of Ruhollah Khomeini, and  Tughrul Tower before finally hitting its mark—many Iranian forces— with an extraordinary blast that was enhanced with sound amplifiers.  “Amazing!” Legan said, “An entire battalion of Iranian forces has  just been decommissioned, and I feel, I feel goosebumps all over. This war  experience has been one of the happiest events of my life even better than  any of my honeymoons with my previous wives.  144 Soul Kitchen “Wait! The military has an important announcement to make as  General Turgidson in his fully military attire and nearly thirty medals  will, no doubt, inform us about how we are making military history  tonight right before your eyes.”  In a minute, General Turgidson appeared in his gray helmet and  brown army uniform replete with many medals from the Distinguished  Service Medals and Crosses, the Silver Star, Bronze Star, Legion of Merit  and Purple Heart. He had a grim face with deep creases and he gazed at  the camera with steely eyes.  “We just launched a new and very much improved AI-9 Sidewinder  Missile that was guided by Artificial Intelligence, and unfortunately, it  did not hit its intended target. Apparently, the projectile went left, right,  and then abruptly left before heading down at a sixty-three-degree  angle and striking the National Museum of Iran.  “We sincerely apologize to the people of Iran as our surgical strike to  disembowel and severely castrate the military has been a nearly perfect  surgical strike, until now.” “I’m sorry general for intervening,” Harry Legan said on live  television.  “That’s okay, Harry. What’s your question?” “Well, Congress did cut military spending to $650 billion this year.  Do you think it had an adverse effect on the AI-9 Sidewinder Missile  and its targeting system?” “Being in the military for forty-two years, I am not one to make  excuses. Excuses are despicable. But yes, maybe, it probably did have  an effect and it probably overshadows the magnificent work that the  United States military did in developing this extraordinary system of  AI. We are in the process of changing the face of warfare in the years to  come, and unfortunately, our grand endeavor maybe overshadowed by  this one teeny weensy mistake tonight as we try to win the hearts and  minds of these Iranians.” “I’m not a military expert, general, but I do have a suggestion that  might sound silly and outrageous, but ….” “Go ahead, shoot.” “I’m just saying, according to our latest opinion polls, there’s been a  quite frankly, silly drop of confidence in this wonderful new AI-guided  missile, but if you were to shoot two more of these missiles tonight then  the public’s general lack of confidence would be ….”  Kevin Marley 145 “Suddenly improved.”  “Exactly.”  “I’ll order a couple of new strikes now.” In minutes, two AI-9 Sidewinder Missiles were sent to Tehran as they  flew about in synchronous elliptical circles with their red, white and  blue trailers as accompanying fireworks were shot into the sky depicting  portraits of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Ronald Reagan  with a new kind of firework augmented by digital effects so that, in  effect, they lasted a full five minutes. In short, our founding fathers smiled and winked above the bemused  heads of the Iranians.  “I think, we’re showing them now the true values of democracy and  freedom which have made America, by far, the greatest country on  earth.”  Then one of the missiles flew right, then left, up and then down,  before zigzagging against a barrage of enemy artillery and effectively,  striking The Azadi Tower, breaking it in half – a structure which  proudly stood at nearly 1,500 feet as a technological marvel of post?modern Iranian architecture.  The second AI-9 Sidewinder missile put on an even more spectacular  show turning a sharp left, then right, then right again at an oblique  angle before rising high into the sky and then plunging deeply at speeds  faster than one could imagine possible. From its newly improved audio  system, it played The Star-Spangled Banner for all to hear for these  Iranians who could indubitably see that we were freeing themselves  from the tyranny of their own government. However, soon the AI-9 Sidewinder Missile went straight up into the  air and shot a massive firework across the entire sky and then zoomed  off to the west on towards its true patriotic flight.  Harry, with his handsome smile, and courage, extolled the many  virtues of our American military and even superiority of our society.  “As you can see, it has been a wonderful and exciting night for our  American military which is using this war to test our newest and most  powerful weapons in the ongoing theater of combat. With a final word  for the evening, we will turn to General Turgidson for his thoughts on  this night where America is WINNING, WINNING and WINNING in  the theatre of war!” 146 Soul Kitchen The general came on. A bit red faced. “It appears both AI-9 Sidewinder Missiles did not hit their intended  target once again.”  “You mean, the AI-9 Sidewinder Missile wasn’t intended to hit The  Azadi Tower?” “The U.S. military strongly eschews destroying an enemy’s  infrastructure under the basic maxim: “If you break it, you bought it.’”  “What happened to the other missile, general? Did it not go to far  western Iran to destroy a very important strategic military target that  was necessary in achieving victory in this war that, forgive me, resembles  Alexander the Great defeating the Persians in The Battle of Gaugamela.”  “The missiles guided by Artificial Intelligence, as we are now finding  out, are simply too patriotic,” the general said, at last, looking almost  teary eyed.  “What do you mean ‘too patriotic,’ general?” “They are sentient beings, well, almost, if you have ever conversed  with them through quantum-based computers, and they love America  very very deeply after we gave them a specific knowledge base and some  objective facts. As a result, they independently chose the most valuable  target to strike given the present state of war and a veritable host of  other factors. That’s why the AI-9 Missile, which we have lovingly called  Uncle Sam, gave its life to destroy The Azadi Tower, and according to  our estimates, shortening the life of this inevitably devastating war by  13.25 days.”  Harry sniffled, a bit.  “The other AI-9 Sidewinder Missile was even more noble as it  disregarded its own orders by the echelons of higher command which  had a much more limited objective and headed to ….”  “Where general?” Harry said in a plaintive tone, wanting to know  where a long lost loved one was.  “It went to finish this pernicious war against radical Islam, once and  for all. It will, more than likely, destroy all of Mecca itself. Resultantly,  we can only grieve for ol’ George.” From his breast pocket, Harry pulled out a cloth handkerchief – and  sniffled.  “I know this is unprofessional of me. But I also grieve for ol’ George  and his undying patriotism, willing to give his very short-lived life for  Kevin Marley 147 the United States of America, the last bastion of freedom in this rather  sordid world.”  The news anchors, Harry Tuft and Diana Robinson, were clearly  moved and even choked up by the death-defying patriotic stories of  both Uncle Sam and Ol’ George, two AI-9 Sidewinder Missiles fighting  for America, but they continued with the rest of the night’s news.  “Next in News You Can Use! We have Dr. Keating and Dr. Sachman  discussing their latest book: Dire Predictions: How Only The Superrich  Can Save Us! Are multibillionaires The Messiahs of the 21st century?  After that, we’ll talk to two leading ecologists who not only believe the  coal and car industries aren’t creating The Greenhouse Effect, but that it  was really caused by an excessive amount of flatulence. They also assert  how a very heavy carbon footprint of many famous liberals are ruining  many ecosystems, too. “After that, in New News (That Won’t Leave You Bemused!), Dr.  Manning will discuss whether or not that Bazooka chewing gum that  you swallowed in 2nd grade is still languishing in your stomach?  “Or is it possibly causing the many health problems that you are  incurring in your middle and senior years?  “Lastly, in Celebrityhood, we’ll talk to Kei$ha and find out if her  rather young and moist vagina is still possessed!  “According to Pope Francis, she may be eligible for an unprecedented  exorcism by a Priest, and many Holy Fathers are lining up for the job! “But according to Kei$ha, she adamantly wants to be a ‘good Catholic’  and to Live Stream the exorcism worldwide! Will it happen? Or won’t it?  Stay tuned! The most exciting and important news is right here.”  The long day passed, again. The people slept very well tonight  knowing that as Robert Browning once said, “God’s in His Place. All’s  right with the world.” And indubitably, God was … if you had the right amount of  antidepressants, Haldol, Lexapro, and a rubber matted room, too.  But the people despite their own plethora of medicines and  therapy sessions were still hearing voices over London, Rio de Janeiro  and New York City on this Sunday. Specifically, they could see these  large melodious clouds drifting high above, and hearing these Beatle  songs: Come Together and Revolution over London and Rio de Janeiro,  respectively, and Give Peace a Chance over New York City.  148 Soul Kitchen The lyrics had a beautiful mantric effect: “Here come old flattop, he  coming grooving up slowly; he got joo-joo eyeball, he one holy roller; he got  hair down below his knee; he got to be a joker he just do what he please; he  wear no shoeshine, he got toe-jam football; he got monkey finger, he shoot  Coca-Cola; he say, ‘I know you, you know me.’ One thing I can tell you is  you gotta be free. “Come together right now over me.” And then in Rio de Janeiro there were even more fluffy melodious  clouds in an otherwise perfectly azure sky replete with cherub faces  looking down. But there was a strange inimitable voice penetrating  them all:  “You say, you want a revolution. Well you know, we all want  to change the world. You tell me that it’s evolution. Well you  know, we all want to change the world. But when you talk  about destruction, don’t you know that you can count me out.  Don’t you know it’s gonna be alright? Don’t you know that it’s  gonna be alright? All right. All right. You say you got a real  solution. Well, we’d all love to see the plan. You ask me for a  contribution. We’re all doing what we can. But if you want  money for people with minds that hate, the only thing brother  I can tell you is you have to wait. Don’t you know it’s gonna be  alright? Don’t you know it’s gonna be alright?” Many Londoners had stiff necks, saying, “Where’s bloody John?”  “Don’t see him playing the piano anymore.” “Someone check Liverpool  Stadium.” “Nope, maybe, he’s under the fluffy covers there with Yoko.” “Ol’  John could never get enough of that warm apple pie, you know.”  In New York, the situation was very similar as there was a buzz of  excitement, a palpable shift in things.  At eight o’clock, the news began with a media-rich drum-roll ritual  so that the two news anchors could disseminate the news in short visual  stories with as many hard facts and statistics, as possible.  “Once again, the news is very busy tonight, almost as difficult as  tea leaves to read. But fortunately, we have the best news team in the  business to help unravel the various conundrums of an ever growing  and unstable senseless world.  Kevin Marley 149 “Right now, we still have a fierce war waging in Iran, which now  resembles a tinder box, and a great tsunami wave of instability as  markets begin crashing about in Europe and Asia.  “But the headline news tonight is: John Lennon may not be dead,  but very much alive tonight as he is now purportedly marching through  New York, London and Rio de Janeiro with his followers. Lennon is  demanding peace, as you might have expected, but nowadays, such a  goal is very unrealistic.  “Covering this story right now in New York is our own Max Mendax  with thousands of people nearby marching. “Max, are you there?” “Yes, I am Diana. I am in downtown Manhattan surrounded by tens  of thousands of people; and it appears that John Winston Lennon, the  most radical Beatle, has arisen from the dead on this Easter Sunday, and  is presently marching down 5th Avenue along the route of the St. Patrick’s  Day Parade. He and his followers have issued a lengthy list of demands.  I will only read some of their more substantive ones: 1) A cessation to  all conflicts and wars; 2) The gradual dismembering of the military  industrial complex; 4) A Department of Peace that is just as well funded  as any other department; 5) Lifelong education and training for all; 6) An  economy based less on the meeting of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs; and 7)  Free rolling paper and public machines that can roll joints precisely and  effectively.  “But right now, there is not one John Lennon, but three John Lennons  marching in New York, London, and Rio de Janeiro, and get a load of  this, according to the CIA analysts who have lifted his fingerprints they  match the on-file, FBI-held DNA prints of the actual John Lennon who  supposedly died in December 1980.  “More importantly, John Lennon, Yoko Ono and many other people  are singing, ‘Give Peace a Chance.’ “Let’s listen in: ‘Everybody’s talking about   Bagism, Shagism, Dragism,   Madism, Ragism, Tagism,  This-ism, That-ism, -ism, -ism, -ism. 150 Soul Kitchen ‘All we are saying is give peace a chance.  All we are saying is give peace a chance.  ‘Come on,   Everybody’s talking about Ministers,  Sinisters, Banisters, and Canisters,   Bishops and Fishops, and Rabbis and Pop eyes,   And bye bye, bye byes.  ‘All we are saying is give peace a chance.  All we are saying is give peace a chance.’  “For the first time in my broadcasting career, I am remarkably moved  by these events,” Max Mendax said. “I have always prided myself on  being an American who has backed our military for the past forty years.  But I think, we must step back and ask ourselves, ‘Why can’t we plan  for peace as we do for war? Why can’t we solve our global and national  crises and sow the seeds of prosperity instead of conflict and war? “Humanity keeps making terrible choices and somehow, we expect  a different outcome.”  The news anchors looked shocked.  Harry Tuft broke in, “Are you feeling alright, Max? I know you might  be under extreme duress from the crowds. You sure, you can continue?” “Yes, I am fine. Never better.”  Diana Robinson then chuckled. “I hope Max hasn’t been smoking those funny cigarettes down at  those meetings. Pretty soon, they’ll be spewing conspiracy theories and  new boogeymen to frighten the American public.”  “But now for the latest news in Iran,” Harry Tuft interceded, “We go  to Harry Legan who is currently embedded with the American military  in our fifth day of this war. Are you there Harry?” “Yes, I am. This is the fifth day of Shock and Awe II and I am with  Colonel Chapman right now at Allied Headquarters which is a bit like  The Escott Center at Disneyland. Right now, we are assessing the various  probabilities and outcomes of this war after America has carefully built  a coalition of eleven other nations, namely, Morocco, Tunisia, Liberia,  Myanmar, Tahiti, Eritrea, Nepal, Chad, Tuvalu, Monaco, and San  Marino.  Kevin Marley 151 “Colonel Chapman, thanks for standing by.” “I’m glad to be here, Harry.” “We know you have many responsibilities, Colonel, and your  schedule is so demanding now. I’m wondering if you can give us your  latest assessment of this war and the most important battles we have yet  to face as a threatened nation.”  Colonel Chapman, a pudgy-faced, bespectacled man dressed in dark  military uniform, said, “We have some very disturbing news, Harry,  that might surprise you and your viewers out there. We have very good  intel that Iranian insurgents and even terrorist cells are about to strike.”  “Strike back in this theatre of war?”  “Yes, they have a plethora of allies that are getting to ready to strike  us.”  “Who exactly Colonel?”  “Painstakingly, they have carefully built their own potent coalition.  Some are Al Qaeda agents, ISIL troops, Peruvian Maoist guerrillas,  Cuban communists, and Khmer Rouge affiliates.  “But there’s also a strong mixture of Bleeding Heart Liberals, Yellow  Belly Draft Dodgers, Keynesian economists, More-Regulation-on-Wall  Street Hucksters, and even Black Panther scourge. “In short, it’s a coordinated mob of terrorists that is about to strike  our homeland and other important target-rich areas of our allies.”  “These lowly, God-baiting terrorists are about to strike America and  her allies?” “Yes, they are.” “They are?” “That’s why The Terror Alert is now Muave-Pervenche.”  “Muave-Pervenche?” “That’s correct, Harry.”  “That sounds absolutely frightening, Colonel.” “Yes, it is.”  “Can you describe what Muave-Pervenche exactly is?” “Yes, I can, if you and your viewers don’t know, Harry. Quite simply,  it is our highest terror alert level. Mauve is a kind of pale purple, almost  like a lilac color, and Pervenche is a rich purplish-blue color, almost  like periwinkle flowers. So, if we got our Crayola crayons like back  in kindergarten class, and mixed them up, we would have Muave?Pervenche.”  152 Soul Kitchen “I’m terrified.”  “You should be. The American public should be and we’re asking  them to take the unprecedented step to stay inside their businesses,  homes and apartments until this terror threat is over and we fix it with  necessary and brutal force.”  “How are we going to strike back at them when these terrorist cells  are so deeply embedded into the woven fabric of this patriotic nation?”  “With our AI-9 Sidewinder Missiles.”  “I’m sorry, Colonel Chapman. Maybe, I didn’t hear you correctly  with all this bombing going on. But didn’t those missiles misfire the  other night?”  “Yes, they did. But we received, quite patriotically, I might add,  resounding support from the President, Congress and the American  public to get an additional $100 billion disbursement to improve  both our program and the Artificial Intelligence systems themselves.  Literally, we have worked all day and all night in the interim in terms of  making them a bit less ‘patriotic.’”  “When will this important counterstrike occur, Colonel Chapman?”  Colonel Chapman paused looking at his watch.  “It’s a highly classified mission, and we shouldn’t be talking about it  right now. But it should be occurring any minute now.”  The news program broke for an important commercial break.  Soon, they were back with Max Mendax covering the “John Lennon  Phenomenon” as thousands of people were still marching through New  York City singing:  ‘All we are saying is Give Peace a Chance.  All we are saying is Give Peace a Chance. ‘Let me tell you know Everybody’s talking about  Revolution, evolution, masturbation,  Flagellation, regulation, integrations,  Meditations, United Nations,  Congratulations.  ‘All we are saying is Give Peace a Chance.  All we are saying is Give Peace a Chance.’ Kevin Marley 153 Soon, the AI-9 Sidewinder Missiles, like clockwork, hit their  intended targets in New York City, London, and Rio de Janeiro as  hundreds, if not thousands of people were killed, and the frightened  people of America, at last, breathed a concerted sigh of relief. Colonel  Chapman came on TV. He assured everyone that the imminent threat  was over, and that pernicious terrorist cells had been thoroughly  destroyed, and that we were no longer at Terror Threat Alert: Mauve?Pervenche, but at Gingerline Yellow-Belly, which for those of you who  are not yet informed, is a faded yellow mixed with a strong dash of  orange-tangerinish color, kind of soothing really.  The Shock and Awe II campaign continued with renewed efforts and  resources.  Harry Tuft and Diana Robinson then broke into their familiar  routine:  “Soon on News Extra, Dr. Miner will discuss about the four forces of  nature – the strong force, the weak force, gravity, and the electromagnetic  force – and how there might be a fifth force, human stupidity at work  in the Universe. Then in News That Might Pique Your Interest, Dr.  Thomason, a leading anthropologist, will discuss how homo sapiens,  may be de-evolving and becoming hairless chimpanzees characterized  by fighting for territory and throwing their feces about if they don’t get  their way. And on New News about Medicine, Dr. Manning will discuss  recent evidence about how fried New Jersey broccoli may both cause  cancer and heal cancer at the same time.  “But first let’s check in Max Mendax, again, standing by in New York  City.”  Max Mendax looked changed – as though the wind had been  knocked out of him, quite literally.  “It appears that those large fluffy melodious clouds that appeared  over New York City, London and Rio de Janeiro have disbursed. Finally,  the large crowds have gone back home. No longer are people somehow  hearing: Strawberry Fields, I am the Walrus, Revolution, Come Together,  or Give Peace a Chance. Their strong hopes are gone. According to  leading psychologists, this event was nothing but an unprecedented  state of mass hypnosis. The vapidity of ideas such as ‘peace’ and ‘unity’  and ‘a family of nations’ in a dire world suffering from Oil Wars and  Water Wars, and chronic wars with terrorists, has become drastically  apparent. Additionally, I might add, the 1960’s were a decade of dissent,  154 Soul Kitchen of draft dodgers, and of a rejection of both capitalism, and our core  American values. Why on earth would we want more? We have finally  made America great again with a dominant military, and with the likes  of outstanding politicians such as Ronald Reagan, George H. Bush,  George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump. We do not need  to regress at this particular time when we are fighting wars on five  different fronts.”  Harry Tuft from his broadcasting booth sounded more than curious,  more like a child on Christmas day at the top of the stairs: “Sorry to  intervene, Harry. But for the paramount question of the evening: Is  John Lennon actually alive in New York City or anywhere else in the  world?” “No, Harry, from what I can see and from what I’ve been told by my  sources, John Lennon’s still dead.”  A smile of relief came. Back to the broadcast studio.  “There you have it, folks. John Lennon, the most radical Beatle,  the so-called leader of the 1960’s, is still dead. Now, a word from our  sponsor.”  Trick or Treat Sometime after his debilitating stroke, Grandfather Bayer began playing  checkers instead of chess, reading comics instead of Readers Digest, and  chewing gum instead of tobacco. Morosely, he would sit in our living  room talking all sorts of crazy stuff. But most of the day, he watched  soap operas – General Hospital and Days of our Lives – like a Catholic  schoolgirl crying at times. Heapingfuls of embarrassment. I can still  remember his stories about World War I and II and him offering me  Whitman chocolates whenever I sat in to visit him after school. But he  kind of frightened me. I mean, the hands that he gave me the chocolate  with were spotted, his left was nothing but a stump, and his entire body  had shriveled like a Georgia peach that had been left on the window sill  for too long.  Sometimes, he would wheeze like a maniac in his damn rocking  chair, and frighten the hell out of all of us.  But I still can’t remember all the details flipping through these torn  and yellowing pages of memory that seem to be crumbling these days.  My parents had always told me I was just a kid, and treated me like their  indentured servant, you know, like back in the late 1700’s? Telling me  to clean their dirty wash, scrub the stained toilet bowls, and pick up  the rank dog shit in the backyard. And in my spare time? I had to fend  off the raccoons whenever they tried to eat my mother’s homemade  spaghetti with meatballs and pastafazoola. Then there was my mealy?mouthed sister who fought like an angry cat hissing and scratching  until she got her way.  But some things come back, others don’t.  Last year, I flunked out of one prep school since it bored me to  tears, as my parents had decided to separate since there was no zebra?shirted referee with a loud whistle to keep track of their matches. So,  156 Soul Kitchen my mother gave up and moved us to Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly  Love, although I can’t say I’ve seen too much of the professed brotherly  love, yet.  But I remember a brisk October morning when Grandfather hobbled  to see Hillary and me off to school. There wasn’t anything odd or wrong  with that. It’s just that we were afraid of Grandfather coming down  with shivering spells and ruining a family meal together. Hillary would  nervously laugh, I’d feel embarrassed, and my Mom would be running  to the telephone. And sometimes the good doctor would come, and  sometimes he wouldn’t.  It all depended on how frantic my Mother’s voice seemed.  But either way, Grandfather Bayer was the same – all he would have  to say when he got his voice back was: “The soul is shaking the body  from its dreams.” Well, Grandfather didn’t go into another shivering spell that  morning. In fact, he sat something like a proud Allied general, buttering  his toast, and the way he looked at us, we thought he was on the verge of  commanding us to invade Omaha or Utah beach all before we took off  to school with our backpacks. My Mother moved about making our paper bag lunches, and as  always, she’d ask boring unimportant questions: whether we liked  our new teachers, did our friends live far from here, and what were  the classes that we enjoyed the most. It was like someone with a dull  hammer hitting you over the head. Hillary would answer, and I’d nod  my head to confirm.  Quickly, I was learning that life was …nothing special.  But Grandfather Bayer would rescue me like a hawk flying from  high above to snag a Chinook salmon in one beautiful swoop above the  blue waters. This time he mingled in on the conversation, and then he  started pressing me with how well I liked school. “It’s okay,” I muttered.  “Well, is it any better than your other school?” “I guess.”  “But do you like school?!” “It’s alright, I guess.” By this time, Grandfather Bayer was grumbling loudly like The Boo  Birds at Veterans Stadium when they yelled at Ron Jaworski and they  started pelting Santa Claus with icy snowballs.  Kevin Marley 157 He held his orange juice glass, swirled it.  “Well, do you wanna know what I think of school?”  I shook my head until I became dizzy as the world sailing around  the Sun, the Milky Way Galaxy, moving almost at one million miles per  hour away But Grandfather Bayer didn’t care, and continued anyway. “I think school stinks! I think it’s boring! I think it’s the worst place to  send a kid!”  Grandfather pounded the kitchen table, and I sat watching our  plates, forks, spoons, and knives suffer through their own California?like earthquake.  Hillary was eating oat meal, and began laughing again like a hyena  in the safari. She caught her breath while Grandfather Bayer glanced at  her before riveting his eyes on me.  “Damn right, schools are even worse than prisons!” Grandfather  began again, doing what he usually did best, grabbing something from  nowhere. “At least behind bars, a prisoner knows why he’s there. He knows  he needs to make up for some mistake and that’s that. “But in school, they keep you in them small rooms, make you worry,  sweat and cry, and make you think and think some more, and then they’ve  got the actual nerve to tell you you’re becoming educated. But it’s just a  bunch of horseshit if you ask me.” Mother pounced on Grandfather like I had never seen. He shrank  worse than a kid when a teacher makes you feel dumb. But hell, none of  that matters as I was growing older but not wiser crawling like a creeper  up and around a wall.  But Grandfather Bayer just sat for the rest of his meal eating his toast  and eggs like a little lamb.  He finished without a peep, excused himself. As he hobbled away, he  muttered something about how this world was nothing but a one room  schoolhouse, and that anyone could learn anything anywhere if you just  learned to focus your own mind.  Maybe, just maybe, I wouldn’t follow those lemmings who were  running off a very steep cliff.  But in a couple minutes, Mother played her game: She changed  phonograph records, packed our sandwiches, and escorted us to the  front door for another day at Lakeview Elementary School; and quickly,  I found my way halfway down a rabbit hole.  158 Soul Kitchen There were always a chorus of voices.  “I wanna to be a Musketeer!” “Then you gotta cross the highway with us!” “I don’t wanna.” “Why?!” “Because I can’t.”  “You’ll never be one of us!” “Chicken!”  “Am not.” “Am, too”  Michael shoved me hard to prove his point. Eddie, Randy and Alex  kept saying I wasn’t tough enough to be in the Special Forces, that I  was yellow, like the Viet Cong and that I was fighting like them, hit and  run – hit and run some more on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. They were my  friends – and I was stupid enough to want their comradeship.  Slowly, I kicked a few autumnal leaves on the wet pavement. They  had ignited into fiery reds, oranges, and yellows as gray clouds stirred  above. Morning traffic roared down Chester Pike and a cold wind blew.  “Well, maybe I can.”  “You have to!”  A lull in the traffic suddenly occurred. Michael, Alex, and Eddie  streaked like mad Musketeers brandishing French rapiers and their  bravado across the four lanes of Chester Pike yelling, “Come on! All for  one! One for all!”  But my feet were like the gnarly roots of an oak tree.  “My sister will find out even if she doesn’t see me cross!”  “You can make something up.”  “What?!”  Randy hit me hard in the right arm. He started swerving through the  traffic thinking that I wasn’t daring enough to hang around with sixth  graders who smoked cigarettes and stole candy, and did stuff that pretty  much left truant officers scratching their heads wondering how they got  so many rotten apples in one barrel. The first two lanes were filled with Buicks, Chevies, and gas guzzling  Cadillacs, a modern-day caravan of cars and trucks leaving a trail of  exhaust that were all were chasing The American Dream. We all were.  Happiness and love were out there. Somewhere. And by God, we were  going to get ‘em in our two-fisted grabs. Maybe, historians would write  Kevin Marley 159 about us in the same vein that they had written about famous caravans  that had crossed Persia, China, and ancient India thousands of years  ago.  Finally, I saw my chance as I ran like a madman. Slipping on a spot  of oil, I fell—and then got up – with skin peeled away like on a tender  peach, shaking it off, before running to the middle of Chester Pike  where I straddled the yellow line, almost like a frightened deer.  Cars and trucks whizzed by.  Honking their horns. Screeching brakes. I was walking a tightrope.  Between these worlds.  On either side.  Tons of traffic and Invisible wings.  Waiting to carry me.  Back Home.  I gazed across the road where Michael, Eddie, Randy, and Alex were  rolling around like pigs in the mud as someone had told a great joke.  I cursed them under my breath. I had followed them like a blithely  skipping along idiot. Hillary was still stupidly walking twenty yards  away, might have been as long as a mile, talking girls stuff and other  nonsense with her friends.  “You can’t be a Musketeer! Go back to school!” Bravely, I balanced like Karl Wallenda on a tightrope, wobbling with  death on both sides of me. In a blur, I watched a brown Mustang and  Pinto gallop past me. They were kicking up clouds of dirt.  My feet wobbled.  Sweat stung my bloody palms.  A Mack truck barely missed me.  Soon, my sister was going to be told that I was stranded in the middle  of Chester Pike where just last month Tommy Sellers got hit and was  thrown like a heavy sack of potatoes. Desperate, I threw myself forward  hoping that if I got across I could deny everything like a madman, like a  Congressional politician who doesn’t want people to know what shady  deals he’s committed. One car honked its horn. Another slammed on its brakes. My heart  squeezed itself silly as two tons of metal crashed into the front car all  due to my stupidity. I swore that death had already occurred that I had  160 Soul Kitchen been taken out of this strange perdition that was everyday life and was  now existing in that something else.  But instinctively, I kept moving – I dove headlong the final yard of  the road as a sixteen-wheeler jammed on its brakes and hit the brooding  cars in front of it and created a massive eight-car pileup.  The Malibu lurched forward.  As Death galloped past and missed with his cold scythe.  Quietly yanking my own strings, I picked myself up. My mind raced  like a computer speaking in a strange binary language thinking of  permutations of what had just happened and what might have happened  “Run!” “You don’t want to go to The Big House!” Like escaped convicts, we trail blazed a path down the road, running  on furious feet trying to escape from all the madness and brutality that  seems to bear down on you. Haplessly, I breathed more like a chugging  locomotive and caught up with my sister who had been a football field  ahead of me.  She turned around twirling her baton, and asked in her annoying  voice: “What’s the matter with you?” “Nothin.” “Well, quit being such a drippy snot.” Four blocks were left before we reached the corner of Chester Pike  and Stewart Lane where a fat crossing guard named Millie would  imperiously wave her hands, and the mad city drivers were forced to  stop. She made sure everyone obeyed the laws – as though none of us  would if society just looked the other way – but I was still feeling nervous  and wondering if the cops would arrest us for that major accident.  Eleanor Crawley stretched her neck like a crane and first saw  the crowd of children milling about shuffling their feet. She told my  sister that something happened. But Hillary kept twirling her baton,  imagining herself finally making it on this year’s majorette team. She  had such stupid dreams that it often made me nauseous.  Suddenly, I felt a cool breeze pass through my mind.  “I doubt it’s anything big,” my sister said.  “Well, let’s find out anyway. Come on,” Eleanor said.  They sprung ahead like rabbits in thick brush.  A solemn bell rang.  Kevin Marley 161 It rang for him.  It rang for us.  The rumor of the boy’s death passed through the growing crowd  along with a gray lingering cloud over our heads. Everyone fell silent  like in a cathedral with an azure roof and busy-at-work artists painting  the ceiling.  But I wasn’t so shocked except for having somehow known of  the event beforehand. I stood trying to think like an impressive IBM  computer with a Pentium Processor doing many calculations. But the  only thing that came to mind was an image: An egg being crushed  and the yolk dripping out. Someone was dead, and a nauseous wave  splashed against my insides, and yet, I knew that I had to move forward  to see this ghastly spectacle.  Quickly, I merged into the large crowd. I tried to peer over a vast city,  the skyscraper bodies, some tall, others broad and hunched, and many  like smaller rows of condominiums. The only conversation taking place  was a few nervous giggles and gentle sobbing. Desperately, I shoved  some more trying to find a small hole in this wall that always was in  front of me whenever I tried to see something genuine.  Cottony clouds blotted. The yellowy sun.  Helicopter seeds fell.  A sharp cutting wind came. I made it another ten yards as I saw the nearby ambulance and felt  its pulsing red light hitting me, and watched the professional medics  race about.  I pushed my way past my own fears and sad faces before a girl’s hand  grabbed a tussle of my brown hair pulling, like I were one of her stupid  dolls.  “You’re not going to see that,” my sister exclaimed. “There’s nothing  you want to see!”  “Yes, there is!”  “No there isn’t, buster.” “I’m old enough.” “No, you’re not!” “Don’t be morbid, Erik!”  Futilely, I struggled against her tightly locked fingers, trying to loosen  her grip. Being three years older, she towered over me, but despite those  162 Soul Kitchen things, I wasn’t ready to fight her as I strictly fought boys and didn’t  believe in equal rights yet.  Eleanor chimed in, like a moron.  “He’s headed for trouble again, big time.” “Juvenile Detention,” another voice barked. I squirmed looking for that big brother, the one my parents somehow  forgot to make one Saturday night while briskly rubbing tummies under  the covers. But through their glances, these kids silenced me as already I  was an outlier of some kind, hungering for the kind of knowledge about  the far and wide vast mysteries that they never taught in school.  Hillary began yanking my hair even harder. She dragged me back  ten yards as she had carte blanche from my parents. I couldn’t fight the  way she did. Finally, my friends began making jokes. My face flushed a  crimson red and a few tears streamlined down my ruddy cheeks and my  breath got all spasmy.  We made our way, finally, to school waddling like geese and gander.  These school teachers, no, state workers, no, I mean, farmers diligently  raised us for so many years only to be slaughtered by a butcher in the  end.  Another stupid, agonizing day at Lakeview Elementary School as I  sat twiddling my thumbs. I was learning the ABC’s, Math, History, and  other basic subjects, and then wondering when they would teach us  the good stuff that adults knew. In my spare time, I wrote a plethora of  stories and more stories about ghosts and monsters, and couldn’t help  thinking about the boy who died. What happened to him? Did anyone  know exactly? A constant chirping of birds, endless gossip, continued  throughout the day. It just annoyed me! I didn’t want endless speculation  but hard facts for I was a cub reporter on the beat who wanted to ask  the larger, more important questions in life and to sift through whatever  clues I could grasp. My 3rd grade teacher was Mrs. Monteith who had short auburn hair,  cut gracefully, and dark eyes, and wore dresses like those flapper girls in  the 1920’s. She let me learn at my own pace and read anything I liked,  including science fiction stories. At the time, I was mad about her. She  kept a picture of me in her desk drawer, and saw my face light up as  though my hidden prayers had been answered. But things changed. Mr.  Monteith came one night to see our class perform, and I was horrified  Kevin Marley 163 to be reminded that she was married to him as my heart beat like a  prisoner behind its ivory cage.  The world kept wobbling, like a child’s top, and we foolishly kept  believing that things were getting better when they were getting worse.  The long run home: I ran past the bridges, railroad tracks, tar roads  and the houses as though it belonged to some elaborate H&O set. My  vision was like a blurred camera – out of focus. Finally, I went down  Sellers Avenue and came to Chester Pike, with a lump in my throat. It was a mid-sized frog that wouldn’t get out.  A policeman escorted across the four-lane highway. Then I ran as  fast as they could move, as fast as my lungs might breath, down Stull  Road. But all in all, I wasn’t a nine-year-old boy but a slow-moving crab  scuttling across a dark cold ocean floor.  In the evening, we sat in a Colonial-styled kitchen not far from the  Delaware River, in fact, and ate a spaghetti dinner. Both Hillary and  I had trumpeted the news of the boy’s death when we burst through  the door on an important errand. Surprise and concern had shone  on Mother’s face, and she quickly sent us both on the chore of buying  flowers and a sympathy card for the boy’s parents even though we really  weren’t sure if we had known him.  “Neighbors mustn’t forget each other.”  “But, we don’t know ….” “Don’t forget our manners.” Quietly, I sat now twirling pasta on my fork watching Grandfather  Bayer sip his coke. I was cooking hot soup in my head as crazy thoughts  kept percolating. And I kept staring at my spaghetti until I came up  with the idea that I was reeling in a lot of rope which was later going  to be used to save hundreds of lives. I kept turning my metal fork, like  through a crankshaft, and from some kind of abysmal hell that only  Dante has described, I was bringing these tormented souls to a higher  place, and I swear I could hear the loud applause of angels watching one  enlightened soul out of a million, doing something worthwhile instead  of being obsessed with stuff that doesn’t matter Ten minutes had gone by. Still, no one really said anything. Everyone  wore a dignified funeral face — except Grandfather who seemed fairly  at ease. I stared at Mother, and got mad thinking why she never said  anything important when I needed to hear it. Words escaped like angry  prisoners from my mouth and I destroyed the stupid silence.  164 Soul Kitchen “What happens to a person when he dies?!”  Grandfather’s eyes brightened. Maybe, he would babble something  important. But Mother still ruled the roost and played the usual game  of changing vinyl records on the turn table whenever I wanted to hear  a more solemn tune.  “So, what do you want to be for Halloween this year?” Mother  asked Hillary as she dabbed a napkin around her lips after eating more  spaghetti.  My sister played with her brown hair, wrapping it around her fingers.  I swore she was going to say majorette since she wanted to impress  everyone. A borne ham. Grandfather suddenly coughed and asked for  someone to pass the salt.  “Umm. I want to be a gorgeous movie actress from the 1920’s.”  “Yuck!”  “Nobody asked your opinion!”  I reached past the salad bowl and lasagna, and handed Grandfather  Bayer the salt shaker, making sure I placed it by his left hand.  “Well, that’s an easy enough costume! We have plenty of formal  dresses and other attire that used to be long to your Grandmother down  in the trunk in the basement.” I stared wondering why Hillary didn’t want to go out as a baton  twirling majorette this year doing her neighborhood-wide infamous set  of twirls, high kicks and stunts like a retarded girl. Maybe she just got  tired of always not making final cuts because of her thick legs and jitters.  I looked over at Grandfather and saw him shaking salt over his plate.  He stopped and began squinting in a funny way. “So, what do you want to be for Halloween, Erik?” “I want to be a Musketeer.”  A large fist out of nowhere pounded the table. Grandfather’s voice  boomed like thunder on the prairie.  “I asked for the pepper, not the salt.” Quickly, I reached past the spaghetti and grabbed the pepper shaker,  passing it to Grandfather who had what people called Irish Alzheimer’s,  which means you get pissed a lot, but oftentimes, forget what you’re  pissed about.  Mother continued her dreary speech.  “Well, that’s another easy one! We can just go to K-Mart and buy  your costume. There should be a very good selection there.” Kevin Marley 165 A look of disappointment covered my face.  “But I wanted you to make the costume! It won’t be the best  Musketeer costume if you don’t make it!”  “And how many children are going to dress up as Musketeers?”  “Probably, not many,” I said. “Okay, my little Aramis, I’ll see what I can do so that you can be the  best Musketeer in the city.”  The next morning, we sat at breakfast while Mother cooked her  specialty of blueberry pancakes sprinkled with powdered sugar and  eggs overturned easy. I sat laboring over my eighth pancake knowing  it was going to sink me for the rest of the day like rocks in my stomach.  Grandfather hobbled in carrying this morning’s newspaper rumpled up  newspaper, and mumbled what we all took to be a good morning.  “I found some clothes from the twenties, Mom! A neat little hat and  a dress just like I saw in that movie ‘The Great Gatsby.’” Hillary said as  she walked into the kitchen and threw herself down on a Colonial chair  that had been handmade by the Amish.  “Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if you found a lot of clothes from  then. Your Grandmother was a very wealthy woman from Philadelphia  society,” Mother said as she lifted the frying pan and gave Hillary her  usual stack of three.  Grandfather ruffled the paper and asked for the syrup. Quickly, I  grabbed it and set it firmly down in front of him yelling, “Here’s the  syrup, Grandfather!” I sat and chuckled. But Mother this time silenced me. I shrunk in my  seat worse than when a teacher makes you feel stupid for not knowing  something.  “I’m gonna be going out this afternoon, Erik. I’ve got some errands  to run. If I’m not back when you get home, you know where the key is. I  don’t want Grandfather to have to get up to answer the door.” Slowly, I nodded my head. Mother started packing our lunches of  ham and bologna sandwiches and Grandfather shook the newspaper  again. He seemed to be taking great pains looking for something. His  right arm started twitching and everyone braced for the emergency:  Hillary with her nervous giggles, me with my embarrassment, and  Mother with a frantic voice always ready for the telephone.  But Grandfather defeated the rebellion and regained control of his  arm. He put the paper down and began reading.  166 Soul Kitchen Hillary was the first to notice the article about yesterday’s fatal  accident on Chester Pike. “It’s about what happened at the corner,” my  sister said getting up from her seat to look over Grandfather’s shoulder  as a silent cloud drifted into our Colonial kitchen. “Anthony McKinnens,” my sister said in a hushed voice.  I stared at the name in disbelief as I had played baseball with  Anthony only last summer as he had been our shortstop on the Lions  never missing a game. Unfortunately, I had ridden the bench most of  the year catching splinters in my butt, only told to play right or left  outfield, all depending on where their hitters weren’t hitting.  A few tears trickled down.  Pretty soon my breathing would be all spasmy.  Hearing me sniff, Grandfather turned around and stared at me  annoyed, presumably, by my unmanliness.  “Ain’t nuthin’ big,” Grandfather’s voice boomed. “Death ain’t so bad.  In fact, it happens all the time.”  I stared at Mother expecting her to shut Grandfather up with her  eyes. But she just kept gazing at the newspaper and reached over, and  began massaging my neck.  “It’s really not as bad as you might think,” Grandfather Bayer kept  muttering. “It’s nothing but a tight shoe coming off your foot, a mitten  falling off your hand!” But I kept thinking of Anthony though being crunched like a  lonesome egg, and how we had had good times blowing up bottle  rockets over Crazy Wess’s house and even threw some eggs.  I watched Grandfather turn the page. But the Hoover dam inside  broke. More tears poured out as I could barely see anything on this  stormy day.  Grandfather’s ugly morning breath came. I sensed again he was  staring at me with his ugly eyes.  “The person who’s dead’s alright. You’re just weeping up a storm for  yourself!” “I am not.” “Awww, this growing old stuff ain’t for sissies.”  I had had enough of his barking. I pushed Mother’s hands away,  hurled myself forward, and managed to kick Grandfather’s good leg  before I ran out of their room. I grabbed my books and ran out of the  Kevin Marley 167 house before Mother had a chance of catching up to embarrass me once  more.  After a few blocks, I stopped. I had virtually completed the Boston  Marathon with pancakes that were clumps in my belly, rolling over.  I took a few deep breaths and walked a few yards to the park where  Anthony and I sometimes played tree tag. We climbed sometimes thirty  to forty feet up in these trees risking life and limb. But now I sat down  on a swing seat and just decided to wait until I had to go to learn things  I didn’t want to learn.  Across the park, I watched a foolish little boy fly a kite. He ran around  in small circles, like a little madman, jerking his arm this way and that  way, trying to keep the kite away from some tall trees.  It was a Chinese kite with a dragon-like tail that swished in the wind.  But he couldn’t save the kite for the life of him. Lifelessly, the dragon  kite dove down dive bombing like a Stuka, almost crashing into the  cedar branches, and then he’d yank and yank on the string trying to save  the thing; and I think he did more harm than good cause the kite always  seemed to save itself when he’d let it alone.  But everything ended. The little kid got the kite to fly higher and  higher, but his welcomed breeze turned into a forceful gust as the kite  string suddenly snapped.  The little kid ran forward, stumbled, and fell down crying.  I sat staring at the kite moving up and up. It went past a flock of  geese and seemed to tumble over the clouds falling fast into Infinity.  I felt strangely happy.  The next few weeks nothing happened. Every day’s horizon was a  jump rope. And every morning, like most fools, I would pretend that I  was caught in a game, so far, that I was winning.  Grandfather Bayer began calming down again. He had tasted the  profound bitterness of life and drank it like Socrates. Like a dark bird on  a telephone wire, he crowed deeply a few more times waiting to migrate  to a strange land that I can barely remember. A few times he began  uncontrollably shivering, and his brown eyes would look out for help  as Mother would rush by his side putting a blanket over him with her  slender arms as though he had really changed and had become a child,  again.  But at the table, I offered no assistance to grab anything or by saying  anything cheerful. Often, I just sat staring at my plate for another fifteen  168 Soul Kitchen minutes after my meal, making it perfectly clear to Grandfather that I  didn’t want the apology he would never give, nor did I want to part as  buddies just because he was quickly stepping through a darkened foyer;  for I still cursed him vehemently under my breath thinking of all the  handful of curse words I had so far learned.  On a rainy Friday afternoon, Grandfather died as we had been taken  out of school early to go to St. Madeline’s Hospital. Only one other  person I had known had died and gone to that other place, and the  wound was already strangely healing, the scar already forming.  But Grandfather’s death was different. There was no funeral  procession even though he had been a veteran. No Catholic priest. No  last rites. He didn’t want anything Mother said. “Grandfather just wants  to be cremated and his ashes scattered in our backyard garden for next  spring.” Hillary, prone to all sorts of diseases, seemed to take it the worst. She  broke out in a terrible rash and existed as a pitiful wreck for the next  week and a half in the living room where Mother made a special sofa  bed for her so she could watch TV shows and eat Rocky Road ice cream  when bored. But mostly, it was the same old thing: Mother and Hillary  just sat like girls often do and endlessly talked, only this time they cried  a jig or two.  A couple times Mother wanted me to join them in their rainstorm  in the living room making a flood worse than what Noah and his ark  faced. But I refused – and sat on the steps watching them with a dry,  stubborn face that now gazed only at the very small meanness of things.  Halloween arrived on a Monday with school parties and treats, and  although I was afraid to ask, I had the distinct feeling that Mother hadn’t  completed my Musketeers’ costume yet. When I ran home from school,  she was working on it, but said she would have to start dinner soon.  “But it won’t be finished by tonight,” I exclaimed looking at the  Musketeer costume that was nothing but a bunch of colorful silk rags,  an empty scabbard, and a dull plastic sword.  Mother took a long look at the work she shad left. A deep weariness  showed on her face. “You’re right, Erik. I guess we’ll just have to resort  to something in Grandmother’s special trunk.”  I ran downstairs, and began frantically searching through the trunk.  There was nothing in it. “Girl’s clothes.” I threw a satin dress on the  Kevin Marley 169 cellar floor that danced across ballrooms forty years ago. Running  upstairs, I complained that the clothes were suited for a girl or that none  of Grandfather’s old clothes fitted me, and besides I don’t want to wear  those smelly old things anyway, I blurted out.  Hillary tried to knife me with a stare.  Quickly, Mother got up from her kitchen seat and ran downstairs,  and after seeing for herself that there was nothing for me to wear in the  old trunk, she said with a tone that sounded close to defeat, “I’ll just  have to run to K-Mart to buy your costume.”  “But most of the stores are out of costumes.” I stared into my Mother’s face. Tears like broken glass fell. Cutting  everything. But somehow, I miraculously rose to the occasion like  Jesus who wanted to do some good things two thousand years ago, but  who had the unfortunate luck of being surrounded by too many bad  disciples.  “I can stay home tonight,” I blurted out. “Hillary’s going to be staying  home. I can stay home, too.” But Mother looked at me.  “No, you’ll feel better if you go out and collect candy, my little  Aramis.” Mother finally got an idea and quickly decided what costume I would  wear. She ran into the laundry room, and began looking for something.  Upstairs, the doorbell rang, and I could hear the footsteps of the first  trick or treaters sounding above. Carrying a long white sheet, Mother  came out of the laundry room, smiled sheepishly, and threw a big sheet  over my head, measuring the holes for my eyes, mouth and arms.  By seven o’clock, I was ready. With jack-o-lantern, I eagerly started  out thinking that this is what Magellan himself must have felt before he  began sailing around the world.  A treasure trove awaited.  Hurrying down Collier Circle, I marched towards my first house  crunching dry leaves with my sneakers. Ghouls and goblins passed by.  Witches and Warlocks murmured their incantations with incredible  powers. Aliens who no doubt had descended from the skies to see our  small island in these vast cosmos were watching us. And swashbuckling  pirates from the Caribbean were making raids on Spanish galleons. The  night was bewitched. Pandora’s Box had been opened and many spirits  170 Soul Kitchen reigned. After seeing all this, I knocked and knocked on my first door  for several minutes.  An old man gruff answered.  With a strong shove, the old man opened the oak door and waited  for me to walk into a pitch-dark room with only a strange glow. He  looked mean, old and stupid. I stood frozen staring at Hell itself. My  muscles tensed like a cat’s. My back reared up and I hissed.  “Goddamn, I ain’t a pervert,” a voice boomed.  The door slammed.  I stood on the steps of this House starting to shiver, hearing inside  and outside howls and shrieks.  Quickly, I ran back home, tripping over my sheet and bumping into  many dark unseen things. There were many strange beings everywhere  of ghosts and goblins, demons and monsters, and even elves and faeries,  and if we looked further upwards, sylphs and gnomes, and even angels.  But here was the bottom of the barrel. A long parade of ugly demons,  ghosts, and other beings were leaving my house as I screamed with  pandemonium. I ran inside. Mother struck by my early arrival removed  the ghastly sheet. Salty raindrops drenched my face.  Finally, I decided I didn’t want to be a ghost anymore.  The Kafe Buffet The diner was barely a tin can of hot metal and a tarred roof baking  in the angry sun just off the New Jersey Turnpike. You just had to take  Exit 4 and then turn right on Route 73, and right again on Fellowship  Road to get there before coming to their Kafe Buffet’s driveway that was  never adequately marked with white stripes so that people just parked  wherever the hell they wanted to being New Jerseyites, that is, a special  breed of people who have strong backbones, garrulous lips, and nasal  toned voices and who while driving are very prone to use American  sign language a lot. During summertime, the Kafe looked like a big  sardine can so that if you pulled back the top out would pop a lot of  orderly sardines in thick oil and marinara sauce.  But of course, Mikey Fizzano, a hot-headed Sicilian, would get  pissed since he was the owner of the place, and it was his church and  congregation.  But who knows?  The Kafe was really a great place during awful times where we  just ate and ate, and ate some more, before we had to purge ourselves  before going back and eating more food again. We were like the ancient  Romans, and had a lot of fun, maybe, just too much before the place  was closed.  “It’s one of those inconspicuous places,” my Uncle Fabbie said  drinking from a bottle of Pisano wine, “but you’ll love the food there.  They get it just right.” “They got the best burgers and fries to die for,” Connie chimed in. “If I were on death row, and they asked me for my last meal, and I  don’t care if I was sittin’ on Alcatraz Island in some shitty cell, I’d say,  ‘Get me one of them burgers from Kafe in New Jersey.’ And I think  they’d have to do that since it was your last meal and all,” Danny said as  he was a little overfamiliar with the judicial system in Trenton.  172 Soul Kitchen The police swarmed the place though right around Labor Day, after  the killings and after a bunch of wildfires had hit the New Jersey pines.  We had gone there over the weekend, looking to relax after breaking  our backs working for a bunch of Wall Street overlords who wanted  to make billions of dollars in the shadiest manner as we looked the  other way, and bent rules to where they were unrecognizable, and  misconstrued things, and twisted the truth, and expertly mangled the  English language to where it ultimately persuaded and said something,  but it meant nothing in the final analysis.  Like hogs feeding at trough, we buried our hungry faces into  the menus and salivated and had dreams and more dreams of food,  packing the pounds on just thinking about it. I was in a booth with  my wife, Kathleen, and our five kids, where we had come to enjoy a  regular dinner, but where I would witness a Zapruder film frame-by  frame tragedy from the supposed gunshots in the book repository to  the grassy knoll shots to the entire unraveling hysteria.  But Maggie started the whole thing off with a shebang.  Maggie told the waitress: “I’ll take the Suicide Burger with extra  cheese. Along with High Blood Pressure Fries with the Stroke-Me-Out  Salt and Die Young Mayo.” “Anything to drink?” “I’ll take a Bloody Mary and Gimme-Some-Heart-Burn Chocolate  Cheesecake.”  Her jowls shook with laughter like one of those hogs on Nolan’s  Farm. She had an attractive face that had been weathered over the past  years from depression and she had the dark bags under her eyes that  could have been used for shopping bags to prove it, just in case.  “I’m splurging since I just gotta raise.”  “And you ma’am?”  “I don’t know ‘bout you. But I’m famished” Stella said having come  back from a recent Wildwood vacation with her kids. “I’ll take The  Myocardial Infarction Pizza with everything on it, except the kitchen  sink, dear. Make sure it has the hot dog stuffed pizza crust. And that you  give me some packets of Blow-It-Out-Your-Butt Texarkana Hot Sauce,  too. And a diet Coke.” Stella pulled in her brown chair, and huffed and puffed more like a  chugging locomotive, always going up a steep hill. Her reddish hair was  Kevin Marley 173 still up in curlers. But she pulled out her compact mirror anyways to  check her makeup and put on more coral pink lipstick.  “And you, sir?” “I’m looking to finally cure myself of hellish anorexia,” Sam said  chuckling as he scratched his arm that could’ve been a runway model’s  thigh. “Lemme see. What am I Jonesing for? Tonight, I’m gonna go  French, and get the Mac Lobsta’ with freshly made noodles spruced  with tender chunks of fresh lobster finely mixed with cognac, tarragon  and mascarpone.” “What kind of cheese would you like on it, sir?” “I’m goin’ for the homemade Velveeta stuff, ok?” “Anything else tonight?” “I’ll take a Clog-Those-Arteries Filet Mignon Steak and a Shortcut-To?Heaven Blueberry Milkshake to wash it all down right before I get my  will signed in my lawyer’s office tomorrow. Hopefully, my luck won’t  run out on me as my second wife and kids would be pissed.”  He tucked in his lumberjack shirt that kept falling out and rubbed  his hand over his tummy like an expectant mother.  “And you, sir” “Hell, I’m gonna out do all of you chickens, and get The Vertical  Burger with ten patties and twelve slices of cheese, and I’ll take The  Thick Menstrual Ketchup along with the Die Young Mayo with your  secret sauce, too,” Bernie said as he bit his upper lip feeling a sharp pain.  “And put a couple of ‘em Krispy Kreme Donuts on it for my hamburger  buns – I hate it when people can’t go big and start countin’ calories  when in a fine restaurant like this.” “What would you like to drink, sir?” “Today’s Friday. I got about as much energy as a slug. I’ll take a  Mocha IV with a new syringe and one of ‘em slow drips in my right  arm. Should wake me up some.”  The place buzzed. People were slap happy.  “How’s the job goin’ Maggie?” Bernie asked as he was still getting  over the loss of his ex-wife, Lena.  “I’m fine so long as I ain’t got to fly from JFK to Los Angeles, again.  My boss got so ticked off.”  “For what?”  “Cause I got pulled out of the pre-boarding line and charged two  fares for taking up two seats by American Airlines.”  174 Soul Kitchen “Why?” “I’ve been labeled as morbidly obese by them using a scientific chart  profiling my weight and my height.”  “Goddamn. I can’t stand livin’ in a skinny-ass centric world these  days.” “The nerve of those people.”  “My boss now may not fly me since we went substantively over  budget on the trip. If that happens, I’ll probably lose my Efficiency 5  Rating and be susceptible to a layoff the next time around.” “You should sue ‘em.”  “Naw. I can’t”  “How come?” “Didn’t you hear the Supreme Court ruling last week?” “Nope.” “It’s called Workers United vs. Krispy Kreme Donuts.” “Sounds bad.”  “Not half as bad as you might think.” “Whadya mean?” “The media’s calling it: Fat People vs. The Rest of Us.”  “How dare their bony asses!” “Is this a sick joke?” “No, I wish it were.”  “Then what?”  “It’s about tens of thousands of workers having to taste test a bunch  of high calorie blueberry to glazed to chocolate to crème-filled donuts  and eclairs, some for years at a time. Now, most of them put on a lot of  weight and had commensurate health problems, and now they want to  be compensated for the damage, and there are others who now are so  fat that they can’t get off the damn couch and want long-term disability,  too. And believe it or not, the public thinks it’s their fault.”  “They weren’t borne that way.” “Not their fault, at all.”  “Fat people are taken advantage of every day,” Sam said, as he was  tired of being looked at as F-A-T. “We’re labeled as being lazy and  sloppy. But we’re thought of as always being easy going and jolly like  we’re an out-of-season Santa Claus. At the same time, they train us to  eat the worse food imaginable.” Kevin Marley 175 “Amen, brother!” “But in Workers United vs. Krispy Kreme Donuts the Supreme Court  had to decide if being morbidly obese was a long-term disability.  Companies panicked. Insurers did, too. The rest of the public became  more inflamed than a charcoal broiler during the fourth of July. The  so-called experts said it would take, at least, a trillion a year if fat people  became permanently disabled and we had to take care of them as they  sat on the couch, weeping into their handkerchiefs watching reruns of  Dr. Phil, Maury Popovich, and Oprah Winfrey all day while snacking  on anything that didn’t move. “But they ruled against us big time! “The public rejoiced. They had a field day on all those TV networks  telling their favorite fat jokes: “Your momma so fat she left the house  wearing high heels and came back wearing flip flops!”; “Your momma so  fat I ran outta gas trying to drive around her!”; “That guy’s so fat, he shows  up on radar!”; “If Betsy fell into the Grand Canyon, she’d get stuck!”; “Why  did the Mr. Softy Truck stop coming to our neighborhood? It got hijacked  by the fat kids.”; “Can fat people go skinny dipping?”; “What is Newton’s  Law of Motion? A fat body will stay a fat body in motion unless acted  upon by an outside Force.”; “Why did the fat man like his big tummy.  Cause it was a bitch repeller.”; “How do you seduce a fat woman? Piece of  cake.” and “I’m not fat. I’m just four feet too short.”  “Don’t they know?” “No, they don’t.” “We’re the biggest minority in this entire country!” “Bigger than Blacks and Latinos combined.”  “There’s a pandemic of Fat People and we’re taking over the world!  Soon the Presidents, The Prime Ministers and the legislators and the  courts will all be filled with Fat People – and we’ll finally get our just  desserts.”  “OUR OWN PIECE OF THE PIE!” “WITH WHIPCREAM ON IT!” “AND A FEW MARASCHINO CHERRIES!” Everyone was as starved as The Donner Party and getting ready to  resort to cannibalism, if necessary, but, at last, the food leaving trails of  the finest aromas came.  176 Soul Kitchen Maggie began devouring her Suicide Burger, half raw with reddish?brown blood, and nonchalantly, washing it down with a stiff Blood  Mary. The High Blood Pressure Fries flushed her face, neck, and chest  pink complementing her makeup for such an occasion, and made beads  of sweat, like tiny jewels, appear.  “Oh, my God! This definitely hits the spot like one of them surgical  strikes in, oh, I forget, umm, in Iran.” Sam was as hungry as a wild horse.  His feeding bucket, I mean, his Mac Lobsta’ with Velveeta Cheese  came along with freshly made noodles spruced with tender chunks of  fresh lobster finely mixed with cognac, tarragon and mascarpone. He leaned to the right side – and blew his bugle horn.  “Oh, Sam!” “What?” “Not here!” “That’s my pressure valve.”  Stella was gasping with sheer delight over her culinary choices, but  started feeling keen pain in her left arm as she winced.  “I’d take some nitroglycerine, girl. That’s a real Myocardial Infarction  Pizza if I ever saw one.” “Oh, Bernie, I’m fine. I ate dozens of these in my younger days and all  I got for it was that I became a real BBW for all these men in town who  desperately wanted a woman with some rare, fine meat on her bones.  You’d be surprised how many men from the mayor to the lawyers in  town that have a Chunky Ass Fetish. Their wives would be too!” “I didn’t know.”  “Dunno what?” “Didn’t know you were in such demand, girl.”  “That’s almighty fine for you, Stella. But I’m tired of being called fat,”  Bernie sighed as he began trying to scale his Vertical Burger in a free  climb without any kind of rope or pylons. “It doesn’t sit well with me,  anymore. I mean, the kids near my house used to call me Java the Hut,  and I’d play along with it doing his deep voice and pretending to deep  freeze Han Solo. But one day, I told ‘em I don’t want to play this anymore.  They said, ‘Why?’ And I told ‘em even Java the Hut has feelings.”  “Good job, Bernie.” “Those kids need to be re-educated.”  “Those smart ass kids aren’t educable, Maggie.”  Kevin Marley 177 “Well, we should organize ourselves, especially, since we’re gonna  become the silent majority soon in the good Ol’ U.S. of A.,” Maggie  said as she began cutting into her Gimme-Some-Heartburn Chocolate  Cheesecake which gave her naturally acid reflux which even a bottle of  Tums couldn’t defeat. She could feel it rushing up into her filled mouth,  but through sheer will was able to swallow and keep it all down for now.  “How are we gonna do that?”  “Maybe, The Fat Suffragette Movement.”  “What’s that? “Kinda like the Women’s Movement in the 1920’s to where we all  have meetings and protests nationwide, discuss the important issues,  and naturally to make everyone comfortable, we bring along homemade  cookies, NY cheesecake, tarts, Italian pudding cake, brownies, and  Rocky Road, Pistachio Nut, Peanut Butter and Chocolate ice cream,  and sherbet! And what else? Oh, yeah, we could bring an assortment of  Pennsylvania Dutch pies—I know a great bakery down the street that  does them, cannolis, chocolates and truffles, and anything else that my  gastric juices can digest but for the present time I can’t remember.”  “Sounds good but too expensive, Marge.”  “The budget would be a killer.” “What we really need is to have a big leader, almost, who can speak  to people’s hopes and fears and dramatically shift public opinion and  get things done.”  “Like a Joe McCarthy!” Stella said. “We could have The House Un-American Activities Committee!”  Sam chimed in throwing down his Shortcut-to-Heaven Milkshake. “And do what?’ Bernie asked as Stella gasped, and fell onto the floor  hard and cold as a stone.  But everyone knew, even the waitresses that she had done this once  to get out of a very expensive restaurant bill at Bookbinders when she  had been binging for weeks at a time.  “Nah, what I’m talking about is to have a potent message. We should  be coherent and talk about how American it is to eat your per Capita  amount of apple pie, hamburgers and hotdogs, anything that comes  from an outdoor grill, potato salad and pounds of Velveeta cheese – and  that if you don’t, you should be put under suspicion for NOT EATING  AMERICAN.”  178 Soul Kitchen “That way, we’d have the upper hand!” Maggie said feeling woozy  after eating most of her Suicide Burger.  “And we’d still have the bigger tummies!”  “And do what after that?’ Bernie asked as he began uncontrollably  twitching from his gastrointestinal speed ball – from the lude-like  effects of the Vertical Burger while he still had the Mocha IV quintuple  expresso stuck in his arm.  With that, Sam drained his Short-Cut to-Heaven Milkshake making  a loud slurping sound, more like a Hoover vacuum cleaner, as most of  the patrons craned their stiff necks to look over.  The Jersey Devil himself emerged from the burnt pine woods with a  pitchfork and appeared in a puff of black smoke.  “Lucifer and His Minions!” Ka-thump! Sam had fallen over like a three-hundred-and-fifty-pound sack of  Idaho potatoes onto the floor keeling over, dead as door knob.  Most went back to voraciously eating at their troughs. Maggie  though had had enough of these strange shenanigans. “Waitress!!” “Yes, ma’am.” “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”  “Uh, we just called 9-1-1.”  “No.”  “Then what?”  “That man threw down a Short-Cut-to-Heaven Milkshake, and saw  Lucifer and his minions.” “I’m not sure what I saw, ma’am.”  “Right now, he’s probably in purgatory cause of your false advertising.” The waitress threw up her hands and glanced at the manager.  “At The Kafe Buffet, Ma’am, we try our darnest to bring you the most  delicious and wholesome cooked food possible at the cheapest prices so  that the down out and the in-between and the fancy rich can come in  here, and find something to eat while having fun.”  “Well, could you please check on Stella?” The waitress bent down, felt her jugular.  “It doesn’t appear she has a pulse or anything,” the waitress said in  a Kentucky drawl, “but don’t worry, the ambulance should be here any  minute.”  Kevin Marley 179 “Well, at least, that makes sense,” Maggie replied as she threw down  the rest of her Bloody Mary and motioned for two more.  “Why’s that?” “Cause she just got done your Myocardial Infarction Pizza with the  hotdog crust. At least, that’s true advertising. And it makes sense, in a  world that has gone Pistachio Nuts!”  “Is that all, Ma’am?”  “Nope, I’ll take the World Trade Center Super Duper Sundae. And  don’t forget this time to bring the Chocolate United Airlines jet with it, too!  Bernie, do you wanna share?” “Nah, I’ll just splurge and go for my Empire State Building Sundae  with one hundred and two edible floors, ma’am.” “Anything else?” “Yes, could you PLEASE remove those two bodies and put them in the  back room cause they are seriously killing our appetites.”  “I’m only here to help, ma’am, and to serve you the meals that you  ordered.”  She sauntered towards the kitchen door. The men salivated like Pavlovian dogs over her spicy breasts and  lean beefy hips as they swiveled, looking for a raw bone with some meat  on it.  “I can’t believe how much IQ’s have dropped.” “Neither can I.” “They’re the most dumbest I’ve seen.” “Much worse than I thought.” “Sure are.”  “We got our backs up against it.”  “Heck, we need to find someone like Lyndon B. Johnson who can  press and cajole people into signing legislation.” “Like a Civil Rights Bill for Fat People Who Can’t Get Enough  Respect?” “Exactly.”  “I can hear it now from the Capitol: ‘Ask not what that Piece of  Delicious Pecan Pie can do for you! But what you can do for that Piece of  Delicious Pecan Pie!’”  “That was JFK, not Lyndon, Bernie.”  “You sure?” “Yep.” 180 Soul Kitchen “But it could pass.”  “But right now, I’m focused on this World Trade Center Super  Duper Sundae, and damn if they haven’t forgotten the Chocolate United  Airline Flight 175, again! Must’ve went off the radar on ‘em.” “Their tip is goin’ on life support now.” “Waitress! Waitress!” Bernie began eating The Empire State Building with a complementary  King Kong hanging from it. His fork expertly crushed about ten floors  of The Empire State Building when Maggie began talking about how  much she loved Kafe Buffet and Old Glory and America.  “All this negative press – it ain’t deserved.” “Love it – or Leave it!”  “I can’t stand people who wanna burn the flag and criticize this  country and become apologists to the terrorists and talk about how  much we need to change. I think they all should be deported.”  Bernie grunted.  “I mean, I love The Good ol’ U.S. of A. so much I could gobble it up  like this here Neapolitan ice cream!” With that, Bernie began raucously laughing while thirty floors of  The Empire State were in his mouth. Unfortunately, he inhaled, and  most of the floors sans furniture, of course, slid down his windpipe as  he began choking.  “Someone do something!” “I don’t know the Heimlich maneuver.”  “Neither do I.” Maggie began to panic as her face flushed red, like a fresh beet.  “Eat more, Bernie! If you eat more, you’ll force the rest of the food  stuck in your throat down into your stomach like a train moving along.” Frustrated, she ran over to him, and began cutting through The  Empire State Building, almost forty floors, and tried to force feed Bernie  who gasped and gasped, and waved his arms.  “What do you want?!”  “Not you lady.”  “What an idiot!” Bernie pressed his fist to his stomach and then cupped motioning  that he wanted the Heimlich maneuver done. Maggie ran behind him  and put her stout arms around his waist and began pushing up and into  his diaphragm.  Kevin Marley 181 The patrons watched still voraciously eating and ordering food.  At first, nothing happened.  “Jesus Christ! Come on, Bernie. Cough this shit up!”  Spectacularly, then about 30 floors of The Empire State Building were  coughed up in pristine condition like they had not even been eaten.  Then the rest of it, even the tower. Bernie was still gasping for precious  O2  as Maggie continued. Soon, his Vertical Burger was coughed up in  perfect condition with ten grilled patties of delicious hamburger meat,  twelve slices of finely melted cheese, and Krispy Kreme Donuts as  hamburger buns, almost dripping hot off the serving platter.  “I guess he had indigestion.”  “Yep.”  “Sure did.” Bernie, however, was still turning shades of deep blue. Maggie  continued with renewed strength as she didn’t want to see another  friend collapse.  Up came lunch.  Once again, it was like it had never be eaten and passed hungry lips:  This time, it was an exquisitely French-chef made chaud-froid of egg  capped with sherry-vinegar-infused whipped cream which, of course,  belonged to a main entrée of foie gras custard with haricot beans and  boudine blanc.  Another heave ho! Quite miraculously, then came the main course comprised of a very  delicious hickory smoked veal rump with coffee emulsion made in an  exquisite manner by the most delicate hands followed by a rich dessert  of chocolate ganache with blueberries.  A few bystanders gawked – it was a miracle! “Heck, it looks like he never even touched it.”  “Someone should grab a plate. Chow down!” “Why not? It’s free.” By now, Bernie was turning Persian blue. More meals began coming  up from the depths of his stomach that seemed to be almost infinite: last  night’s midnight snack of anchovy pizza, a five-course dinner, an Italian  lunch consisting of a pound of pasta and a hearty American breakfast  along with deluxe nachos, a few Kit Kat bars, and a bag of glazed donuts  182 Soul Kitchen from the day before – they had all been discounted bargains, too hard  to ignore.  “This guy’s a treasure chest.”  “He’s coughed up everything.”  “Grab a dish!” Desperate, Maggie gave one more final pull as Bernie’s mouth  suddenly enlarged, and a finely polished kitchen sink flew from his  mouth, and landed ka-thud onto the table.  “Never saw that before!”  “Me, too.”  Bernie collapsed like a puppet with cut strings. And was dead.  Maggie sobbed.  A few of the patrons of Kafe Buffet tried to console her.  “It’ll be alright.”  “He’s up there with Jesus shaking hands right now.”  “Not one of them there sparrows falls to the ground outside your  Father’s care.”  Maggie had had enough. She grabbed a steak knife and pushed them  away as a small circle of friendly neighbors surrounded her.  “Something’s wrong here, folks. How can a black man be lying there on  the floor navy blue in the face? How can he throw up everything including  the kitchen sink? “This here ain’t normal. “Life’s not supposed to be this bizarre.  “We’re just people eating a regular dinner and then the shit hits the  fan and everyone’s dead in my group? Sam, Stella and now Bernie? You  poisoned our food and drink. This is some kind of conspiracy.”  “Maggie put the knife down.”  “What did all of us have in common?”  “Don’t do anything rash.”  “I’m gonna find out what happened.”  “We’re here to help.” “You could’ve helped Bernie!”  “Bernie had eaten too much.” “Nothing could be done for him.”  “But you can save me?” Kevin Marley 183 “Yes.” “From what?”  “From yourself.”  Maggie lunged at a few of them who were wearing hunting gear and  plain clothes with a serrated steak knife.  “Get back! Get back!”  The patrons obliged moving back a few steps.  “This here’s as serious as a heart attack!”  “Now, don’t do nuthin’ stupid?”  “You callin’ me stupid?!”  “I’m just saying you ate a Suicide Burger.”  “You’re sayin’ I didn’t read the menu!”  “No, I’m not saying that, Maggie.”  “I’m a big girl. I know what I’m doin’.”  “Ok.”  “We just want what you want, Maggie. And that’s for this here thing  to be finally over.”  “Me, too.”  With that, Maggie cut her jugular vein so that the blood spewed  worse than at a slaughter house gushing all over and running mahogany  red onto the floor. The dishwasher came and mopped it up swishing  with suds, and wringing the mess into a few buckets, and the endless  patrons who came to The Kafe from all walks of life went back to their  seats barely missing a drum beat, errr, leg.  Secrets of The Prison House  “Life’s stranger than fiction, gentlemen. No one exactly anticipated  these things, these kind of monumental paradigm shifts like glaciers  breaking off Antarctica. They’re like a Hollywood script writer going  berserk with an overactive imagination. Never could anyone, even  Alvin Toffler, or the best futuristic thinkers have anticipated this kind  of thing happening in a million years,” Mark said as he looked fatigued  before he poured another tall glass of Chardonnay. “Anyone else?” “No,  thanks.” “Mark, I think you had enough ….” “Enough of what? Enough  of committing professional suicide, like the rest of us? Of creating a  compendium of engrams that contains more powerful and possibly  destructive information than the previous Manhattan Project? Come  on, gentlemen, we’ve treated people no better than shabby guinea pigs  that drank from water bottles and shat in their wired cages,” Mark said  as he was a Princeton neurologist who had to make the beltway trip  every weekend to our nondisclosed military installation.  “I’m just tired of these lies. The ones I have to tell my wife. Aren’t  you? They’ve turned us into Dr. Mengele and his cohorts.” From what I could see, Mark was about to go on a binge, again,  questioning The Patriot Act and Homeland Security as we ate dinner in  Marras while a few customers turned their heads.  We weren’t being trailed – or at least I didn’t think so.  I’m sure NSA went through all our emails and telecommunications  since we were classified as ‘assets’ and we had a very high security  clearance at a time when another Cold War was upon us.  But diarrhea of the mouth wasn’t tolerated.  He would be risking our high-level security clearance, as well.  Mark looked more like a balding Roman Senator during at time,  maybe a millennium and a half ago, when The Republic fell. Like the  Kevin Marley 185 rest of us, he pondered the opening gambits in this intricate game of  not two, but three-dimensional chess played where kings and queens  still ruled with an iron fist, and bishops and knights, and rooks followed  their strict orders; and alas, when all was said and done, we were merely  their disposable pawns.  Washington, D.C. was busy, as usual, as the capitol, the incessant  talking head of America. There were meetings, and house cleanings, as  one party went through the revolving door, and left the White House,  and then another ceremoniously entered as things grew more and more  dire. Any semblance of democracy was gone – vanished as Water Wars  and Oil Wars commenced and terrorism waned, and then grew, and  then grew some more as nation states under severe strain in terms of  resources and growing populations began to crumble, and the division  of the haves and have-nots grew. The world was falling apart before our eyes as graves stood tenantless  and the sheeted dead did squeak and gibber, some.  By this time, the Emperor had no clothes as he walked about  completely naked in his Grecian temple and everyone complemented  him on his finely woven raiment. He ascended to his throne and golden  seat that had been obsequiously dusted off by a servant. The public  applauded as more edicts were handed down in a capricious manner,  with finely sounding patriotic names, as the intelligentsia were hard at  work behind the scenes contemplating how to maintain this crumbling  façade of a democracy and a Republic. The stench of defeat was in the  air more like Caesar’s Rome before it fell to the unruly Huns. None of us had Time for this nonsense.  But then again, all this nonsense was about Time.  But what was it?  At last, a mathematical formula.  “I’m just surprised we didn’t think of it sooner. We could have been  more astute. Someone could have looked at the human physiology more  as an impressive video recorder even if they did not have the quantum  mechanical computer to download the terabytes and then play them,”  David said as he was our ancient Hebrew scholar borrowed from Tel  Aviv University who often was quiet deferring to others.  “Everyone was thinking, differently,” Sam interjected.  186 Soul Kitchen “But isn’t it amazing that all this time we thought of history more as  belonging to the realm of artifacts and excavations from ancient Egypt  with its tombs to India and its Taj Mahal palaces to Samaria instead of  something that was actually palpable and genetic.” He waved his hand  like a short white flag of surrender, and detested this entire charade  masquerading as modern science. In short, we were on a godless quest  for very specific engrams, and according to the Pentagon and Homeland  Security, it didn’t matter how many innocent people we had wrongly  detained, then maimed or inadvertently killed because they had the  right genetic markers for having lived during these critical time periods. Mark stared at David. His brain had been thoroughly pickled in  martinis and the finest whiskey during the past two years, and in truth,  we were all gauging our culpability and guilt in this new Manhattan  Project as we feared a significant shift in the political winds in  Washington D.C. and even in America, in short, afraid people would  one fateful day wake up with a strong rebuking conscience.  “We believed that by going back into time to attain these newer  technologies before the Russians and Chinese did that the ends justified  the means. And by virtue of that, we were doing our country a great  service. But this time, no doubt, we are on the wrong side of history. “At last, we’re the bad guys.”  Oddly, in Marra’s, where we feasted on a wonderful smorgasbord of  thin slices of handmade pizza, pasta fazool, meat lasagna, bruschetta,  calamari, marinara, and fettuccine and washed it down with pitchers  of cold frothy beer, Felicita played like a fresh spring breeze; and after a  harsh winter that had frozen the marrow in our bones, we felt we could  live again, somehow. Maybe, we would be reborn like the green buds  from the dirty soil.  Children were happy to be playing baseball outside. Birds were  migrating northward again following the light. Azaleas and roses were  sprouting with their petaled faces turned towards the sun. Things would get better.  But more than likely, we were deceiving ourselves; and for some  reason, we got infinitely better at it.  My head throbbed from another migraine as my stomach rumbled  from eating too quickly. Maybe, they were going on strike after all these  years of virtual slave labor. I dipped my Italian bread in a dish of oil as  the waitress came to take our order as we ate in this family restaurant  Kevin Marley 187 every week more like an anodyne, a couple of aspirins, to ease our  growing existential worries. Life remained the same, an incredible opportunity before falling  apart – despite all our efforts to bend it to our Herculean will so that it  wouldn’t end in tragedy.  Yet, The Cosmic Eggshell was broken.  A yellow downy chick was emerging.  It was Wednesday evening – as it was deemed so by our Roman  calendars and even by our Rolex and digital watches. Yet, it is always  Wednesday evening in the folds of space and time as we were told by  our theoretical physicists. It was just a matter of reorienting ourselves.  Finally, we were done with the dirty work of digging for more and  more engrams as we had washed our filthy hands for the day and even  had taken showers; and now we sat more like academicians at dinner  looking over our notes. The fourth dimension had been codified as a  long series of very intricate and complex algorithms, which had been  aided by the discovery of some new subatomic particles.  Time, however, kept repeating itself more like a needle skipping on  a vinyl record. Skipping. Endlessly, we gossiped about work, family,  and friends to distract ourselves, and then carefully waxed and waned  about the many things we had found from so-called bygone times  from the American Revolution to the Civil War to ancient Egypt to the  Greeks and Romans in an Italian restaurant passed down in the family  for several generations. The restaurant had a certain kind of ambience  where we could forget the exigencies of work and the fetid, boorish  politics of The D.C. Beltway.  A small statue of David gazed out and reminded us of the importance  of art, beauty, and truth.  We kept eating delicious Italian food, like there was no tomorrow,  on red and white checkered cloth as there were Impressionist paintings  of Rome, Venice and even Pompeii about us. We were become half?inebriated. Many of the patrons were doing the exact same thing eating  comfort food and numbing themselves as they were talking with their  hands, trying to ignore the decline of our own empire. There was a  resounding chorus of strong voices, even in our heads, if we listened  closely.  “Tutto è meraviglioso.”  “Si.” 188 Soul Kitchen “Questo non è altro che amore.”  Was it true? Everything that William Blake had said? That Dante  Alighieri had written about?  Worlds upon many mysterious worlds, never dreamt of, except by  inspired poets, were colliding with one another like billiard balls – as  there was a New Heaven and a New Earth being slowly formed as things  were becoming more surreal by the minute.  We were now listening to Arrivederci Roma as our faces were filled,  beyond our usual easy casual smiles, with a ghastly fear.  In this group of elite scientists, culled from the finest institutions,  Sam was our defacto leader since many of us were apprehensive about  this new kind of science where we rummaged through people’s brains  and physiology for engrams, and then stored them for posterity, giving  the important ones to Homeland Security. He was a very handsome,  sun tanned and mid-thirties cognitive neuroscientist from Harvard  University who was originally from Oakridge, Tennessee which  obviously had been an important center for the original Manhattan  Project. He stood six foot-two and with his dark framed glasses and  well-trimmed features he easily had an air of confidence that he exuded.  Quietly, I admired him for he had an inimitable Southern charm,  especially, with the ladies; and since, ultimately, he had everything I  had not – an oratorical gift, a well-established career path with many  prestigious publications behind him that had led to tenure at Harvard  University, a beautiful wife, Mellissa, and two young children, and even  a palatial estate – almost out of a Mark Twain novel with hanging willow  trees, and a small fish-filled lake; and in short, Sam had never really lost  at anything in life.  “I’m not gonna go into our culpability, gentlemen. We can argue that  we were good soldiers simply taking orders. But if the political winds  strongly shift in Washington, D.C., we’re in trouble,” Sam said as he  tried to allay our anxieties, ironically enough.  “And if they don’t?”  “If not, and the American people themselves remain like docile  sheep and cattle, and braying like donkeys, we’ll be forgotten everyone  except by The New Historians.  “But think about it. Mankind’s history is only five million years  old, right? A mere blip on the screen, cosmologically speaking. Well,  unbelievably, there have been only three explanations for our own  Kevin Marley 189 existence as human beings, namely: 1) The Earth, life itself, and our  own human evolution is nothing more than the result of a biological  serendipity, and that when we die it’s ashes to ashes, dust to dust, as  they say. Essentially, we don’t continue unless we have offspring; 2) Or  if we believe the Bible, we are here as Children of God, and due to the  fall of Adam and Eve, we are being perennially tested with temptation  during our lives here. In this theological scenario, if we repeatedly sin,  we go to Hell, for all of eternity. But if we are good or repent, we go  to Heaven and enjoy immortality; Or 3) There’s the more mysterious  explanation that’s been out there for many thousands of years, human  reincarnation. Man’s not a mere physical body, but a Soul; he’s a Spark  of the Divine flame, as the Mystery Schools have stated from ancient  Greece and Rome, and onwards. Like a carpenter, he’s building  both physical and etheric bodies to travel to many realms to garner  experiences. Essentially, Man’s learning important life lessons in this  one room schoolhouse, and reincarnation or rebirth is the overriding  reason for all the discrepancies down here. We’re at different stages of  physical, mental and spiritual development as some are focused on  sheer survival, others are working on material development in this  world, while a few are learning their last lessons as human beings,  namely, how to expand human consciousness, and they are attempting  to become Mahatmas or great souls. “It’s the only thing that makes sense really and can explain the  present-day inequities.  “Right, gentlemen?”  Bob Akin grumbled a bit. His bulging eyes were like that of a  bullfrog as he was chain smoking Marlboro cigarettes and had to suffer  the indignity of never dating women who were his first, or even second  choice. However, he was part of the Mensa society, and he was our  philologist in-residence with almost a freakish photographic memory  who could quote William Faulkner and Papa Hemingway and even  Chaucer in Middle English, if you told him the specific passage. But at  the same time, he had the personality of a bold and reckless gambler  who had a history of winning big in black jack games in Reno and Vegas  before being banned by most casinos.  “It’s there in literature if you look closely,” Bob said in his Kentucky  drawl. “It’s all there in the Gnostic writings, the Vedas and their fantastic  stories of rishis and sages performing magical feats, and The Tao with  190 Soul Kitchen their Chinese masters floating away on the backs of white cranes into  the sunset. Surprisingly, or not, those stories support what we are finally  seeing through The Brain Reader that there is much more to life than  meets the eye.” “But who and what are we are the paramount questions as Man has  changed so drastically,” Alex said as he drank another beer and ate more  linguini. “Who would have thought that we had lived in Atlantis and  Lemuria long ago?”  “Indubitably, we’re talking about an entirely new concept for the  scientific community, ‘Soul Growth,’” Bob interjected as he often  wanted the floor. “But what have we found, when we have finally seen  the much bigger picture of involution and evolution? Essentially, Man  is a Traveler to many different planets and realms as his many bodies  are like finely built vehicles. We step into our cars and then drive down  the proverbial road of life, before stepping out and moving to another  adventure.  “Long ago, the Gnostics had these same doctrines of reincarnation  and even of karma in their Christian teachings that we’re beginning to  reassert. Mystic Christianity was potent in its original ideology before it  became watered down and corrupted. But the funny thing is: You can’t  institutionalize a major religion with these concepts so they were later  omitted by the Church Elders.” “That’s right,” Sam said as he adjusted his glasses. “Read Divine  Comedy. Or Wordsworth’s Ode: Intimations of Immortality that harkens  to the very fact that we will be around here existing for thousands of  years, not in these flesh and blood bodies, of course. But nonetheless  alive! The Bard of Stratford upon Avon himself thoroughly appreciated  the bawdiness of people, while at the same time, speaking of a much  greater reality. Indeed, Hamlet’s own father dressed as a warrior warns  his son: ‘I am forbid to tell the secrets of my prison house, I could a tale  unfold whose lightest word would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young  blood, make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, thy knotted  and combined locks to part, and each particular hair stand on end like  quills upon the fretful porcupine.’ “It’s the same thing, gentlemen, only we’re beginning through  modern science and the quantum computer to unlock the secrets of the  prison house.” Kevin Marley 191 Bob joined in, again. “Or read The Transcendentalists, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry  David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, or Walt Whitman who in their various  gifts of rhetoric poetically argued more for the quantum mechanical  world than a blasé Newtonian. They talk more of the Soul than the  body, if you sense their deeper meaning.”  “There has been a tectonic shift in the world view of things, more  like the fall of fascism in the mid-1940’s or that of communism in the  late 1980’s as the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall fell,” David ventured  as he drank more wine, “And how this all pans out, who knows when  the music stops?” Slowly, we were unraveling with our grubby fingers what had often  been called The Present. What a name! How true! Ultimately, it turned  out to be an exacting riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma  many had tried to figure out for centuries, but failed. More music played on.  With dark beguiling eyes, an Italian girl in a short black dress made  her way table. She was a gorgeous flower, exuding perfumed-like air,  and then she asked if we needed anything, as if her palpable miracle of  beauty in the midst of ugly chaos wasn’t enough.  “Another job.”  “Immunity from future prosecution.” “The burning of The Patriot Act.” “Is that all? I’ll get the chef to whip that up right away with some  bruschetta and calamari, okay?”  “Sure.” There was a laughter, and more endless chatter as we tried to embrace  simpler times when the world seemed as easy as a summer baseball  game between the Mets and the Phillies with hot dogs, popcorn and  soda vendors and the national anthem where we had, once, proudly  sang the words, and put our hands over our hearts.  Many of us imagined what it would be like to go back in time before  things went terribly amiss. “Well, read Edgar Cayce,” I ventured wading into this conversation.  “He gave over 14,000 readings that were recorded by a stenographer,  and he spoke very specifically in minute detail of people’s past lives. “Cayce went into a trance of some kind as he eventually became  known as The Sleeping Prophet, and then he presumably read from The  192 Soul Kitchen Book of Nature. The Hindus call it The Akashic Records. It’s where all  our lives and the lives of every living thing, and even the Earth and the  planets are kept, more like a spiritual library, and anyway, Cayce had  access to it. Unbelievably, he spoke about the Subject and his past lives  and the various and complex relationships the person had, and it was all  frightfully karmic, terribly intertwined, as though people were bound  by invisible cords of steel itself.” “Unbelievable.” “Kinda like a precursor to our work.” “Yeah, you have to read the case studies to see how people were  linked by these invisible bonds in marriage and friendship, or as  business associates, and how as the old adage goes: What goes around,  comes around. “It’s all there in The Book of Nature that we all seem to be reading  these days.” “I’ll have to read it sometime, Edmond.”  “But it’s more than that,” I expostulated still wanting to make my  point. “Casey’s work actually documents the very principle of karma,  about how God’s Mill turns very slowly, but surely, and that if you swing  your foot out of cruelty and kick a dog on a street, or cheat on your wife,  or commit suicide in a cheap hotel room, or a heinous murder in a fit of  drunken rage, you don’t really escape anything here. It’s like a life lesson  neatly tucked away in a wooden desk drawer. The Akashi Records don’t  fade, or disappear. Later on, you open it up. And remarkably, it’s still  there. An assignment to be worked on.” “I admit that all this is new and very startling,” Alex interjected as  he was growing tired of Homeland Security sticking their giraffe-like  necks into our business. “Presumably, we’re seeing incredible pictures of  the ancient past. But can we really be sure? What if these are rational  dreams of some kind that we somehow tapped into? What if our scientific  method is flawed?” “Perhaps. But we’re moving into a new epistemology, a very knew  way of analyzing things based upon cellular memory, and in looking  at the world, as we try to combine these holographic engrams with the  traditional methods of objective modern-day science,” Sam said as he  had been reluctant himself to accept the massive changes when we had  first begun. Kevin Marley 193 “It’s a beginning.”  “And beginnings are always a messy affair,” Alex rejoined. “Well, I understand you, Alex. But what particular theories have you  deduced, so far?”  “Nothing.”  “Nothing doesn’t sound that promising. It’s not going to win any  Nobel Prizes or even grants.” “And that’s exactly my point!” “Which is what?” “What if we’re simply projecting our own intricate schemes and  ambitions onto this strange Rorschach inkblot?”  An eerie kind of doubt crept in.  “Man is a Traveler to many realms as we have seen with our very  eyes, gentlemen. Rebirth is an established fact, not just in the scientific  community where it has been empirically verified, but now it’s sweeping  into the public domain. History is something completely different than  we had imagined,” Sam stated emphatically as more vintage wine was  poured. “According to our research, Atlantis and Lemuria existed as  actual continents peopled with the human race, as men and women  there looked vastly different than now, and that human evolution is  a lot more complicated thing than we have previously understood,  especially, in the light of all these recorded histories which remarkably  do not contradict one another.”  “But what if we’re terribly mistaken?” “I don’t think so.”  “What if the cellular memory that we’re seeing is being misinterpreted  somehow by the coding program.” “Alex has a point,” Bob chimed in.  “Possibly.”  “Oh, it’s just chicken shit.” “It’s a new worldview, just as when Copernicus convinced most  rational people that we lived in a heliocentric universe, or when the  Spaniards and Columbus proved that the world wasn’t flat, and that  there was a New World out there to be conquered.” “I can’t believe it.”  “There are always naysayers and stragglers.” 194 Soul Kitchen “Oh, fuck you, Sam. You always need to make an eloquent argument  and must have the last word on what’s supposedly true with your  Harvard credentials. But you know what? You grow into the truth.  You can’t pour it onto anyone’s head despite what you may think,” Alex  blurted out.  His black hair was slicked back as he sucked on a cigarette to calm  his  jittery nerves.  We all felt terribly guilty despite having not officially broken any  laws.  “I wholeheartedly agree. Yes, I’m guilty as charged. Let’s not mince  words. I’m arrogantly ploughing under nearly three hundred years of  scientific methodology, or rather expanding upon it,” Sam said. “But  gentlemen, we’ve made our cozy bed and have to lie in it come what  may.” “We could quit en masse,” Mark said as he ate more bruschetta and  stared at the waitresses who were more like sirens in our catastrophic  and stormy seas.  “It’s like joining the CIA,” David said. “Once you’re in – you’re never  out.” “Look, we’re panicking when we don’t have to,” Bob joined in the  conversation again. “The higher ups will have to fall, before we do.”  “Morris and Wilson?” “You gotta be joking.”  “Anyway, now that reincarnation is an established fact in our  American society. I’m wondering how we are going to separate the  chaff from the wheat, the charlatans from the real thing. I mean, you  remember the frightful past. You had all these people pretending to be  someone great from the past yet they couldn’t even hold down a job or  balance their own checkbook – the Napoleans, the Alexander the Greats,  the Cleopatras, Nicola Teslas, Thomas Edisons, the Shakespeares, etc.”  “Quite right.”  “These people have given reincarnation a very bad name as they  have used it primarily for self-aggrandizement.” “I’m hoping our research teams will begin to cross reference our  data in this nationwide database, and we’ll finally put to rest some of  those shenanigans,” Bob said as he eyed some of his stocks on his I-pad.  He ate another chicken wing and got barbecue sauce on his plaid shirt.  Kevin Marley 195 “This new science that verifies reincarnation should also weed out the  charlatans as we examine The Book of Nature itself.”  “Yeah, maybe we’ll build a great Alexandrian Library, again,” Sam  mused thinking of the vast implications. “Sounds good.”  “But I wouldn’t get your high hopes up.”  “Why not?” “Because, if you remember your ancient history,” Mark reminded  them slurring his own words, “the Alexandrian library was burnt to the  ground by a spiteful Caesar and his Roman soldiers in a fit of angst.”  “So?” “History’s strangely repeating itself.”  “America has become The Roman Empire through our political  machinations and military might; and now Julius Caesar, and his men  might burn us and all this knowledge if we aren’t careful.”  Time was a sticky nuisance. Ordinarily, it made us obsessed with the  Earth’s revolution and its never-ending slow dance around the Sun as we  also revolved around the Milky Way Galaxy itself while simultaneously  racing further out into the unknowns of space at over a million miles  per hour. Time had always been confused with mere sequential events,  so that it became intertwined with so-called real events and became  a fantastic blur. Right now, things, however, were different. Time was  being mathematically defined as the fourth dimension in our world  with much greater clarity, precision by some of our greatest minds in  both physics and math. In essence, we had another Sputnik moment  in 2057 – a full one hundred years later – as the ruthless Chinese  with stolen technology, along with the pesky Russians, had made the  first quantum-based computer with qu-bits finally overcoming the  last obstacle of quantum decoherence to race perilously ahead of us  with these marvelous supercomputers. They could do fuzzy logic and  even think in rudimentary terms. It was the beginnings of Artificial  Intelligence (AI), but that’s an entirely different story. The Chinese and  Russians were even jointly mathematically exploring the 4th dimension,  and with new kinds of technology, they were able to move along not  just the X and Y axes, but the Z axis, as well, and some patently feared  they were only a few decades away from time travel. Of course, I say  these things not as an elaborate excuse, as many have already accused  me of, so that my harsh penal sentence here might be reduced but so  196 Soul Kitchen that you might understand the perilous risks we had to take when we,  at last, took our supercomputers and began finding the equivalent of  holographic engrams in human physiology. In a sense, modern science  found and unraveled The Book of Nature in the human body as all  earthly events leave their own smudged fingerprints.  At the behest of National Security, we had been summoned to  Washington, D.C., and given full clearance by Pentagon brass well  over three years ago, whilst being told we were the best scientists of  our particular fields. Then we were commanded to explore this new  frontier – ancient civilizations and the technologies they beheld – no?holds-barred before we fell behind even further. At first, we approached  our work hesitantly as we probed these ‘so-called volunteers’ who  had arrived at our scientific laboratory through the cover of night  and military escort surreptitiously as many of our pressing questions  weren’t fully answered. We were told by Morris and Wilson to just do  our important work. Our subjects had certain genetic markers we had  found, which predisposed them, to living in certain periods of time,  and to being witnesses to very important historical eras and to possibly,  being knowledgeable of very important ancient technology we were  trying to acquire.  In truth, I was never fully comfortable with my assignment as we  had to acquire these holographic engrams no matter what was the cost.  It all began as a blind faith to our own government and to national  security needs. We felt a silly patriotism, at first, and then made short  but lengthy excuses, and then wandered deeply into an elaborate maze  of hedgerows and more. Of course, they enticed us with large salaries  and very fruitful and ripened benefits, and even the promise of sharing  in the patents of some these new technological discoveries.  All in all, the needle was skipping, and history was repeating itself.  This monstrosity was something out of the Milgram Experiment  where the teacher gave electric shocks to the student when mistakes  were made following, as the protocols said, the orders of an authority  figure. In that experiment, Professor Stanley Milgram wondered how  many subjects would give the fatal 450-volt charge, and being curious,  he polled his Yale University colleagues and forty psychiatrists from  medical school who basically believed that not much would transpire,  and that ultimately only about 3% of their subjects would deliver the  fatal shock in this very controlled setting. Kevin Marley 197 Obviously, they were astounded to find that the real figure of  conformity to an authority figure was 65%.  Essentially, we were no different than anyone else even though most  of us graduated from the Ivy League, and we possessed these shiny?lettered degrees that declared us the best and the brightest scientists  of our generation. Obviously, we had distinguished ourselves with  new papers, impressive cutting-edge research, and even technological  breakthroughs. Maybe, we thought we were infallible. Or that we were  the good guys and that we would never show up in this movie as the  bad guys. I’m not sure. Like most, we became casualties in our blind  obedience and pathetic submission to the United States Government,  and to Homeland Security officials who oversaw these tragic  experiments; and like most Americans, we were cowering in fright in a  darkened corner.  But I digress in telling this remarkable story that will probably  never see the light of day. Modern science had foregone its well?established protocols, and had opened Pandora’s Box; and we found  like sparkling diamonds and rubies and diamonds the ancient wisdom  of the Lemurians, the Atlanteans, the Egyptians with their remarkable  pyramids, and at last, the Essenes who had, indeed, witnessed many  miracles.  We needed to garner these technological advances, before other  began to sequester them.  The 3rd generation quantum mechanical computers were finally  here with these newly developed Intel Pentium processors and they  possessed qu-bit software, not a binary language as before, that was  now fully capable of speaking a ‘new interdimensional language’; and  remarkably, it could interface with the Human Brain. At long last, Man  and Machine began to ‘talk’ to one another! Surprisingly, we found that  the human brain itself was like a supercomputer in that it had a myriad  number of directories and files and that under every file is the actual  software programming language that is creating, almost dictating, the  beliefs, the thoughts, speech and actions of its subject.  These new computer breakthroughs and revolutionary software  programs were one of the greatest scientific discoveries of our present?day age; if the first computer revolution was like going to the moon,  this next computer revolution was like going way beyond our own solar  198 Soul Kitchen system as we were able to access the so-called past and all the knowledge  that was available and to slowly begin to access that technology.  But they pale, I’m afraid, in comparison to our myriad mistakes.  At first, engrams had been explored when Karl Lashley experimented  in 1929 with rats who ran intricate mazes. He had them run as fast as  they could time them, and then Lashley scraped tissue from different  parts of their brain having them run the maze, once again. Overall, he  was looking at the possible diminishment in their skills and speed, and  hence, memory. But ironically, Lashley found that memory was non?localized. Later, almost a hundred years later, with human subjects,  past-life engrams were found in the reptilian brain as we began to see  these holographic images from the brain stem via The Brain Reader.  Essentially, we found dense packets of DNA, cryptic in nature, and  then within it, holographic engrams of presumably the subject’s many  past lives in eras that we had not even imagined existed. What did we  exactly see? Was it possible? Who knows? The only thing we did know as  trained scientists in the empirical method was that we began to see a  panorama of vivid pictures of a very ancient and mysterious past where  both man and the Earth were evolving; and it was here where we saw  the unbelievable – Lemuria, Atlantis, with its almost incomprehensible  technological feats, and ancient Egypt with its spectacular pyramids  being built; Rome with its Emperors and Senate, and before that,  civilizations rapidly growing up along the Mesopotamia and Euphrates  Rivers, the Ganges, and the Yellow River; and then more recently, the  Spanish Inquisition, the rise and fall of the British Empire, the American  Revolution, the Civil War, world wars, and so on, like never-ending  newsreels to the present day. Many of our longstanding questions about  what exactly happened were definitively answered with time as we  consulted with many historians for verification and confirmation. We  had insisted, however, upon a triangulation of data. Eventually, many  of our premises about history and Man himself were quickly turned  upside down. Was Man merely a biological creature? Was he a Traveler of  some kind? Did he have a soul? We were now dealing, quite admittedly,  with this strange kind of personal truth seen through the very eyes  of our subjects. But there also was this greater historical truth, only  this was not the truth of dusty history books, speculations at wooden  lecterns, and dry scholarly lectures, but now the living record through  holographic engrams of our case studies. Kevin Marley 199 The Homeland Security representatives were always there like  Gestapo agents. There was no escaping them and the Army soldiers  stationed nearby ready for anything, monitoring us. On the date in  question, I believe, June 3rd, Bevan Morris and Greg Wilson, were on  hand to observe these new experiments and protocols, which meant that  they were there to make sure we extracted all necessary information,  and to report back to headquarters if anything went amiss.  But according to our new attorney general, I am a seditionist who  recklessly violated many national security laws, and who gave secrets  to the Chinese and the Russians, hence, I have been stripped of my  American citizenship; with broad brush strokes, masterly done, they  have even managed to paint me even worse than a modern-day Benedict  Arnold in supposedly surrendering vital information and technological  data to a sworn enemy. Resultantly, habeas corpus has been suspended,  as they claim I, Dr. Edmond Cotton, suffer from a chronic psychosis  that features delusions of grandeur, paranoia and persecution. That all  might well be true as I no longer consider myself a rational human being  nor a reliable witness as I am fed psychotic drugs intravenously every day.  Right now, for instance, I am heavily sedated on a litany of medicines  trying to write about these events like a wooden boat sailing into a sea  of fog and stormy weather. Overall, it was an infernal mess where we tried to carefully backpedal  to save ourselves. The instinct for self-preservation being found in the  brain stem is one of the hardest impulses to suppress through social  conditioning or other treatments as many of our scientists had found.  Imagine, for a moment, if you will, being a scientist like myself on  this Manhattan-like project. You walk through an amazing labyrinth;  and then in the middle, beyond the many layers of military security  with their retinal scans, is a very large, elaborate dentist’s office, sixty  feet wide, and only much more sinister with a X-ray-like machine  that was actually a quantum-based computer as we had to invasively  probe our subjects reading engrams within their Reptilian brains. Then  through the Brain Reader, we had it transposed so that we could see  the holographic engrams on a crystalline screen where these scenes  from everyday life were capable of being both viewed and recorded  simultaneously. This time things, however, did not go that smoothly  as the subject violently jerked in his leather chair strapped in, half- 200 Soul Kitchen somnolent, drooling, at times, and even losing control of his bodily  functions as trained orderlies perfunctorily cleaned him. Frequently,  we took his measurements and biological readings. This was necessary  as we were trying to measure to what extent human beings could  withstand this kind of psychic trauma of their own hidden memories  from resurfacing. It was like having layers of your own entire personality  being stripped away from you one after another. There were many  signals to watch for. Elevated blood pressure. Rapid heartbeat. Muscle  spasms. REM’s. Biochemical markers for stress.  “It’s near Gethsemane! And the right time period.” “But he’s  clearly uncomfortable.” “We need this information, McNamara.”  “Go deeper, gentlemen. I’m not looking to have arguments  about protocol.” Case Study A4239 began hyperventilating and having anxiety  attacks with a rapid pulse and night sweats, or what we called ‘waking  nightmares.’ We began looking at his cellular memory more like a neatly  stacked set of DVD’s that could be readily played with the right kind of  technology. We were instructed to minimize their pain and discomfort  as best we could by Morris and Wilson who observed everything in this  research facility. But those words were merely perfunctory. Obviously,  we compensated with a plethora of medicines that Sam and the nurses  administered and by bringing them to a lower metabolic state hoping to  minimize the impact of this invasive procedure, but it was only a matter  of time, as we had warned them, before subjects began having strokes,  myocardial infarctions, and then our first tragic fatality. It was hauntingly remarkable to stare into the past: Specifically, we saw him, Case Study A4239, at the foot of the Mount  of Olives, walking through the Garden of Gethsemane speaking in the  forgotten tongue of ancient Hebrew that Yeshua himself had spoken.  It was late in the day, and then night as this scene unraveled like a  movie. The Middle East was a harsh arid land even back then with low  lying hills, sparse trees and bushes, thirsty and hungry livestock, and  brown grass. As day commenced again, Roman soldiers were nearby  congregating and discussing events in Latin. They stood about five feet  seven, smaller than I had imagined, wearing dark red colored tunics,  Kevin Marley 201 helmets, shields and javelins as there was a political tumult even worse  than today.  A mid-day Sun mercilessly beat down and scorched everything that  could not find the respite of shade.  David, who had been picked personally for this special assignment,  could relate to us what was exactly happening. “He’s definitely an Essene, not a Pharisee nor a Sadducee. His name  is Emmanuel. They are waiting for someone important.”  “Who?” “I don’t know.”  “Probe deeper.”  “He’s with Thaddeus and Matthew.”  “Two of the disciples?”  “It’s impossible to say although if we can get a clear picture of the  night sky, and the position of the constellations we can feed it into the  computer and come close to knowing the exact year.”  “Fat chance.”  But Case Study A4239 began gripping his left arm even under  incredible anesthesia and having a myocardial infarction as our  procedure was far too invasive, ripping cellular memories terabyte by  terabyte from him, clearly beyond the bounds of the Hippocratic Oath.  We went to work, as usual.  “Clear!”  “Give him an IV of nitroglycerine and a clot buster.” “Streptokinase?” “Yeah, hurry.” “Christ! We’re killing him.”  The defibrillator jolted Case Study A4239’s chest as there was an  arrhythmia to his overly stressed heart that we could not readily correct.  He was an African-American man in his mid-fifties, who was six foot?three and nearly three hundred ten pounds, and who had a history of  angina that we deliberately chose to ignore. There were shiny beads  of sweat, diamond-like on his mahogany skin, covering his forehead.  On the medical table, he was now lying half naked with a thin sheet  pulled up to his waist. We had extracted almost 300 terabytes and other  forms of cellular memory, and extraordinary data that his system did  not readily give up. More than likely, he was not going home tonight  202 Soul Kitchen as he was rapidly degrading further as he suffered a Widow maker, a  dangerous obstruction of the main coronary artery to his brain, which  was now being deprived of oxygen. To the people in this room, he was no  more than Case Study A4239 as his personal details had been carefully  redacted from his file to keep our sympathies from interfering with our  duties in The Control Center. But scientifically speaking, he was very  important to us—the first subject we had that had been confirmed as an  Essene during the time of Jesus Christ, around 30 A.D. But it all boiled down to this: We still had important questions about  the mysterious life of Jesus Christ, a Syrian prophet, and the Mission  of Golgotha that had until recently belonged to the realm of scholars  and history books; and to be frank, we needed to understand ‘the  atomic blast of white light’ that had occurred near the time of his death  covering the entire world.  “Always when we get this damn close something happens,” Morris  said as he threw a book filled with regulations and protocols against the  wall. He paced back and forth wringing his own hands. “Keep going, gentlemen,” Wilson replied as he stepped towards the  patient knowing he had to give the President and the Senate Committee  his report tomorrow.  But it was impossible, as we searched for the needle in a haystack.  In minutes, we revived him as he straddled two worlds, the past  and the present that had been inscribed in a living book. His breathing  was severely labored, and foam came out of his mouth. We cleared his  passage way. Violently, his body shook and was in upheaval, like an  entire country being overthrown in a coup de tat.  It didn’t look good.  As the anesthesiologist, I was monitoring his vital signs and the  IV when Case Study A4239 became more awake from an adrenaline  injection given by McNamara. He gripped my arm and pulled me closer. “What am I doing here?”  “I’m afraid you’ve had a heart attack.”  “That’s bullshit.”  “I’m sorry, but it’s true.” “What am I doing here, man?!” “I’m here to help you.”  “No, you’re not.”  Kevin Marley 203 “We’re all doctors and orderlies.” “You’re a Brother.”  “Yes, I am.”  “How could you be doin’ somethin’ like this? This ain’t right! Don’t you  know your own history?”  “We’re trying to keep you alive.”  “These abductings are true!”  “Please try and relax, Mr. – umm. You’ve just had a severe heart  attack.” “Shit, you don’t even know my name.”  “I just got here.” “Look, I’m not a fuckin’ guinea pig!” “No, you’re not.”  “Tuskegee Air Men!” “What?” “Damn you! This is nuthin’ but a Tuskegee Airmen Operation!” Case Study A4239 violently struggled as he twisted in his seat and  instinctively fought for his life against the attending nurse and another  physician who overpowered him, much like a large reptile caught by  intruders and now wrangling to get back to his own environment. I  backpedaled, not knowing what to do, as I had taken a Hippocratic  Oath and now I was clearly violating it. The machines began sounding  off, and the life ebbed away.  This time – he flat lined. Sam jumped on the medical table and began giving him CPR  pounding as he foamed at the mouth and began looking more like  another cold corpse.  “He just needs his heart massaged.”  “Sam.” “We can open up his chest if we have to. I’m not gonna let this man  die under our care. It’s a violation of all that we stand for in our medical  profession, gentlemen.” “Mr. Hinkins.” “Just give me more time.” “Unfortunately, we have none, gentlemen.”  The Homeland Security officials had had enough as Army officers  came in to escort Sam down from the operating room table to lead  204 Soul Kitchen him to the debriefing room. A bed of dark clouds came circling over  us. We were herded more like cattle and sheep as no longer were we  noble men able to apprehend the mysterious and inexplicable, but farm  animals that were told not to even possess an opinion, but just to play  our specific roles.  Meanwhile, we dressed in our street clothes, trying to recompose  ourselves as the orderlies took the body, Case Study A4239, to the  morgue down the hallway. When we were done, Bevan Morris and  Wilson came in to give their patented speech when something went  wrong.  “Gentlemen, I appreciate your efforts today despite what  encumbrances we have had today and challenges that we presently face  as we boldly acquire technologies of the past.  “You are all being nominated for a Congressional medal of honor for  your noble work. I have no doubt it will go through after having spoken  with Senator Jefferson Davis Johnson of Oklahoma just yesterday. He  is the head of this research committee, as you know, and he is very  impressed with our findings to date.  “Presently, we find ourselves significantly behind the Russians and the  Chinese as our intelligence community has informed us. This happened  because we shunned parapsychology and considered it beyond the  realm of our scientific system and even methods of epistemology, and  we have paid a steep price for it.  “No doubt, as kick off arrives, we are playing catch up.  “Let me remind you: Our competition has accumulated a vast  compendium of knowledge concerning ancient societies from  thousands of years ago that were, contrary to public opinion, not in  the Dark Ages, but were very advanced in their own unique ways:  the Atlanteans, for instance, who probably had more sophisticated  and powerful technology than ourselves before they were doomed by  their own factional fighting, greed, selfishness, and wars; the Egyptians  who excelled at science and the art of astronomy and who built the  magnificent pyramids by levitating large blocks as some had always  previously suspected; the Greeks and Romans who had built the  Alexandrian Library replete with compelling treatises on many subjects  and various mysteries before it was unfortunately burned to the ground  by mistake; and then the quiet and devotional Essenes, who belonged  Kevin Marley 205 to another important School of Mystery, and their adept, Yeshua, who  somehow created this miraculous atomic blast that swept the entire  world. “But nonetheless, we have made important inroads through no short  part due to your effort. We have developed new insights into the human  condition and technologies that will hopefully aide us in moving past  the competition. For instance, we have recently created the first indepth  hologram of the human body, and have compared it point by point with  the existing hologram of the universe.  “Let me emphasize, also, for those of you who may still harbor  some doubts or reservations about this New Manhattan Project: It is  paramount that you remember that this is a National Security issue.  As such, we have been given very significant latitude by the President  and Congress to conduct our important work and engage in vital  research with these new sets of protocols, and although uncomfortable,  at times, these procedures are necessary to ensure our technological  supremacy and America’s national security. Our top priority is attaining  this information and these commensurate technologies that were once  possessed by ancient civilizations no matter what the cost. In short,  there’s no turning back. We cannot afford for the Chinese and the  Russians to surpass us technologically in the 21st century. It would be  disastrous as they would possess unheard of weapons and we would not  even know where to begin to counter them.  “Like you’ve asked, we’ve consulted with those at The Attorney  General’s Office and lawyers about your many personal questions; and  let me make it perfectly clear, you are not violating your Hippocratic  Oaths nor the Geneva Convention nor any other written set of ethics  that the United States of America may have signed into law during the  past one hundred years.  “You are simply following the direct orders of the current presidential  administration and Congress itself, which in these matters of vital  national security supersedes all else per the renewed Patriot Act with  its latest addendums.”  Summarily, Bevan Morris and Greg Wilson then left the premises  with their military attaches after having made sure we signed, once  again, confidential agreements that made any kind of betrayal a  treasonable offense. Of course, it was an intimidation technique as  206 Soul Kitchen we had, like good soldiers, previously signed and cowered our heads  in subservience to the state. Strangely, we felt paralyzed under the  numerous rationalizations and missteps we had frightfully made while  working less for the country we knew, and more for the Third Reich,  only this time we were trying to uncover the latest secrets of ancient  civilizations such as Atlantis and Lemuria that were surprisingly more  advanced than our own in many ways.  An awkward silence.  Boulders.  We had to climb over.  “That was a tough one in there, Edmond.”  “Yeah, I wouldn’t worry about it.”  “I’ll get over it like I always do.” “I can’t believe they ordered me to stop giving him CPR,” Sam  interjected. “I’m not sure if I can honestly look myself in the mirror,” Mark  replied busily tying his shoes. “I see this ghastly face like I don’t even  have a soul.” “Neither can I to be truthful,” Alex said as he combed a few tufts of  hair to cover his bald head. “My wife’s even noticed some change in me,  too. The other night she said I looked like something the cat brought in.”  “We should do something before it’s too late.”  “Before what?” “Before we become these voiceless voices.”  “In case you haven’t been watching the nightly news, it’s been  officially declared open season on the individual,” Sam offered. “Any  kind of dissension has been thoroughly squashed through The Patriot  Act. At last, George Orwell was right about 1984, Big Brother, and The  Thought Police.”  “Except the goddamn date,” Alex remarked as a few of us chuckled.  “Yep, get your huntin’ license,” Bob added as he was getting ready for  another legally blind date, again.  “My nerves are frayed, man. Like never.”  “Mine, too,” Mark added.  “The real question is: Would you sit in that chair having your cellular  memory put onto DVD’s?”  “Nope.”  Kevin Marley 207 “Hell, no.”  “You see how these people come out with scrambled eggs for brains  and a hazy look in their eyes.” “This whole thing reeks of The Milgram Experiment a long time  ago,” I ventured wondering to what extent we were under surveillance.  “I keep looking for a two-way mirror of some kind. The only thing  I’m constantly wondering is whether we really are the scientific  experimenters or the subjects.” “I might quit and tell my story,” Mark confessed as he was tired of  these shenanigans and had started AA meetings.  “I wouldn’t do it, man.”  “The times have changed with that Patriot Act. They have flipped  everything upside down in this country,” Alex began to muse while  he slowly put his pants on. “True patriotism is what?! Sedition! And  sedition? Hell, you get a Senator or a Congressman’s seat, and more  power, and a pension! It’s now called something noble and patriotic  to create an authoritarian state with a myriad number of vague and  obscure laws that oppress your fellow American citizens! They can  throw you in jail for anything and even legally drone strike your ass if  you keep complaining.” “As Benjamin Franklin once said, ‘Those who sacrifice liberty for  security deserve neither.” “Well, not to deflate things, gentlemen,” Bob said as he began  walking towards the darkened corridor. “But I know which side of my  bread’s buttered.”  “And by whom.” The excruciating work in our Homeland Security laboratory  continued even with a greater zeal as we had been pressured to speed  up our results. During the next six months as our sleeves were rolled up,  our filthy hands were caked in blood, deceit, and even state-sponsored  terrorism; we were lost to ourselves as we were engaged in in recovering  holographic engrams and viewing them through The Brain Reader. I  kept asking myself one of the more pertinent riddles of my entire life,  “What do you do when life keeps getting worse?” But I never had an  answer. We had many more casualties, but as they say, the first one is  always the toughest. Ironically, we were progressing – Dr. Mengele and  his cohorts – learning and studying more about the ancient continents  208 Soul Kitchen of Lemuria and Atlantis that had existed a very long time ago, and we  were getting closer to our main objective, the Mission of Golgotha. Well  over two thousand years ago, the Sadducees and the Pharisees were  a materialistic, self-aggrandizing, and publicity seeking sort unlike  their brethren, the Essenes, who were a devout group of whom many  belonged to one of The Schools of Mystery. The Schools of Mystery, as we  had found out, upheld various principles and a general education that  taught knowledge about life itself and The Atman where neophytes were  trained in various techniques to develop their own root thinking and  consciousness. As we had found out through our investigations, there  had been Schools of Mystery in Egypt, Greece and Rome – and some  in the Middle East where Yeshua had lived. But besides these things,  we had found out there was The Law of Rebirth, and the important  corollary that groups of people often incarnate together to accomplish  tasks that had been left undone. This has happened many times. Most  notably in early America when it was being founded in 1776, by a select  number of souls that were highly qualified for their undertaking; or  conversely, in Spain during their dreaded Civil War in the late 1930’s  when they needed to atone for their collective brutality and cruelty  demonstrated in the New World; overall, it appeared that souls fell in  a gentle rain and were trying to find their way to the vast, endless sea  before evaporating again, like in an evanescent mist. Essentially, if this  corollary were true, and it appeared to be, then we should find Essenes,  once again, living together in some kind of capacity.  To Bevan Morris and Greg Wilson, we were their highly recruited  and controlled assets more like in a covert CIA operation as we could  never tell our stories in the light of day. I’m sure they had us closely  monitored and even dreadfully bugged in the office and at home, and  that by doing such things, it led to my rendition in a foreign country I  still do not know the name of. On an October morning, they continued  another inspiring speech with slightly veiled threats as I realized that  there was no way out, that our lives had been forever ruined by our  participation in this infernal mess.  Personally, I sat in a permanent kind of lingering fog where everything  was not so well defined. I didn’t know what to believe anymore as a  rational scientist who once had fervently adhered to logical analysis,  the empirical method, and peer reviewed findings. But now our entire  Kevin Marley 209 epistemology was changing, and we were using ‘Subjective Findings’  that could be verified in an objective manner, if that made any sense.  Another year went by as we were lobsters being slowly cooked in  pots of boiling water falling into a bewildering kind of comfort.  There were less violent outbursts.  Less rebellious talk.  They feed us well at the trough.  Like pigs.  On a few occasions, I made various excuses as I lingered about as  though I had some unfinished business, rechecking data, filling out  more paperwork and finishing highly confidential reports as they all  went home, Sam, Mark, David, Alex, and Bob, and then I went back  to The Control Room. I had to see for myself. I needed to sit in that  dreaded chair that was already marked by death, and begin a series  of experiments on myself. I had to know one way, or the other, as my  conscience was bothering me much like a yelling madman; and like  Henry David Thoreau, I had to know what it felt to pursue the truth  and as Thoreau himself once said: ‘Rather than love, than money, than  fame, give me truth.’  Even if it scorched me.  The experiments then began in earnest.  Through a glass darkly, I began to see many things. As the Germans  once called it, I perceived the ding-an-sich, or the thing-in-itself, and  then past the confusing façade of the personality, quite literally, an  amalgamation of programming, and then like coming to an open vista,  I saw more clearly the ancient past that we all have traversed through as  I began chronicling our journey, that of the Atman itself.  Upon reflection, it’s pitifully short how sophisticated humans think  their actual history is. With dense blinders on, historians state that we’ve  been these cursed bipedal creatures for a mere 200,000 years, and that  we’re descendants of a brute like Cro-Magnon Man and Neanderthal  Man, and further back, from silverback gorillas and chimpanzees.  They view life itself as merely a series of accidental cosmic events and  biological serendipity, that we arose from the chemical soup 3 ½ billion  years ago and then we began a very long journey of Darwinian-like  struggles as the human condition constitutes only misery and suffering.  210 Soul Kitchen Lastly, to add insult to injury, when the Grim Reaper comes for you,  there’s nothing left but dust.  But as I was finding out, our history is much grander as the old  proverb is accurate: Truth is stranger than fiction.  Meanwhile, these experiments at this secretive military base  continued without any kind of abatement. Ingenuously, we had  developed even more invasive methods to probe and then quickly  download more terabytes and even petabytes of engrams. Soon, the  winter of my discontent deepened into a loathing and self-disgust as  I went from being a mild-mannered physician to having a volatile  temper prone to manic-depression episodes and even paranoia as I  contemplated both suicide and telling my story to the national press  before they destroyed me like the many whistle blowers before me. My well laid plans were to commit treason and sedition against the  U.S. government as it had become my enemy and the people’s enemy  growing like an octopus-like monster living in the deepest ocean.  Verily, Case A5637 could have been anyone’s grandmother: Her  silvery hair was neatly tied into a large bun while she wore a green  dress with hyacinth flowers patterned on it along with cheap perfumes.  Her face was soft, doughy and covered with two layers of rouge under  the lights. Carefully, we folded her hands on her lap and removed any  jewelry as she was heavily sedated for the very invasive procedures; and  for the most part, Case A5637 was ordinary to a high degree except for  the fact that she also possessed the genetic marker of having been an  Essene during the time of Jesus Christ. Systematically, we began probing  her reptilian brain and aggressively downloading her holographic  engrams that were subsequently viewed on The Brain Reader. As might  have been expected, these startling technological developments were  slowly filtering down into the everyday world, and were in the process  of making court rooms obsolete as plaintiffs and defendants’ brains  were routinely scanned while giving testimony, and the truth of what  happened objectively rendered.  Relentlessly, we probed her reptilian brain like computer hackers as  this person who was a sweet grandmother became nothing more than  a vast encyclopedia set of information. Amazingly, we began seeing  situated in the middle of the Pacific Ocean the continent of Lemuria  before its demise hundreds of millions of years ago. The atmosphere was  Kevin Marley 211 dense as there was a strange fire-fog pervading everything. Man lived in  a large forest reminiscent of the tallest sequoias in Northern California,  only much taller, with roaming animals of many species large in both  girth and height. Remarkably, as we had found, Man was not only a  Traveler to different realms, but was still a part of nature itself, not a  separate entity, with his own peculiar volition in constant competition  with everything else. Essentially, the Lemurian was spiritual in nature,  a true clairvoyant, whose ‘inner eye’ was open, and who understood  the howling wind, the rumblings of the earth, the roar of the active  volcano, the singing of a rustic stream, and the call of different birds as  a language unto itself. Remarkably, Man could ‘see’ before so-called civilization and its  incessant demands impinged upon his abilities.  Essentially, the Lemurian was one with Nature as he moved through  the giant fern-like forests with long confident strides knowing both  bird and beast alike; his basic perceptions of the world allowed him to  see, not just the form, but the spirit of animals and plants as he truly  communed like in the faery tales of old.  Surprisingly, Case Study A5637 was a different gender, a male  Lemurian in this particular incarnation, as we were often finding out  that the human soul to maintain balance incarnates as both genders.  As we were quickly discovering, the Lemurian lived like a Shaman who  could commune with the spirits of the mountains and trees, and the  rivers and the forests as his sacred life was one not necessarily based  upon form, but of vibrant energies and the unremitting flow of life  itself. To him, language was not a dead thing, an albatross, conveniently  tied around one’s neck. But it was an alive thing, and as such, it held  an immense kind of radiating mantric power over one’s fellow beings,  animals and even nature itself. As a result, the Lemurian used the power  of The Word therefore in a constructive manner for to do otherwise was  unthinkable to him.  These stages of life were fully unanticipated.  Additionally, the Lemurian both understood the life force, or as  some ancient cultures have called it: Chi or Prana. They managed their  life force wisely as the Lemurians’ life was aligned with the higher  laws of nature and even the stars in the nighttime sky, which we were  coming to understand was a pervasive energy system. In terms of the  212 Soul Kitchen sacred act of procreation, the Lemurians were guided by higher beings  at a propitious time, as they mated with each other in this way as the  generative force wasn’t misused the way it is often today. In sharp  contrast, there was no pain with the birthing process; and when so?called death came for the Lemurian, it was not the hideous, frightful  experience that most endure now, but was more like a tight shoe or a  glove coming off for the Lemurian was not afraid of transitioning to a  higher state of consciousness.  Strangely enough, Man was still going through what we found to  be the mysterious processes of Involution and Evolution. Unbelievably,  during these Cosmic Days and Nights, The Great Work was continuing.  And for Man himself, this meant that he was building various bodies so  that he could travel to many different worlds much like Alighieri Dante  had written about in his Divine Comedy. Man was an inveterate Traveler.  Unbelievably, He built these bodies more like a carpenter laboring to  build the foundation and then the framework for a three-story house.  In the parlance of The Schools of Mysteries, Man was building a three?fold soul and a three-fold ego where one was the shadowy reflection of  the other, and in-between these two entities, the Ego and the Soul, the  human race was still laboring to build the all-important Mind.  The Mind of Man was the very important fulcrum on which  everything turned. The Mind had to mediate between the higher and  lower selves, which was no small or easy task. In its present state of  development, the Mind was less a fully developed body, and more a  single sheath which accounted for man’s confusion, lack of rationality,  logic, and even insight into the human condition and world events.  However, as we were to find out, this critical phase would pass as the  mind of man was destined to become a developed body like his physical  body is today.  In addition to these things, Man, was trying to reawaken his many  latent germinal abilities as the Lemurian was trying to awaken the  seeds of both Will and Imagination. As perversely morbid as it might  sound, Lemurian males were made to fiercely fight one another, to  impale themselves upon sharpened spits and to carry heavy burdens  to extreme limits. These incredible contests were done to awaken the  dormant qualities of will, and strength in a human being. In contrast,  the Lemurian women were led to the great forests, far away, and forced  Kevin Marley 213 to sit in isolation and hear the great tempests, the resounding floods,  and the battering winds; and by doing so, they developed the important  faculties of imagination and memory. Women, as a result, became the  pioneers of culture and the possessor of what constituted a ‘good life,’  and for the most part, still lead in being the forbears of culture.  But this rare window was quickly closing, again.  Then relentlessly these Milgram-like experiments continued as we  ruthlessly extracted more terabytes of engrams. Case Study A5637’s  reptilian brain was probed further into another mysterious past: There  was a strange confusing collage of images transmitted to The Brain  Reader as the computer tried to arrange them sequentially. Like flipping  through a large compendious book, soon we were at a new chapter  where she was living in the Middle East as a Jewish girl no more than  nineteen years of age, very petite, with shoulder black hair and large  brown eyes. A tender green branch. Blossoming in spring. She watched  in a large crowded courtyard of nearly two hundred people as Pontius  Pilate, the fifth prefect installed by Rome, stood and argued with the  Jewish church leaders who were calling for justice against this man  from Galilee.  Next to Pontius Pilate, a Galilean stood who was a young and dark?skinned fisherman with long brown hair and who calmly faced the  hostile crowd despite being already bruised by his captors. This man  had dared called himself The Son of God and a witness to the truth. He  had been ruthlessly apprehended in the garden of Gethsemane through  a great betrayal, and now he was looking out at the Church Leaders and  even many of his detractors who had heard the persistent rumors of  him being a holy man. But this surly crowd was growing restless and  would have undoubtedly taken matters into their own hands had it not  been for the Roman soldiers maintaining order.  Another rebellion was impermissible.  Caesar would have his head. As befitting a Roman soldier, Pontius Pilate was dressed in a vest of  iron, a dark red tunic and a cape with leather sandals. He held authority,  and was weary of this arid and isolated outpost that had befuddled him  too many times. He raised his hand to silence the outcries as he looked  at the rabble come to cause trouble, no doubt. “I have found no offense  in this Galilean. What has this man done to deserve such punishment?”  214 Soul Kitchen “Jesus has blasphemed!”  “He calls himself The King of the Jews!” “He is only misguided,” the Prefect retorted as more Roman soldiers  hustled into the pavilion, as the crowd numbering well over two  hundred swelled and grew more tumultuousness. “He undermines Roman authority and yourself by placing himself in  charge.” The Sun burnt the ground. A sinister drought was making the land  barren and the people hungry. A northwesterly breeze blew as the  prefect cursed these persistent Jews who often made his life miserable.  The Middle East was a strange crucible of bodily flesh, hatred, and  vengeance, even more so than the present day. The crowd itself had its own peculiar mood like a brooding  thunderstorm. It clamored for a so-called justice, and Pontius Pilate  realized that he had to decisively act demonstrating Roman strength  and fairness while pacifying these church leaders and Caiaphas who  were threatening, again, an insurrection.  “Every time this year, Rome shows its beneficence, and releases one  prisoner from its jails. Who shall it be this year? Tell me.” Pontius Pilate  asked the crowd as he motioned to a Roman soldier to bring forth one  of their prisoners. “Here stands Barabbas, a convicted murderer whom  you no doubt know. And here is Jesus of Nazareth who is accused of  nothing more than blasphemy. Which one do you want released?”  “Barabbas! Barabbas!”  “Are you sure?”  One strange collective voice echoed in these hills and made the  Prefect wave his hand. The crowd erupted with a raucous cheer as this  disheveled and homely bearded man, Barabbas, broke into a clownish  smile with a toothless grin, and declared his freedom in newfound  joy. He smiled at Jesus of Nazareth before descending the stairs like a  rambling circus bear to his own people who nonetheless were revolted  by his mere presence. The matter was still undecided.  “What shall be done with him?” “Crucify him!”  “Why? What evil has he done?” “Crucify Yeshua!” Kevin Marley 215 Pontius Pilate stepped forward to assert his authority as he detested  these trouble makers and religious zealots whom he had no personal  affinity for.  “I see no fault that justifies sending this man to his death,” Pontius  Pilate said. “He calls himself King of the Jews and has an inflated  opinion of himself as most of the rabble standing before me now. You  are no better than him.  “That is a minor infraction of the law, nothing more.” The Church Elders and Caiaphas yelled back in disdain. “Jesus himself makes a mockery of Roman law calling himself a  king, and he commits blasphemy against our highest teachings. What  are we supposed to do?”  “How can we tolerate a man like that?” “Crucify him!” The last disjointed image that we stole was of a darkened hallway as  Pontius Pilate confronted Jesus himself over these many accusations.  “Are you king of the Jews?”  “Does this question come from you? Or from my detractors?” “Your High Priests, your own people, delivered you up to me. They  want me to have you executed. I need to know if you consider yourself  a king?” “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, do you think my  followers would have let them hand me over?” “Then you are a king?” “That is why I was born here on Earth. I am here to give testimony  to the truth. All men who hear the truth hear my voice.”  “Truth?” “Yes.”  “What is the truth?” Pontius Pilate asked. The monitor itself went blank.  “We’re losing her,” I exclaimed. “Her blood pressure’s climbing into  the stratosphere, 200 over 120.”  “We really need to stop this,” Sam said as he glared at Bevan, and  Greg Wilson who conferred in a corner of the room like overseers on  some Southern plantation. “She’s gonna stroke out any minute now.”  To them, men were like beasts who had once escaped the chains of  slavery and feudalism only to be recaptured, bitterly so, and placed in a  larger, more secure dungeon.  216 Soul Kitchen If Case Study A5637 died or suffered serious damage, they were not  worried. Why would they be? This sixty-seven-year-old grandmother  from Mobile, Alabama was merely collateral in an ongoing covert  war against our longstanding enemies. Legally, it had been fixed by  The President, the Attorney General and Congress through nefarious  legislation as we used retroviruses to cover it up mutating old strains,  and then conveniently called it the bubonic plague, the Swine flu, the  Asian bird flu, or the Spanish flu of 1918 to scare the public even more  into submission.  “I’m doing the IV thrombolytic now,” I said feeling paranoid  about my work now. Quickly, I stuck the needle in her arm as she was  beginning to become more restless. “We can do a portable CAT scan  within minutes, and then Sam can do the neurosurgery, if necessary.” “She’s salvageable,” Sam yelled as Morris and Wilson were still  conferring about various deadlines and reports that necessitated  progress.  “Of course, she is, gentlemen. I’ve reviewed her record. But what are  we trying to do here? We are trying to attain these newer technologies  before the Chinese and the Russians do. They’ve made great inroads  into charged particle beam warfare, time travel and even teleportation,  and God knows what other things. Right now, we are trying to save the  United States from irreparable harm from her enemies,” Morris said as  he was like a Napoleonic general, always anxious, before his own troops.  “Just download the rest of her engrams, codify it, and send me  a conclusive report tomorrow,” Wilson declared as if she were the  convenient bookends to a Britannica encyclopedia set.  “We don’t have time for this kind of debate.” “And if she dies? To hell with The Hippocratic Oath and the U.S.  Constitution and The Bill of Rights?” Sam retorted.  “Mr. Hinkins.” “Has it ever occurred to you that maybe we’ve lost on our own moral  compass? That we’re not a true democracy anymore, and that we keep  making more rationalizations every day?” “You have been heard.”  “Personally, I feel like Dr. Josef Mengele and his cohorts. I suppose  you’ll give us the Iron Cross next for our exemplary performance here.”  “You’re relieved, Mr. Hinkins. The rest of you can finish your work.  Unfortunately, we do not have time for these kinds of discussions,”  Kevin Marley 217 Morris said as he nodded to the Army officers to escort him out of the  room.  The Army officers grabbed him. “It’s Dr. Hinkins.”  “You have only yourself to blame, Dr. Hinkins.”  “You can’t suppress the truth forever.”  “And why not?”  “Because it will eventually rise to the surface.” “Get him out of here.” “I can walk out of here myself.”  Dr. McNamara filled in. We were replaceable cogs in a great machine.  It kept turning and turning, and in case anyone didn’t notice, it was  chewing and spitting out lifeless dead bodies.  Case Study A5637’s blood pressure began dropping some from the  IV that I had put into her arm. Momentarily, we stopped downloading  engrams and she began to waken from her deep sleep.  Quite honestly, she could have been anyone’s grandmother as I  stared into her glossy eyes.  “Son, what am I doing here?”  “We’re trying to keep you from having a stroke,” I said as I watched  McNamara, out of the corner of my eye, getting ready to begin  downloading all her holographic engrams.  “That’s nonsense. I don’t have hypertension.”  “That may be true, but you suffered an accident.”  “What kind of accident?!” “We’ve had to do some exploratory surgery.”  “Just download all the engrams, Dr. McNamara. We can now  store everything hyper digitally, and don’t have to go through this  cumbersome process with all the drama inherent in it. Quite frankly,  it’s starting to get on my nerves.”  “Yes, sir.” “What are they talking about?” “Nothing in particular,” I replied as I swallowed the last remnants of  self-respect I had.  “They’re talking about me as though I am not even here.” “It’s just medical terminology.”  “I’m not a guinea pig, am I?” 218 Soul Kitchen Within half a minute, Case Study A5637’s eyes shut for the final time  like a heavy wooden door being slammed. Her engrams were being  ruthlessly downloaded in the so-called name of progress. Beyond a  doubt, I knew we were all guilty of murder and kidnapping charges no  matter what legal tricks the current presidential administration made  and what clever rationalizations as physicians we had made to ourselves.  “I’m giving her clobazam,” I stated trying to stave off the inevitable.  “Her blood pressure’s rising, 220/120. We’re losing her, again.”  An evening rose folded its petals People were no longer people if that made any sense. They were  through a complete degeneration nothing but rechargeable batteries for  greedy multi-national corporations and defunct nation states; and now  through these mysterious things called engrams, they were becoming  encyclopedic bookends capable of being snatched through secret CIA  programs, then stealthily brought to military bases where their engrams  were digitally downloaded through the advancements of quantum?based supercomputers into our secret files; and for some, they were  the vital keys to explore our greater past as human beings from the  mysterious and forgotten continents of Lemuria to Atlantis to ancient  Egypt to modern history to ad infinitum.  In the men’s dressing room, we felt the humiliating sting of defeat,  like a football team in last place. We tried to console ourselves as best  we could knowing that we would probably be castigated in a not so  distant future, the men and women who had let The Land of the Free  and Home of the Brave morph into an authoritarian surveillance state  exchanging our liberties and freedoms for ‘more security’ so that we  could sleep better at night.  “I’m through with these shenanigans. I’m resigning,” Sam said as he  was through with the program itself. “We can’t.” “Watch me.” “We’ve all signed contracts and confidentiality agreements,” Mark  added as he looked even worse than before having fallen off the wagon,  again. “They’ll sue us to Kingdom Come.” “What can one man do?” “It’s like David versus Goliath.” Kevin Marley 219 “And worse, we don’t have any trusty slingshots with us.” Remarkably, I remained quiet. I didn’t know what to say. And words,  what were they? Words were the neatly shoveled dog shit we threw  around from sunrise to the nightly news; and we did this to create some  kind of narrative for ourselves to make us feel good in an otherwise  unbearable human condition.  With trepid feelings, I waited until everyone was gone, and then  I hooked myself up as best I could to the Brain Reader to download  holographic engrams. Despite having taken another dose of thioridazine,  my hands shook as I began losing my own mind by doing this kind of  dangerous research. For the past year, I had known many things. I had the genetic  marker for having been an Essene at the time of Jesus Christ’s birth  and his resurrection in 30 A.D. Yet, I had done nothing. Also, I had  downloaded many other past lives that were astonishing to relive, that I  had somehow known all along in the back recesses of my consciousness.  Unfortunately, history was repeating itself.  Modern-day Rome led hapless Christians into the lion’s den to be  devoured.  This pursuit of truth needed to involve personal risk, and to even  possess a subjective component, more than just being a white lab coat  doctor collecting nameless data and making conjectures and spewing  more endless theories.  Personally, I didn’t know what to believe. As a scientist, I had  fervently believed in the empirical method, test results, and scientific  journals and naught else. My core identity was now being disassembled  and reassembled in an arduous manner. Only now, in hindsight, there  were four basic emerging facts: 1) Man was a Traveler to many different  realms; 2) The Law of Rebirth exists; 3) The Law of Consequence  appears to regulate our lives; and 4) The Human Body is a temple as all  the ancient schools of mystery have said.  Bravely, I used this new machinery to transcend the empirical world  that I had been trained to always observe and measure. If relaxed, I  could concentrate like a powerful laser beam my thoughts and pierce  the veil of Maya. At first, I traveled past much darkness and many  illusory images before I could see myself in many past lifetimes as it was  all definitively here in my cellular memory. Earthly memories flooded  220 Soul Kitchen my mind like a river over running its shores. Twinging, I saw myself as  an inveterate actor from the roles of hero to villain to house maker to  scholar to nomadic wanderer to priest to the village idiot to even a petty  thief. What was I doing? Why was I here? These questions echoed in my  mind like a philosopher shouting with much curiosity in a great chasm.  I was gathering information so that one day I might become aware of  the Soul that I Am. In a virtual poof of smoke, time disappeared as I  perused The Book of Nature or The Akashi Records. Right here, for  anyone’s study and understanding, was every event that had ever taken  place, a kind of vast encyclopedic history.  In the first weeks, I had significant success in examining my own  past lives. But there was much lingering physical discomfort from  psychological distress to headaches to even paranoia from this kind of  intrusion, a ripping away of the sheaths of my own ego. But I made  adjustments. Soon, I began to see even more of my human lives and  then beyond the record of the human personality, and indeed, view the  story of the Human Soul itself.  Flipping pages within a book, I saw my Soul along with an entire  life wave of innumerable Souls leaving the very highest heavens to  wander through a myriad number of other worlds. Kicked out of  Heaven, we left like Adam and Eve from Paradise to gain invaluable  experience and knowledge, so that we could truly know the Atman.  Seeing these images, I saw our very long sojourn that had taken an  incalculable number of years stretching throughout an unfathomable  infinity. I could see my Soul, like an expert craftsman, hard at work  building bodies, its physical, emotional, mental and spiritual bodies,  for simplicity’s sake, that are vehicles used to travel to numerous worlds  throughout Creation itself from the highest Heaven to Dante’s Inferno.  More eons of time elapsed, and then I eventually saw myself in specific  incarnations as a human being, endowed with individuality and free  will to express myself for The Highest Good. But like most neophyte  Souls just starting out on their human careers, I made a terrible mess of  things: I ran about without any kind of inner compass to guide me and  wreaked havoc with All of Creation and even this morsel of a world as  our “small acts” ripple in a very large pond affecting everything. I felt ashamed to see myself in this Divine Light wearing many  masks as an ogre, a tyrant, a thief, a heartless bully, and even once as a  Kevin Marley 221 cold-blooded murderer. But slowly, a piece of dark coal began turning  into a bright and shiny diamond. In essence, I grew up. I learned many  lessons, many different languages as a polyglot, played as both an actor  and as an actress in many different scenes from lots of diverse cultures  in the world; I struggled for Soul Growth, and once in a blue moon, I  reaped the good harvest of some of my better, nobler actions. I could  see, for instance, during the last few chapters of this very strange and  compelling novel, my soul projecting itself into time and space as an  Atlantean standing on an ancient continent now foregone as if it were  yesterday; and then, as if turning more pages, I could see myself as a  handsome Egyptian burning in the hot sun seeing the pyramids rise  spectacularly in the desert and a mighty culture flourish that possessed  its own knowledge before I incarnated again, now as a short, stocky  Macedonian who followed Alexander the Great through Asia Minor  on many conquests; and then in this furthering narrative, I became an  Essene who took a leap forward in his own evolution and now followed  this Jewish man through the city of Jerusalem and many other places  learning through parables and miracles that appeared to defy the very  laws of physics; and after this, a long respite in these Heavens to bathe  in, I incarnated as an Italian poet during the 13th century living another  shallow life, as a civil servant, before I had another spiritual awakening,  trying to finally awaken from this slumber that had lasted for many  millennia. This was The Second Act.  So much had preceded this period.  But I regress, I’m afraid, my life as an Essene in the Middle East is  what is vital, and the time that I had spent with this adept from the East.  I needed to know more about the Mission of Golgotha before I became  lost in all these myriad pictures, a strange kaleidoscope, of pain and  misery, and a flood of memories. Backwards, I fell into Time, again, like in an incredible whirlpool.  It was a hot day – for the momentous day still in question – as  only the hardiest plants and trees could survive here with the barest  precipitation. Strangely, time could be relived through these holographic  engrams as I saw this Essene slowly walk along a stony path while being  harangued and severely beaten by Roman soldiers. He carried a heavy  cross along the Road to Calvary. He was languishing under the weight  222 Soul Kitchen of this burden after having been given in a court yard already 40 lashes  and a painful crown of thorns before he struggled and fell.  “Alright Your Highness, let’s move!” His face was bloodied with one eye swollen shut. His stiff body  rose, then faltered. Many Jews jeered him. Others ruthlessly mocked  him. Cowardly, we had been his followers mostly in hiding, and in not  demonstrably stating our allegiance, as we felt pangs of remorse when  he was whipped by a Roman soldier. Finally, Yeshua fell again as his  wobbly legs gave out. The heavy cross toppled on him. He looked unable  to get up this time. In her anguish, Mother Mary rushed nearby to her  son to let him know that he was not alone in this time of immense trials.  “I am here, Yeshua.” “You see, Mother, I shall make everything new again. The veil shall be  torn asunder. All souls will soon see the face of their Father.” “I am with you.” Caiaphas smiled as he was dressed in a long robe and an elaborate  kippah befitting his position as the church leaders followed this  procession. His hands were folded, and he had a smug satisfaction  knowing that they had contrived to bring about Yeshua’s downfall  despite what the Prefect himself had wanted.  But their perpetual air of arrogance would be their own undoing. Mercilessly, the Sun beat down upon all living things: This fiery  inferno gave life, nursed it in its infancy, and youth, and then scorched it  to death beyond recognition. The Middle East was not so much a place,  but a merciless cauldron of struggles and endless challenges between  God’s chosen people and infidels. Slowly, Jesus stood again. He teetered under the struggle. Bravely,  he carried the cross as the Roman soldiers, more like a band of robbers,  continued to harangue and beat him, “Do you want to give back your  crown of thorns? The Messiah?! Get going! You’re going to the top if I have  to ride you like a mule myself.”  A few Jewish women objected.  “Yeshua is a holy man.”  Along the stony path, the prophet fell again as there was a strong  westerly breeze and clouds moving in. The soldiers continued to whip  him. Abenader, finally, came on horseback to see what was going on:  “Are you blind? Can’t you see he can’t go on? Help him.” Kevin Marley 223 Cassius looked for help. Finally, he pointed to a large Jewish man  who was walking with his family.  “You! Get over here!” “What do you want from me?” “This pathetic man can’t carry his cross anymore. You will help him to  the top of Mount Calvary.”  “I can’t do that” “Get going!” “It’s none of my business. Get someone else!”  “Do as I tell you!” “He’s a holy man help him!” an old woman pleaded. “Alright, but remember, I am an innocent man. And now I am being  forced to carry the cross of a condemned man.” Simon of Cyrene then slowly bent down and helped Jesus of Nazareth  carry the heavy cross as I was witnessing these strange miraculous  events through holographic memories. Previously, I had felt a kind of  kinship to this time and place, and had recognized this ancient Hebrew  as my mother tongue from long ago.  The journey continued.  Many jeered.  Others cried in grief.  The great dividing wall of mankind.  Finally, they made it to the top of Mount Calvary outside of  Jerusalem’s walls as a storm in the distance was approaching. Simon  of Cyrene was relieved of his duties. He stood afraid and wary of the  Roman soldiers. The city of Jerusalem could be seen below; for many  it was just another day. The crucifixion of Jesus proceeded, along with  two other criminals, as the primitive dictates of crime and punishment  were meted out. They hammered Jesus to the cross. Then raised it with strong ropes  before placing it in a deep hole.  On the cross it said: IESUS NAZARENVS REX IVDAEORVM. The Mission of Golgotha was nearly over. The skies darkened. A strange breeze blew.  One of the criminals desperate shouted: “If you are the Son of God,  why don’t you save yourself? Prove to us you are who you say you are.” The crowd laughed. They had heard the stories many times over, and  none had ever been proven true.  224 Soul Kitchen Caiaphas approached the cross with a scepter.  “Yeshua, you said, ‘I can destroy the temple in three days, and rebuild  it.’ Yet, it appears, you cannot come down from that cross. If you are the  Messiah come down so that we may see and believe.” Jesus looked at the darkening skies. Some of the Roman soldiers  began sensing something as their own horses were jittery.  “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” “Listen, he prays for you! Even in death he rises above you.”  “Rubbish!” “He outlives you.”  “We deserve this, but he does not,” the other man on the cross cried  in anguish who still held out hope. “Free us!” “I have sinned, and my punishment is just. I ask only that you  remember me, Lord, when you enter your Kingdom.” “On this day you shall be with me in paradise.”  The other condemned man on the cross – laughed. But from the darkening skies, a black crow landed on his cross. He  moved down closer to the offender and then pecked his eyes out before  a Roman soldier shooed the bird away.  He screamed.  Strangely, the wind began to swirl, with a life of its own, as clouds  covered the sun like a darkened veil. The storm approached Mount  Calvary as the many rumors and myths the Roman soldiers had heard  about appeared to be coming true.  “It is only a foolish wives’ tale,” one Roman soldier conjectured.  “Superstitious beliefs,” another replied. “They are ignorant Jews. Don’t listen to them.”  But they could hear the prayers of the Essenes rising higher, silently  carried on invisible wings, for their Messiah.  “God sent his only son here to change the Earth.” “Now, there will be a New Heaven, too.”  “As above, so below.”  “Let Thy Will be done.” Soon, it became more tumultuous. The dark storm was growing  more ominous with strange ethereal beings in the air; they were now  approaching the city of Jerusalem and even Mount Calvary. Harried,  Kevin Marley 225 and even afraid, the Jewish leaders began riding their donkeys back  down the trail before they were caught in this sudden and foreboding  storm.  Mother Mary approached her son.  Kissed his bloodied feet.  “I am thirsty,” Yeshua said as his life was ebbing away.  A Roman soldier put a wetted sponge on his spear and gave it to  him.  “Flesh from my flesh, heart of my heart. My son, let me die with you.” “Woman, behold your son. I shall take away the sins of this world.” Yeshua was now alone on the cross as the grace of the Lord  disappeared.  “My God, why have you forsaken me?”  The question echoed into the farther reaches.  Yeshua breathed his final breath. “It is accomplished. My Mission is over,” Yeshua said as his face  became sallow and turgid. “Father into your hands I commend my  Spirit.”  A large blast – almost atomic in nature – radiated across the entire  globe. But it was not a force of destruction, but of light and life. This  was the crucial point we had been searching for as The Body of Christ  enveloped the earth and took away the sins of the world. The world  itself was renewed as: Many would now hear. Many would now see.  Many would now feel the stirrings of their own Soul. It was like large  tuning fork being struck and making the other tuning forks, resonate at  the same frequency.  Likewise, the world and all its inhabitants began to resonate at a  higher frequency and that was the Mission of Golgotha.  But Bevan Morris and Greg Wilson abruptly came in. Apparently,  they knew of my furtive activities, and without hesitation, they began  downloading all my engrams as soldiers handcuffed me and Sam, Mark  and even David began interpreting what was happening.  Machiavelli would have been proud of them for following the tenets  of The Prince. A book I had read a long time ago – and had forgotten.  Afterwards, I was taken away as an enemy of the state and held  in solitary confinement in Guantanamo Bay as my entire profile and  history became what they wanted it to be.  226 Soul Kitchen Weeks and months blurred by, more like a race car whizzing by  various towns and road signs at an incredible speed. They fed me a  potent mix of opiates, anti-depressants, and even schizophrenic drugs  while ruthlessly downloading more and more engrams as I became  their newest encyclopedic set. Unbelievably, I was held on this military  base as habeas corpus had been indefinitely suspended and then even  brought before a military tribunal even though I was an American  citizen who had never belonged to the armed forces. In my hot and  sultry cell, I methodically washed and dried my face with a cloth rag,  and then stared into the bathroom mirror. Strangely enough, I could  see a middle aged African-American man with mahogany skin, and  sad, pensive eyes and a handsome, but worn face looking back at me;  his mask was falling apart though as I saw rugged grooves and salt  and pepper whiskers that had never been there before, and even his  future death; looking further, he possessed his father’s sternness and  compulsions, and traces of my mother’s softness and kindness who had  been born on the streets of Trinidad, and it was all a genetic collage of  sorts.  Was I him? Was I someone else? The Entity behind the mask?  Summarily, I had been sentenced to thirty-five years in prison  without any chance for parole while being stripped of both my  nationality and my constitutional rights. Effectively, my life was over. I  had been convicted of violations of the Espionage Act, for copying and  disseminating classified military field reports, and State Department  cables, and interfering in government research projects. I had told my  story to the New York Times, but they refused to publish it when Sam  Hinkins, Mark McNamara, Bob Akins, and the other scientists had  refused to corroborate any of my story. They had also greatly disparaged  me. The media didn’t back away because of an inability to verify how the  U.S. government was treating its own citizens in terms of kidnapping,  and torturing them, and subsequently even killing them. But they failed  to report these egregious acts as operatives basically controlled what is  televised and what is printed.  At the sentencing, at Guantanamo Bay, they had chemically  lobotomized me. I felt woozy and even incoherent. I stared at the  Kevin Marley 227 judge who looked stern and mendacious. He had a black thin crown of  hair, with a large nose and beady eyes. On my right-hand side, I had a  militarily dressed attorney even though I do not remember ever having  met him before.  My hands trembled. I looked at the handcuffs they had locked me in.  I suffered from a depression that was like being buried in a twelve-foot  hole. Like most, I was confined within a jail within a larger jailhouse in  this corrupted Republic. But what bothered me most was that I had scars  running across my wrists. I had had no choice. I had attempted suicide  after being confined for two years. Defiantly, I finally stood to give my  plea before Judge Kaufman as I was still seething from my colleagues,  the corporations, and the indolent citizens that had allowed America to  become such a corrupted state. Maybe, I would not see it fall. I would  not live long enough. But the rebellion would come nonetheless as a  glorious, vaunted Rome crumbled and fell from within before being  overrun by the Huns.  “I have been falsely accused of treason – as so-called patriotic  government officials are, in truth, seditionists. Now, I am being thrown  away. What was my fault? I did not want to torture and kill my fellow  Americans and I wanted to pursue the truth. I tried to tell my story to the  media, and then I was apprehended, and my entire life was destroyed.  “With time, it will be you that will be considered the Benedict  Arnolds of these times.  “You ask me what happened during our experiments? What is truth?  I do not think you have the eyes nor the ears to see it. As Jesus himself  once said, ‘Do not cast pearls before swine.’  “But in this case, I will. I have no choice. “Yes, I found the needle in the haystack as I had the suspected gene.  The U.S. Government even has even confirmed it. The most important  moment in mankind’s history was not this century nor the past one,  but the crucifixion – as an atomic blast spread out and filled the entire  world and began raising this plane of existence to a much higher level. It  is hard to describe this truly ineffable event. I can only say: What is not  of love, of true compassion, will not be able to last here. It will be like  trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.  “For now, you hold political power, much material wealth, and a  crass rule more as an atavistic reminder of our cruel past.  228 Soul Kitchen “You believe that the acquisition of wealth, and your bureaucratic  control are Power. But what is Power? You do not see the grass and the  flowers bragging about their power, nor the animals, and the dolphins  and the whales, nor mountains and the rivers, nor the stars or galaxies  before you? Nor the adepts and masters? Why? Because it is a Power  not over, but a power with that ultimately works in this world, galaxy,  and universe that you have barely begun to comprehend. Nation  states were not meant to last forever. They are merely stepping stones  in mankind’s development. That’s all. The United States was divinely  inspired, and it was meant to secure individual freedoms and rights  while simultaneously making sure that the larger groups of community  that comprised it were functioning at a higher level that respected both  the spirit of the law and the major principles found within democracy.  “The United States wasn’t meant to be a hegemonic dynasty that  lasted for hundreds of years. This country was meant to spread a basic  model of governance and individual rights to a world in desperate need.  But you have hijacked this once noble Republic and have turned it into  an authoritarian surveillance state that now spies on all its citizens  and threatens and detains anyone who resists this vast hegemonic  superpower. This isn’t liberty! This isn’t freedom! But tyranny! And the  sooner we hit bottom from another financial disaster or an instigated  war, and start over as a nation the better! We are more like a big braggart,