THE TRIBE’S RETURN

THE TRIBES’ RETURN (SEE “GOD” PAGE FOR PORTUGUESE VERSION)
Larry Lee Slot

Chapter One
Estevan sat down next to his mother’s naked body. He opened the lunch sack his mother had given him before she died. Inside was a sandwich of flax seed bread, a mango, a piece of boiled cassava and a jar of spring water. The sandwich contained a piece of monkey meat and a slice of tomato. Unable to eat any of it, he looked around the village. Not even a dog remained moving. Estevan wanted to cry, and he even allowed a few tears to form, until he remembered that males are not allowed that privilege. His father would probably have been displeased at seeing tears on his only son’s cheeks.
Estevan wandered about the village. Except for what his mother left him, there was no food to be found anywhere around the commune environs. Everything was scattered or burned. Estevan returned to his mother’s remains and picked up the lunch package. He bit into the cassava and took a sip of the iodine-laced water. Brazilian soil was severely deficient in non-radioactive iodine. The Fukushima pollution passed into South American aquifers, long ago, contaminating the drinking water throughout Brazil. The only way to prevent some of the toxicity and not become iodine deficient was to put 10 drops of two percent non-radioactive iodine tincture in 20 liters of well-water and drink from that every day. Water aficionados might find it a little bitter, but it was as healthy as polluted well-water could be.
Cassava was easy to acquire, but the monkey meat was not. Neither was the mango, wild flax (gingili’) seed, or tomato that easy to find. Most fruits and vegetables required maintenance work and vigilance to protect from the elements, thieves, and predators. Difficult to do, living in an anarchist tunnel. Local fruits and half-wild vegetables made up most of the custodial diet. The clandestine tribes were obligated to foraging. Revealing gardens, that would just be lost to predators, was both futile and foolish.
The monkey meat came from a lawyer his father killed a week ago. That kill may have been what drove the predators to attack the commune a few hours ago. Estevan remembered his very agitated father talking to the other members of the CoC (Community of Consensus) about the fact that the lawyer was outfitted with two RFID chips instead of just the standard one. The lawyer must have worked for a super-predator. Super-predators were blind slaves to caedere wealth, power, and callous hedonism. These individuals could not see how their avarice was destroying themselves, the human race, and all life on the planet.
Ordinary predators like lawyers, medical doctors, politicians, or big bankers were just lesser versions of the supers. But, they were never outfitted with more than one chip. His father had cut out the normal chip from the wrist of the lawyer before they hauled the carcass back to the tribal enclave to carve up the meat. It was there that they discovered the additional chip in the monkey’s neck.
Estevan hoped that it was not his father that had made the chip mistake. Killing and bagging the lawyer that brought the predator band down upon them was one thing, an acceptable risk. Forgetting to rip out a surveillance chip upon acquisition was a grave error. His father would not have done so willingly, but could it have been negligence or even treachery? Was shame in order?
Estevan’s mother died in that attack. Before she thrust the sack of food into his hand and pushed him into the tunnel to hide, Estevan saw his father trying to strangle a predator cop to death. No. It could not have been treachery. When the commotion ceased, outside the tunnel, Estevan had climbed out to encounter his mother’s body lying on the ground. His father was nowhere to be seen. No body meant that his father might still be alive. But, where? Was anybody else alive or had just Estevan survived?
He reconnoitered the area for about an hour, finding nothing except a battle knife that had fallen into a tatu’ hole. Estevan cleaned the blood off the knife with sand & savanna grass. He then returned to his dead mother and the lunch remains. The ants were actively stealing it, so Estevan finished what remained, even though he still wasn’t very hungry. Food was too precious to let ants have it.
There were about 20 other dead bodies on the ground besides his mother’s. All the women were naked, most had their legs spread wide. Their throats were cut. The men’s bodies were largely clothed but substantially mutilated. The orange-colored clay ground was now red . . . everywhere.
Estevan heard a sound and ran towards what remained of the tunnel. He stopped short of diving in when he realized it was just the beating of vulture wings. Vultures don’t like rain, or it obscures the aura, so the birds were late in exploiting the carnage. It usually only takes a few minutes. Maybe it was his presence too that kept them circling so long.
Now, that the rain stopped they were landing to feed on the bodies. He ran at them and threw stones, but it was a losing proposition. He knew he was just wasting his time and energy. Vultures are persistent and have little fear when they detect the living aura changing to the colors of the dead.
Soon the ants would come en masse and the area would be uninhabitable. Estevan returned to the partially-destroyed tunnel and went far underground, looking for any survivors like himself. He found a candle and put it in his pocket, because he had no matches with which to light it. Close to dark, the boy stopped searching and fell asleep. Sometime later, he was awakened by a person trying to crawl over him.
It was Oxyfel, an acquaintance from the same village. They were in the similar age group in the tribal school. The other boy was a good student, the best in the class. His father had been one of the tribe’s elders but was now one of the bodies Estevan saw lying on the ground, dead.
The boys left the ruined tunnel complex at daybreak. Estevan showed Oxyfel where his father’s body lay. They soon discovered his mother’s body too. Oxyfel was not as controlled as Estevan, and he let the tears fall with abandon. It was perhaps as much from fear for his future as grief over his parents’ fate. The tears subsided around midday, and the boys began thinking more ardently about their future.
The village had contained a few more men and children than were strewn about the environs. The boys had no idea where the predators had taken those captured. Estevan knew they would need to leave the scene of the massacre. The predators took all the firearms, but they would return, looking for survivors and more loot. There were many necrophiliacs among the predator class too. He and Oxyfel must disappear.
They would need water and food. There was no food to be found in the village, and the predators had thrown a body into the village’s well. The boys did not want to try taking it out to drink the water, so they left the site with only a candle, some wet matches, and the battle knife Estevan found in the tatu’ hole.
They walked for two hours before they came to a stream and were able to quench their thirst. Leaning against the base of a termite mound, they found a glass liter bottle. In it they put stream water and resumed their journey. After walking most of the afternoon, they came to a road. Not much further, along the road, they came upon a mango tree and stopped to feast on the sweet fruit. Not realizing how tired they were, the boys fell asleep under the mango tree and slept until after dark.
Oxyfel was the first to awaken, and he woke Estevan. They both ate some more mangos but wished they had more food. Mangoes are great fruit, but man does not live on fruit alone. These boys were cannibals, and they wanted monkey meat. The sweet mangos made them thirsty, and they drank all the water in the glass bottle. Up ahead on the road they discovered a farm house. A light inside was burning brightly. Estevan was for attacking the premises and killing all the occupants. Oxyfel was more cautious.
“Suppose they aren’t monkeys?” Oxyfel said.
“How can they not be?” Estevan replied. “Only predators live in houses. Humans live in communes.”
“Not all of them, Estevan.” Oxyfel countered.
“You’re right, Oxy.” Estevan replied. “I remember my father saying he once killed a human by mistake, thinking that way.”
“Really?”
“Yup.” Estevan said. “He said the meat tasted just the same. But, he felt bad about it, killing a missioned person and all.”
“I can imagine.” Oxyfel said. “Do you think it was that that kept your father from the headman position?”
“I don’t know.” Estevan replied. “Could be. He was qualified for it in all the other ways, he said.”
“Well.” Oxyfel said. “Shall we attack or wait for some lawyer or doctor to come along?”
“How are we going to know if it’s a doctor or lawyer?” Estevan said.
“Ask?”
“Don’t you think predators know that they’re running a risk, letting their profession out to strangers,” Estevan asked, “especially smelly ones like us?”
“And in buffer zones.” Oxyfel added.
“Yeah.” Estevan said. “That too.”
“My mother used to say that not all predators know they’re parasites.” Oxyfel said, holding back his tears, thinking about his mother.
“Well, I don’t believe that, and I’m hungry for meat.” Estevan said.
“What if there are too many for us to kill?” Oxyfel queried.
“Then we fight harder.” Estevan said.
“Predators have phones that they can use to get help.” Oxyfel said.
“Not if we kill them before they get a chance to use them.” Estevan said.
“And cameras and other surveillance stuff? And drones that have directed-energy laser weapons.” Oxyfel asked. “You know what they do to anarchists when they catch them.”
“Oxyfel, you’re a coward!” Estevan shouted.
“No more than you!” Oxyfel riposted. “You were hiding in the tunnel too, while your mother was being killed.”
“She pushed me in and told me to stay there.” Estevan countered, also tearing up. “I wasn’t a coward!”
“You were.”
“I wasn’t!”
“Were.”
“Oh, bullshit! It’s too late to kick ourselves for not acting enough like our fathers.” Estevan said. “We may be alive now because our mothers knew what was going to happen and wanted us to survive. And, we did. They were right.”
Oxyfel said. “Yeah. We can yell at each other all night. It will go nowhere. I’ll make you a deal. You don’t judge me, and I’ll not judge you.”
“O.K.” Estevan agreed. “Shall we get some meat?”
“Let’s get some meat.” Oxyfel said.
The two boys crept quietly up to the house, until a dog began barking, and Oxyfel said. “What shall we do? I don’t have anything to kill it with.”
“My knife will kill it, if the thing gets close enough, but the noise will give us away long before.” Estevan said.
“You want to leave?” Oxyfel asked.
“Yeah.” Estevan said. “They might not even be preds.”
“I’m not so hungry anymore, anyway.” Oxyfel said.
“The people in the house might have already called the cops.” Estevan said.
The boys crawled back to the road and got to their feet. They followed the road for a few more miles, until they saw a car coming. They knew they were running a risk, due to the buffer zone curfews. Coming from a proscribed CoC (Community of Consensus), these boys were clearly outlaws. If the ZWO (Zionist World Order) police saw them, they would be arrested immediately and sent to the camp or killed outright. The predators put a bounty on all breakers of curfew, trespassers on Ashkenazi lands, and anarchists. They paid the bounty for such outlaws, dead or alive, child or adult.

Sometime previous, the ZWO’s fractional-banking Ponzi Scheme collapsed. The Ashkenazi trillionaires turned to artificial intelligence and computerized shell games to keep the dying economy afloat. That worked for a few years, but in time it couldn’t hide the cascading collapse either. When the economy failed, completely, the Khazars passed the ZWO Sustainable Development Law. With this law, the bankers made deals with prominent political cronies to trade their nation’s fractional-banking debts for land.
The Ashkenazim then displaced the land’s former simian occupants, even indigenous people, to make space for the new “Nature” corridors. The Ashkenazim used naive environmentalists as collaborators to force into camps or kill all who resisted. Passively refusing to leave confiscated lands also made one a criminal. Anyone, not an Ashkenazi predator or crony and not living in a simian corridor (city), was considered a felon by the ZWO and proscribed from society as an outlaw. Estevan and Oxyfel were sons of outlaws. According to ZWO Law, that also made them outlaws.
Sustainable development was a euphemism, (not to be confused with biosustainability). It enabled Ashkenazi predators to cheat people out of resources like land, rivers, lakes, forests, etc. Super-predators, acting on the ZWO Sustainable Development Law, made prohibited areas available only to ZWO predation. The Law prohibited these regions from everyone except a select few and established buffer zones around them. The boys were in one of those buffer zones now. It was not completely prohibited to non-Ashkenazim but still had special laws and prohibitions attached.
Before the ZWO Sustainable Development Law, anarchists and custodians were gentle folk. They were followers of biosustainability principles, similar to Christians in the sense that Christians claim to be followers of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Custodians were atheists, and they considered Christians to be religious parasites. Ashkenazi predators considered these early custodians to be wrong-headed environmentalist kooks and troublesome weirdos, to be shot on sight. Sometimes, the predators only exploited them like parasites exploit everyone. A few years after the great ZWO Sustainable Development Law passed, however, many people in the simian corridors were frozen out of the mini-predator society too. Governments were understandably worried about anarchistic and biosustainable ideas. Most communes were already prohibited from “Nature” corridors and buffer zones. The ZWO actively persecuted the simian corridors’ custodian inhabitants.
Most of the state’s residents, anarchists and others, even small predators, now in simian corridors, were in a bad way. As were most of Nature’s non-subjected or non-farmed species of flora & fauna, many of these poor people were also disenfranchised for one reason or another. The central cities were impending mausoleums for them. In 2016 the Ashkenazim took over the internet and held truth hostage. They never returned it. With Ashkenazi-directed political education and entertainment, the young simians’ natural blood-lust evolved into sadistic displays of brutal bestial spectacle in the population corridors. Quietly desperate, like wild animals, weak, displaced, and disenfranchised people fled the fold and began living in the interdicted buffer zones, prohibited countrysides, and forbidden jungles. Cops, hunger, disease, crime, democidal directed-energy weapons, etc. killed many.
Small predators were also at risk, as the larger and more intelligent predators began tightening the restrictions on everyone, monkeys and humans (people with missions in life) alike. The super predators (dynastic bankers, smaller caedere wealthy, and top ecclesiastics & politicians) extracted all they could out of the lesser parasites. Custodians felt doctors, lawyers, compassion vultures (professional altruists & do-gooders), thugs, priests, the religious, etc. were lesser parasites. A few of these latter predators gave up predation & death-worship, joining Communities of Consensus (CoCs), trying to embrace biosustainability. Such transitions to custodianship did not come without a cost. The price was too high for virtually all. Most of the petty predators and death-worshippers, who joined the CoCs (Communities of Consensus), were not cut out for the custodian life. They felt biosustainability was not for everyone, and they soon returned to their parasitic professions.
Giving up respect for simian life was one of the costs few could bear. Not that it was without precedent. For millennia people have had great difficulty in accepting the simian for what the simian is. Many of the great swindles in history, such as Taxes, Free Will, Written Law, Religion, etc., were given incubus by this errant feeling. Ignorance is our inveterate companion in life, and the more we do to dispel it the more it grows. Many of our greatest people could not have done their great deeds if they did not have a profound disrespect even disgust for the majority of mankind.

Chapter Two
When nothing a person does, thinks, or feels seems to be valued by its community, that person begins to feel it doesn’t belong. It made no difference if one was viewed with revulsion by its group, or if one should likewise find the group repulsive. These latter revolting people also experimented with entering the CoCs. Early CoC members were thus a smorgasbord of personalities, characters, and educational achievements. They met and melted into a cauldron of deviants, boiling and bubbling out a concentric Weltanschauung.
Super predators noticed that difference in individuals, but neglected to exploit it fully. The ZWO felt wise to make it a crime to be any kind of custodian. Predators and their police agents began ferreting out the dissenting custodians and murdering them right along with the zealots. If one did not have an RFID chip or were to be caught with a copy of The Garlic Peddler or The Pontibus Journal in one’s possession, it was prima facie evidence of anarchism. Anarchism was bona fide proof of “human” status and grounds for arrest and summary execution. If captured in a prohibited zone the very least a custodian could expect would be internment in a concentration camp of forced labor for life. Pacifistic CoC members and unaffiliated anarchists vanished into the gulag along with captured zealous custodians. The rest of the dissenting custodians fled the tribes en masse.
Concentration camps arose in response to the behavior of malcontents. Shortly after the ZWO obtained their hegemony, the entire world began to fear the Ashkenazi elite. That fear quickly grew into hate and even many un-CoC affiliated simians began taking illicit umbrage on run-of-the-mill Ashkenazim for slights. Prison sentences usually included a release date. Upon their release, these ex-cons did not fear the system with as much emotional energy as they did their future should they not satisfy their hatred and desire for revenge.
Soon after the ZWO’s first crop of released ex-cons appeared on the street, the killing of judges and prosecuting attorneys rose steeply. With the backing of much of the populace, it became epidemic. The ZWO, responding to their legal riff-raff’s complaints, turned all prisoners into life-sentenced convicts. The judges jumped with alacrity to the permission to brand convict foreheads with the letter “C”. Judges that branded the most received recompense in bulging bank accounts.
Ashkenazis were by far the most intelligent of the simians. The atheistic, anarchistic custodians were the most intelligent of the humans. The conflict soon resolved into a global war between these two groups. The more violent CoC tribes lasted longer than the others, but soon most of them too succumbed to predation and the parasite-combines’ search and destroy platoons. The only tribes to survive the annihilation squads of the predators now were members of earlier now-defunct tribes that banded together into incredibly violent killing machines.
Some were said to begin devouring their enemies’ bodies even before the enemy heart stopped beating. These last tribes were forced to live in savage areas or enjoy spelunking in mountain caves. Even there, they needed to learn tunneling techniques to survive. Life for these few remaining humans was tough, and they were seriously at risk whenever they encountered predators. Estevan and Oxyfel were scions of the few survivors of the most violent of the most violent of these latter tribes.
The predatory surveillance state was extremely intrusive. People living in the central corridor cities, (small-time death-worshippers, poor predators, and humans), were constantly at risk of observation and detection resulting in imprisonment. The huge, eternally-at-war, fascistic ZWO was forever in need of cheap labor for arms’ manufacture, sweat shops, soldiering tasks, etc.. The ZWO did not expect the Ashkenazim to do physical labor or any work that did not involve either predation or fraud. A great many laws, easy for the non-Ashkenazim to break, made it simple to find prisoners to fill slave labor positions.
There were no longer government-sponsored penitentiaries. The ZWO licensed out all that business to private contractors. Only fascistic private prison camps served the antisocial. With the assistance of Ashkenazi judges and lawyers, the private prison system, caedere-enthralled pols, snitching neighbors, and electronics the ZWO managed the first complete-surveillance police state to encompass the entire world. The big wigs in the ZWO were all dynastic Ashkenazim. The status of an average Ashkenazi at this time was like that of an average Roman citizen in the time of Saul-Paul.
The station of the Ashkenazim did not proceed exclusively from their kinship with the Zionist hierarchy. It also sprang from their simian qualities. Among the most intelligent animals on the planet, they were also unimpeded by the silly morality of the run-of-the-mill simian. The only simians that could compare to them in these exceptional qualities were the cannibals. The anthropophagite anarchists were equally as intelligent, and their biosustainability rules made them almost equal in practical amorality to the Ashkenazim.
There were many humans among the Ashkenazim and, except for the RFID shibboleth and the smell, they were indistinguishable from the average custodian. In fact, although it was not widely broadcast, there were even many Ashkenazim included in the CoC membership ledgers. These were not despicable traitors to their tribe. These individuals were as noble as they had a natural right to be. It stood as evidence that not all Ashkenazim were weak caedere slaves.
As time passed, the only way to enjoy even the rudiments of liberty meant choosing between parasitism, ostracism, or starvation. Custodians too squeamish to be anthropophagic did not last long. ZWO grocery stores prohibited entry to non-RFID chip carriers. Being constantly ready to go on the move, custodians had little incentive for spending time on agriculture or employment in small farming tasks. Feeling that eating endangered plant and animal flesh was a sacrilege, starvation was the almost certain alternative for them.
As much as She does with any suicide, Nature frowns upon willful starvation. She makes Her displeasure manifest in many ways. For humans and others on the periphery, a diet heavy in simian meat consumption was the logical result of such a life. The situation meant that there was often vigorous activity and hunger between meals. Also, custodians emitted cannibal odors (volatile putrefaction compounds – VPCs) & (volatile organic compounds – VOCs). Phenols, methane, ammonia, ketones, esters, and aldehydes accompanied pyruvates, sulfides, mercaptoethanols and decarboxylated diamines.
These odors gave them away to predators, especially predators with scent-detecting technology. Naked noses, though, could easily detect many. The ZWO was currently building VPC & VOC sensors into cyborg predator bodies. They also discovered that all simians have an odor footprint similar to a fingerprint that could be catalogued into a library. Scientists were experimenting with a body-odor biometric detector. After deleting the soap residue and perfume “noise”, the detectors were projected to be able to identify incognito custodians that caused particularly high levels of sabotage.

As the vehicle now approached the boys, the two jumped off the road and hid in the weeds. The vehicle maintained its velocity, until it was almost directly abreast of the cannibals. It then slowed markedly and stopped directly in front of them. The vehicle was a police car, and it activated its infrared searchlight, scanning the roadside. It was almost uncanny the way it zeroed in on the boys, hiding in the tall roadside grasses.
“All right.” The cop said. “Come over here with your hands up and visible, or I’ll drill you where you are!”
The young anarchists did as they were told, and the cop looked them over. Then, he asked. “Are you two remains of that nest of atheists we removed yesterday?”
“No sir.” Both boys replied in unison.
“What are you doing so late on the road?” The predator asked. “Two hours after curfew.”
“Going home, sir.” Said Oxyfel.
“From where?” The cop asked.
“Church.” Estevan replied.
“What church?” The cop asked, ripping the veil off the boys lies to expose the underlying blush of truth.
As the boys hesitated too long, the cop began reaching for the handcuffs on his belt. Capturing new slaves for the camps meant a feather in his cap and a bonus on his next payday. Thinking the capturing of CoC children would be easy was a fatal mistake however. Estevan caught the movement and shouted to Oxyfel. “Run! Oxy, go!”
As Oxyfel turned and ran, the cop pulled out his pistol and pointed it at the running boy. Before he could fire however, Estevan sprang like a cougar at the predator. His battle knife plunged deep into the cop’s right abdomen, piercing the predator’s heart. Then, nearly as quickly as it went in, the knife leaped out, carrying Estevan’ hand with it. To add certainty to its objective Estevan’s knife now slashed through the predator’s throat. The cop lost all sense of propriety, and the one round he fired went off into the night harmlessly. The dying parasite was holding his neck’s severed arteries and veins in his hands, but his truncated breathing soon stopped altogether, never to return. Estevan grabbed the cop’s falling pistol before it hit the ground. Staring at Estevan with a scared look of surprise, the predator sank to his knees, kicked sporadically a few times, and died.
Estevan shouted to Oxyfel to return, and the boy did so, slowly, pace quickening upon seeing the dead predator on the ground.
“You killed him, Estevan?!” Oxyfel asked.
“Clearly.” Estevan answered. “What else was I to do? Ask him to dine out with us? Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“Into the town.” Estevan said. “We have transportation, a knife, food, a gun, and a cop uniform. Just think what we can do with all that?”
“You’re right.” Oxyfel agreed. “Can we eat first?”
“Sure.” Estevan said. “But, only the liver for now. We don’t have time to spend an hour chewing on muscle. Help me get the uniform off this monkey. Then, we can gut him and eat our fill.”
Within fifteen minutes, the cop was undressed, dressed, and partially fileted. His naked remains found respite in a nearby gully. The boys almost finished eating the raw liver and then wiped their bloody hands on roadside grass. The search of the police car netted a shotgun, a box of cartridges and a box of flares, in addition to a full tank of fuel and a case of bottled water.
“You want to try to drive, or shall I, Oxy?” Estevan queried, drinking from one of the bottles of water.
“I think it would be better if you wear the uniform and drive.” Oxyfel said. “You just proved you can think faster than I when it’s necessary. I’ll pretend to be the criminal in your custody.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Estevan said, dressing in the bloody uniform, while Oxyfel searched the car for electronic surveillance devices – cameras, microphones, RFIDs, GPSs, etc..
The two cannibals drove slowly down the road toward the nearest town. As they approached the city’s lights, they saw a crowd of people gathered around an electric cable pole. From the horizontal piece, holding the electric wires, hung a body. The body was pointing straight down with an angled quizzical-looking head introducing the point of suspension. Being in the police car and in uniform, Estevan was able to get close enough to see the face of the suspended person. It was a familiar face, his father’s. Another pole held another cannibal, similarly positioned. The procession continued for another half-dozen poles. All the necks of the victims displayed large gashes at the point of suspension.
“Well. Now we know what happened to our warriors that were not with the others. I’m sorry, Estevan.” Oxyfel said. “I know you were hoping we’d find him alive.”
“It’s all right, Oxy.” Estevan replied. “I was expecting something like this. How could it be any different? My father was a good soldier. He was well-educated, an anarchist, and a decent man, a custodian. The predators are scared of his kind. They have no more choice than we do.”
“There are just too many monkeys in this world.” Oxyfel said.
“Or too few Great Pontibus Bridges.” Estevan said, backing up the car and leaving the town behind them.
While driving, he drank deeply from one of the bottles of water and munched on the last few chunks of cop liver. Estevan drove for an hour before pulling over to the side of the road. He hesitated a few seconds before saying. “We can’t keep driving like this, Oxy. You heard the radio. The state found the GPS and RFID we threw in the weeds. They’re looking for us everywhere. We’ve got to find another CoC to join.”
“How are we going to do that?” Oxyfel replied. “I’ve never even been to another commune, and I don’t know how to go about locating one.”
“Neither do I.” Estevan said. “It’s the reason a few CoCs are still around, I guess. Nobody in any commune knows enough about the other communes’ whereabouts to snitch on them. It’s got to be that way.”
“Predators can get information out of anyone.” Oxyfel added. “My father told me that.”
“We’ve got to leave this car and get far away from here somehow.” Estevan said. “It’s always later than you think.”
“You heard that from your father, didn’t you, Estevan?” Oxyfel said. “Mine used to say the same thing.”
Estevan nodded and said. “Think, Oxy. We need to act fast or we’re dead.”
“Let’s eat first.” Oxyfel advised. “Then we can drive, until we find a place to ditch the car so it won’t be noticed.”
“Eat what?” Estevan said. “The liver’s gone. I just ate the last of it.”
“Yeah, but not the cop’s arms.” Oxyfel said.
“What if we got caught with them?” Estevan criticized, upon seeing the pieces of meat Oxyfel produced. “It would have clinched our guilt.”
“Like we actually stand a chance!” Oxyfel mocked. “We’re doomed if we don’t find another CoC to hide in. And, you know it.”
“Yeah. You’re right. Let’s eat first.” Estevan agreed, always hungry.
They ate while driving and hadn’t gone much further when they came upon a group of people walking along the road. As the police car approached, the people ran into the bush alongside the road. They were obviously frightened of the police. It was good news to the boys. They stopped the car and ran after their kindred fugitives.
A child was the first to be captured, and it was un-uniformed Oxyfel that made the bust. The child’s mother would not stand by and watch her child be taken. She turned and ran up to Oxyfel with fangs bared and nails protruding. Oxyfel knocked her down with one swing and waited to see what Estevan caught. He got an old married couple. The young men and women, unencumbered by children or the aged got away.
“Why were you running from us?” Estevan asked.
The recently captured said nothing, and Oxyfel said. “Tell us. Can’t you see we are not police.”
“What were you chasing us for?” The old man asked. “Why would you do that if you’re not police, and even in uniform too?”
“We thought you might be humans.” Estevan said.
“What do you think we are?!” The old woman shouted.
“You’re predators.” Oxyfel said. “I see the RFID on your arm.”

Chapter Three
“We’re not cops. We stole this car after killing the cop that was in it. I’m wearing his uniform.” Estevan said, pointing in the direction from which all were traveling. “Our CoC’s village was raided a couple of days ago, and only we survived. My father was one of those hanging with the others on the light posts back there. We’re just as much on your side, except for your RFID, as we can be.”
“How do you know we’re on your side?” The old woman asked.
“We don’t.” Oxyfel answered. “But, we know, if you are running from the police, we are on your side.”
“Why does our running from police make you our allies?” The old woman asked.
“If you are robbed, raped, or assaulted in any way, by another simian, or are dying of hunger, there is no ethical reason for not attacking and killing any policeman you wish.” Estevan replied. “There are reasons for abstaining but no ethical reasons. You are a citizen of a state. That state has an implied duty to protect you in return for your tribute. If you are assaulted, or hungry, the state has failed in its obligation to protect you. Policemen are agents of the state. They enforce the laws and uphold with force the state of affairs that allow you to be so abused. Running from them, as you were, only legitimizes you as our allies.”

“So. What do you want from us?” The old man asked.
“Friends. Information. Help.” Estevan answered.
“As you can see. We cannot even help ourselves. How can we help you? What do we know that you don’t?” The woman with the child, knocked down by Oxyfel, said. “Why don’t you just leave us alone and go your own way. You’re in more trouble than we are. You’re cannibals. We didn’t kill anyone, eat anyone, or steal anything.”
“Why are you running?” Estevan asked, when the child asked for food.
“Not that we feel compelled to answer,” the old man said, but, my son, one of us that has escaped from you, is wanted by the police.”
“Why?” What did he do?” Oxyfel asked.
“Nothing.” The younger woman replied.
“What do the police say he did?” Estevan asked.
“They think he took his RFID chip out and had it adulterated to get us a larger food ration.” The old man said.
“Why are you in need of more food?” Estevan asked.
“Everyone needs more food.” The woman said, pulling up her skirt and that of her child to show their knees. “We’re starving, skin and bones! My husband was just trying to get more food for us.”
“That’s bullshit!” Oxyfel said. “The corridors have a lot of food.”
“Like what?” The woman said. “Where do we find it?”
“It’s everywhere.” Oxyfel replied. “You’re just too squeamish or ignorant to exploit the sources.”
“Give me a hint as to a typical source?” The woman said, getting angry.
“One of the best sources of fresh meat, every day, is domestic cat.” Oxyfel replied. “There are plenty of them around, destroying nature every minute. They’ve already wiped out over a hundred species of small animals and are in no way diminishing their impact. Cat aficionados are ignorant morons and eco-thugs. The corridors are replete with them. They are not aware of even the rudiments of biosustainability. Ashkenazi predator law is becoming increasingly on their side. Cats are overrunning the corridors.”
“How can anyone eat a cat?” The woman asked.
“You see?” Oxyfel replied. “Too squeamish to exploit a source. You could also eat the cat owners. They’re predators. You would be doing nothing negative.”
“Where were you planning to go?” Estevan asked, changing the subject in the press for time.
“We didn’t know.” The old man said. “We just didn’t want to be put into the camps.”
“Have you thought about joining a CoC?” Oxyfel asked.
“We’re not atheists, anarchists, or cannibals.” The old woman answered, arrogantly.
“No, and you’re not human either.” Oxyfel riposted, and then turned to his friend to say. “Let’s go Estevan. These death-worshippers can’t help us.”
Before Estevan could answer, the younger woman asked. “Why do you call us death-worshippers and say we’re not human? We’re as human as you, just because we don’t eat people meat?!”
“No, Ma’am.” Estevan answered. “You are monkeys. Humans have purpose, missions, objectives, aspirations. Humans do not collaborate with the Ashkenazim. People that are not atheists are religious in some way. Religionists worship death and the death of all their friends and enemies. You worship caedere wealth, pursue no objective, and are detrimental to all Life. You’re simian cats. We only eat humans if they are our enemies. We eat monkeys, predators, parasites, cats, and death-worshippers.”
“So.” The younger woman replied. “We were right to run. You would like to eat us?”
“We were hoping to collaborate with you against our common enemies, the predators.” Estevan said. “I see that’s impossible. We are not hungry now. You may go.”
“Thank you, young man.” The old man said. “Before we go, could you tell us how you thought we might collaborate? We do indeed seem to be enemies of the people you call predators.”
“Certainly.” Estevan replied. “We’re doomed if we do not find more of our own kind hereabouts. The predators are looking for us, both out of revenge for surviving a raid on our commune and for killing one of their cops.”
“What could we do to help?” The old woman asked, condescendingly, no longer arrogant.
“We were thinking you might know something, or have heard something, about another commune” Oxyfel replied.
“Why do you call the people of the state, predators?” The young woman asked.
“Anyone that parasitizes humanity, worships caedere wealth, or makes it harder for all living things to survive is a predator. That means medical doctors with their lies & poisons, lawyers with their Written Law, politicians with their state power, corruption, and betrayal. Also, bankers, priests, pastors, genetic misfits and their care-givers, prison wardens and guards, thugs, nuclear power executives, etc.”
“Just about everyone.” The young woman said.
“Just about.” Estevan agreed, looking directly at the young woman. “You see why we are in need of your help. Everyone wants our scalp. Even you poor, scared, religious monkeys would cheer at our hanging.”
“Come on, Estevan.” Oxyfel said. “We’re wasting time.”
As the boys turned to leave, the young woman said. “Thanks for not eating us.”
“When the predators catch up with you, you’ll think differently.” Oxyfel said, running to catch up with Estevan. Shouting out, as he ran, “You’ll probably curse us.”
“Do you believe that, Estevan?” Oxyfel said. “She THANKED us for not killing her.”
“She doesn’t know what’s in store for her and her daughter in those camps, Oxy.” Estevan said. “That’s why. It’s not her fault. It wasn’t an insult, just ignorance.”
“Poor girl.” Oxyfel said. “Her husband is a typical Christian, isn’t he? Didn’t even return to try and protect her from us. Hiding in the weeds, somewhere. Religious slaves! My father was right about these people. How come death-worshippers are so afraid of what they worship?”
“Ya’ got me, Oxy.” Estevan replied. “My dad probably said the same thing your dad did . . . all the religious monkeys are that way. They don’t know if they’re more cowardly than demented or more demented than yellow.”
“Amounts to about the same thing.” Oxyfel said.
They reached the car and immediately resumed traveling on the road, hoping something more advantageous would turn up. The seriously pot-holed road soon took a slow but large bend to avoid a river. Following it brought them not much farther away, as the crow flies, from where they were when they met the religious fugitives. Estevan stopped the car to urinate. While urinating, the boys heard what appeared to be machine gun fire not far away. Estevan wanted to see what was happening, hoping to encounter anarchists-at-large. They grabbed their arms and dove into the bush in the direction of the shooting. It was not long before they heard voices. One was familiar. It was the voice of the young mother they left just a short time ago.
“Please, baby. Mama can’t carry you anymore.” The mother said.
“I can’t mama. I’m too tired.” The child said. “And my tummy hurts too much.”
“Okay, sweetie.” The woman said. “Just lay there and sleep. Mama will be right here.”

Estevan and Oxyfel lay in the bush, listening but not moving. Soon, a couple of predator police entered the area and came upon the mother and child.
“Here they are.” One said.
“This makes the last of them.” Two said. Let’s waste ‘em and go home.”
“Oh, please.” The mother begged. “Don’t shoot her. She’s dying anyway. It won’t be long. Do what you want with me, but please let her die in peace.”
“Tough shit, bitch.” One said, starting to remove his trousers. “You broke the Law. Now ya’ gets yo’ ticket ta ride.”
Two raised his weapon to kill the small “criminal”. The woman saw what was about to happen and threw herself over the child, as if her body would stop a 7.65mm round. Two didn’t fire, however, because the cops’ erstwhile compatriot’s shotgun and pistol left them each with his own “ticket to ride”.
The woman began screaming, and continued screaming, until Estevan grabbed her and shouted in her face for a few seconds. When she quieted down, Oxyfel told her that her daughter was dead. The woman broke down again and, falling on her daughter, wouldn’t stop. Estevan pleaded with her to be quieter, as they did not know if there were not still more police in the area. Estevan said if she quieted down he would stay with her while Oxyfel checked out the situation as to residual predator presence.
A few minutes later, the woman and Estevan heard two shotgun blasts and some prolonged screaming. They expected that Oxyfel ran into more predators. They were right, and a while later Oxyfel returned, heavily laden, with two more pistols, an automatic rifle, and two fresh livers. To calm the quietly weeping young woman, the two boys buried the child in a shallow grave. Then, they butchered the remaining dead cops and took their livers.
As Estevan shoved all four livers into a cop shirt to make carrying them easier, Oxyfel tried to speak with the still weeping young ex-mother. He put his hand on her shoulder, but she pushed it away. Oxyfel shrugged, turned, and made to return to the police car with Estevan, guns, and livers. The woman stood, forlornly, among the trees not knowing what to do.
“Are you going to stay here and wait for the police or are you going to come with us?” Oxyfel shouted to her.
She looked over at them and said nothing. Both boys made their way rapidly back to the police car. They were close to the spot where they left the car, when the young woman reappeared.
“Were you serious about taking me with you?” She asked.
Oxyfel looked at Estevan as if to see if it was acceptable, but Estevan gave no indication one way or the other, so Oxyfel said. “Yeah, come on.”
“You promise you won’t eat me?” She asked in all seriousness.
“If you promise you will eat our food with us.” Estevan said, breaking his reticence. “We won’t buy food for you.”
The young woman hesitated and asked. “Do you think my husband is dead?”
“He’s dead.” Oxyfel said. “When I came upon the cops, one was raping the old woman’s corpse, and the other was robbing the bodies of four men. All were quite dead. I assume your husband was one of the four.”
“Yes.” The woman said. “I hope you did not take his liver. I could not live with the thought of eating it.”
“No.” Oxyfel replied. “I only butchered the cops.
“Well?” Estevan said. “Let’s have it! Are you going to share our life, or are you thinking you can continue to be a mini-predator and a death-worshipper, living with us and at our expense, until you can betray us?”
“I’ll try to share your lives, but I can’t promise.” She said. “It’s too much to promise all at once.”
“Then, stay here and wait for the predators.” Estevan said, turning and walking the last few steps to the car. “Assisting the parasites of this world is not our mission. Die via the drones and directed-energy guns if you want to. I don’t. Sorry for your loss, lady. Good luck!”
Oxyfel looked at her and gave no indication he disagreed with Estevan in any way. Estevan was carrying the guns and Oxyfel now scooped up the shirt-full of livers and joined him, moving the last few meters to the car. They were throwing their cargo into the car when the woman again reappeared.
“Okay.” She said. “I promise to do as you do. But, if I make mistakes will you wait for me to learn before killing me?”
“As long as they don’t get to be repetitive and aren’t too grave.” Estevan said, impatiently, with little compassion.
The three were soon traveling down the river road, and Oxyfel said. “Estevan, remember, we need to get rid of this car. The drones will soon be overhead. We don’t stand a chance now. They won’t be fooled any more with this car. They know we’re using it to disguise our presence. It may even be leading them to us.”
“We have no choice, if we don’t want to go on foot and surely get spotted while vulnerable.” Estevan said.
The young woman was looking at the river and noticed a beached boat. She said. “There’s a tuk-tuk. We could change transportation right here.”
“What do you think, Estevan?” Oxyfel queried. “We might be able to hide in the underbrush near the banks if drones pass overhead.”
Estevan stopped the car, looked down the small incline at the boat and at the other two and said. “We’ll need to hide the car.”
“We could drive it into the river.” Oxyfel suggested. “With all that silt in the water, if we find a place deep enough, even a drone won’t see it.”
“Get everything out of the car, that we need, and put it in the boat.” Estevan said. “If there are no oars in it, cut a pole with my knife.”
“Are you sure about that, Estevan?” Oxyfel replied.
“We’ll plant compensation trees later.” Estevan said, justifying his non-custodial murder of a tree. “I’ll dump the car somewhere and come back here.”
“What if they get you?” Oxyfel asked.
“Give me half an hour.” Estevan answered. “If I can’t get back before that, just go. Leave me the automatic rifle.”
Moments later, Estevan was back on the road, looking for a place to ditch the car. Oxyfel and the young woman were about a half-hour making the boat ready and getting it loaded. Oxyfel destroyed a pistol, breaking the boat’s rusted padlock to remove the anchoring chain. That took time, and he had no watch. So, they could not tell how much time elapsed, except by estimating. The young woman said she thought they were waiting nearly an hour already. Both began to feel uneasy about leaving.
Soon, the decision was made for them, as automatic gunfire erupted a short distance down river from them in the direction Estevan took. Oxyfel shoved the boat away from the shore with a pole he’d cut. He hugged the banks, drifting as slowly as the current and the pole would allow. As the two came ever closer to the sound of gunfire, Oxyfel held the boat back as much as he could by grabbing at vegetation that reached out a meter or so over the river. They drifted a few hundred meters more, until the river vegetation thinned abruptly, and they saw an old concrete-columned bridge.
Inadvertently, moving closer, Oxyfel also saw a police car partially sunk into the river. Water was only up to its windows. He assumed it was their police car, but Estevan was nowhere to be seen. There were police running around on the bridge and shore near the submerged car. All were firing into the bush near the road. Every once in a while, one would scream and fall down.

Chapter Four
“We have to get closer to the shore and stay put for a while.” Oxyfel said. “I don’t see Estevan, just cops.”
“All I see is cops too.” The woman said. “I agree we should stay here for a while, Oxyfel. By the way, my name is Amanda.”
“If you see Estevan, Amanda, tell me immediately.” Oxyfel said. “I don’t know what we can do, though, even if we see him. There are too many cops for us to subdue. If he’s been taken, we won’t be of any help.”
The sky was buzzing with drones of all sizes and models. Some were crashing into the bridge, the road, and the river.
Amanda said. “Did you ever see so many drones?”
“No.” Oxyfel answered. “My parents told me about them though. My mother said that sometimes, during battle, the sky grows dark from the shade they produce.”
“They, supposedly, can destroy a town of twenty-thousand people in less than a minute with those directed-energy lasers.” Amanda said.
“People say that as bad as it is here in Brazil, the surveillance is many times greater in first and second world countries.” Oxyfel said. “Hard to imagine that, isn’t it?”
“It is.” Amanda said. “I never thought about it before, but your people must have incredible courage to rebel against such technological superiority.”
“I never thought about it either, before yesterday. But, you’re right. My parents and Estevan’s were very brave people. Oxyfel said. “I hope I can do things with my life that would have made them happy to have had and know me.”
“There!” Amanda whispered, grabbing Oxyfel’s arm and pointing to a point on the bridge. “I saw someone on their knees by those cops.”
“I see him too.” Oxyfel said. “It could be Estevan, but I’m not sure.”
A shot rang out, then another, and the genuflecting body fell off the bridge and into the water. An hour later, the area cleared of cops, drones, and gunfire. A helicopter arrived, about a hundred meters upriver. Two cops and a third man embarked. The helicopter hovered for a minute and then flew away. When there was no further sign of life, Oxyfel released the vegetation to which he was holding. They drifted down river, under the bridge and past it, eyes peeled for signs of Estevan’s body.
Bodies sink, until putrefaction has time to make the gases that float the corpse. Even if they knew it was Estevan’s, his cadaver would probably be too deeply hidden underwater for any recovery. There was no excuse for gratuitous bravery, so Oxyfel and Amanda did not stop. They drifted as far away from the bridge as they could get. The course of action, Oxyfel chose was the correct one, because within ten minutes the area was crawling with cops and drones all over again.

When Estevan left the other two, he traveled along the river road, until he came to the bridge. He saw no one nearby and slowly drove the car to a point close to the bridge where the water looked deepest. He hoped to make the car roll and slip down the bank until it went far into the river. It was not to be. The car went down the bank and stopped as it hit the water.
Estevan waded in and pushed it further but never got it to submerge completely. Not only were his hopes unfulfilled there, but a passing drone caught him in the act of pushing. Within minutes the sky was alive with drones. Cops quickly followed, and Estevan found himself embroiled in a savage firefight. He took down a number of drones and a few predators, but he was seriously outnumbered.
He knew surrender meant almost certain execution, and he was determined to go down firing or until he was out of ammunition. Cops had him almost surrounded and were closing in to finish him, when automatic weapons fire opened up at the cops’ rear. The predators were now surrounded, except for the drones and those on the bridge, and they all began dying in earnest. Estevan was surprised, and he questioned his good fortune. Who were these people helping him kill cops? Could they be anarchists, custodians like himself?
When the last of the uniformed predator agents were dead or running up the road away from the river, the leader of Estevan’s deliverance shouted at him to hold his fire, and Estevan shouted back. “Why should I? How do I know you aren’t death-worshippers, like the rest of these scum?”
“How do we know you have a mission?” The group leader asked.
“I am my father’s son.” Estevan said.
“Who is your father?” The man asked.
“My father was one of those brave men hanging from lampposts in the next village upriver from here. My mission is the same as his was, biosustainability with anarchy forever.”
“What was your mother’s name, boy?” Another man asked.
“Denilah, daughter of Lawrence.” Estevan said.
“Okay, boy. You’re among friends.” The second voice said. “We’re humans too. We knew your mother, father, and grandparents.”
“If you knew them, who was the headman in my CoC?” Estevan shouted out to him.
“The real headman was your father, but people called Apos the headman out of respect for the old man’s zeal.” The group’s leader replied, rising to his feet. “We know what happened to your CoC, and we’re happy to invite you to join our tribe. I am the headman, Blake.”
Estevan rose too and said. “Very happy to see you and just in time too, Blake. My name is Estevan.”
“I can see the resemblance in your face to your father, Estevan. If your consistent performance is anything like today’s, you are walking in your father’s footsteps and did him proud today. But, let’s get out of here now. A new group of fresh predators will soon be reinforcing those dead ones that were shooting at you. We’re low on ammunition too, as I’m sure you are.”
“Yes. I am.” Estevan said. “I’m quite ready to leave. I’ve been hoping to find you for two days.”
“I can imagine.” Blake responded.
The humans were finishing the annihilation of the predators, robbing their bodies, and shooting down the last of the drones when Blake sounded the regroup whistle. Before they melted into the forest, carrying their dead and wounded, one of the humans said he wanted to remain a little while longer to finish off any remaining hidden predators. Blake said. “We lost two good men today, Axel. I don’t want to lose anymore.”
The over-zealous human (Axel) said. “Blake. You saw what they did to Horace! Murdered him on his knees! How can you let that go by?”
“I’m not letting it go by. That’s why we leave now. Nothing can be done for Horace. He’s lost. The preds retreated. We leave now to fight another day. I want to choose my battles – not have them chosen for me.” Blake said.
“Blake. I have a friend, a member of our tribe, upriver in a boat. I don’t want to leave him here to be killed by the predator reinforcements.” Estevan said.
Blake looked concerned, until Axel said. “I don’t think that’ll be a problem, boy.”
“Why not Axel?” Blake asked.
“Did he have a girl with him?” Axel asked, holding up his hand to quiet Blake, momentarily.
“Yes, he did.” Estevan said.
“Blond girl, big tits?” Axel asked, looking at Estevan. “Blue dress?”
“Yes, to all.” Estevan replied.
Axel turned to Blake and said. “When the drones cleared out over the river, the chopper was still visible. We were hiding, hoping to squeeze out any remaining cops, when his compatriot and the girl drifted on down the river.”
“Well. That’s a relief, of sorts.” Estevan said. “They can hide from the returning drones in the river bank vegetation.”
“That’s true, Blake said, “that section of the river is well-vegetated.”
“I’m ready for anything now.” Estevan said. “Shall we take some meat?”
“We’ve got plenty.” Blake said. “That’s all part of battlefield clean-up protocol. I’m sorry we can’t take the time to catch up with your friends right now, Estevan. Our CoC is undefended.”
“I understand.” Estevan said. “What do you think I should do?”
“Why don’t you come with us. We can wait and see if the police find them. If they keep out of trouble, we can look for them at our leisure.” Blake said. “I’ll leave some observer cameras nearby. We’ve captured a great deal of predator technology in the last few months and can monitor many regions of the buffer zone for ZWO activity. If your friends get attacked, nearby, we stand a good chance of knowing it. You can decide what you want to do then. A ZWO camera and some other electronics made us aware of your situation a few minutes ago. Technology, the preds developed, led us right to you. It can do the same for your friends.”
“It won’t do to be beating the bush, looking for them, with them hiding from us all over Brazil.” Axel said, trying to get back in Blake’s good graces.
“That’s true.” Blake agreed. “They will indeed be trying to hide from everyone everywhere they go tonight.”
“I agree that they’ll be hard to find, but I still feel I must try.” Estevan said. “I feel an attachment to him. Coming from the same tribe, we are like brothers now without our parents. I appreciate what you did for me, and I’ll never forget it.”
“Come with us.” Blake urged. “You can’t do anything to help him now. You should rest awhile, get to know where we are, and who we are. You may need us again.”
Estevan thought about Blake’s words, and they made sense. Finding Oxyfel in the night, possibly a mile away by now, would be almost impossible. Night vision drones and a region crawling with predator agents would make the task almost hopeless. It would be good to rest and to know where another CoC was located. To talk to other humans without fear of quick annihilation would be nice too.
“Okay, Blake.” Estevan said. “You’re right. I’ll go with you now, and maybe I can do something to pay for everything you did for me. I also want to thank the families of those good men who died extricating me.”
The latter task was not easy. The men who died were well-liked in the tribe. Their friends and relatives could not see how Estevan’s life was worth the death of their loved ones. Estevan felt awkward. He told Blake that he wanted to leave.
Blake sensed what the reason was and said. “You need not feel that they think it’s your fault Horace and Emil died. Their kin are just hurting, and you’re waffling in the bulls’ eye. Everyone here knows the risk we take as custodians. We can’t work for biosustainability alone. We need each other. Most of these people knew your father and mother. Your mother even has a cousin here. I knew your father very well. Many others here did too. Our CoC has participated with yours on raids. Everyone here knows how your father and mother died. Many saw your father on the power pole. He was a brave and savvy guy, well-educated. He did a lot of great things for biosustainability.”
“If he was so well thought of, why did he never get to be headman of our tribe?” Estevan asked.
“He WAS headman.” Axel interjected. “He just wanted everyone to give Apos that title.”
“It was more than that, Estevan.” Blake said. “You need to understand the man your father was. He didn’t want to be headman, because he felt he didn’t deserve it.”
“Why didn’t he think so?!” Estevan asked, getting upset.
Turning to Axel, Blake said. “Do you remember, Axel, when his father killed that human “by mistake”?”
“Yeah. I remember.” Axel said. “The guy was living in a house near the Mearim river. He was not a member of ours or any other tribe.”
“That’s right.” Blake said. “Your father killed him, Estevan, because the guy was in the house of a politician that we were after. There were other pols in the house along with a bunch of bankers and lawyers. Predators, each and every one of them. Lots of cops were protecting them too. It was a real bloodbath. When the killing was over, we were butchering the parasites, and he couldn’t find an RFID on the guy.”
“We didn’t think much of it at the time. We took the meat back to our various tribes and consumed it.” Axel said. “Your father and mother too.”
“It was only after a few days or a week that we discovered the guy was missioned. Your father remembered personally killing and eating him afterwards.” Blake said. “That set him off.”
“How did you find out the predator was missioned?” Estevan asked.
“It was all over the Ashkenazi news.” Blake said. “The ZWO was all upset about losing such an important part of their CoC eradication force. They put an incredible bounty on your dad’s head.”
“The dead guy’s mission was to infiltrate, search out, and destroy us!” Axel said. “He was human but not a custodian!”
“The Ash Kan Nazi media did a big bio-story on the guy. They made a big deal out of his demise. I’m sure it got them many recruits. There was no doubt about it, the pred was truly missioned. His father was apparently killed by an anarchist. So, the guy had a bee in his shorts to kill as many of us as he could. He dreamed of putting a gravestone on biosustainability too. As an incognito cop, he was responsible for many of our losses.” Blake said. “Your father should have been proud and happy, killing the bastard, but it busted him all up.”
“That’s right, Estevan. It seemed to make no difference to your dad.” Axel said. “Nobody could understand his problem. How anyone could believe in free will, knowing what we now know about biology, psychology, and quantum mechanics is too much for me to understand, but not your father. He believed in a right and a wrong. No matter how much we talked to him, he always thought he’d done something wrong. He couldn’t escape his Judean-Christian upbringing.”
“It was literal principle that held your father back, Estevan.” Another CoC member said. “Not just residual “sticky” principle, like trying to get the idea of “God” out of your life after your parents cram it into you when you’re too young to critically think. He was convinced he was a murderer. I was there too. I was in that filthy pol’s house. It was great. We were killing mindless cops, treacherous pols, thieving lawyers, avaricious bankers, and doing so successfully. We got away without a single casualty. When he should have been pleased with our victory, the poor bloke was thinking he’d committed a crime, done wrong.”
“He’d been taught you don’t kill missioned monkeys.” Axel said. “We couldn’t talk him out of his guilt.”
“They’re human beings, Homo sapiens eusapiens.” Estevan said.
“Yeah, but what kind of human is the question. “Not all that glitters . . .”.” Blake said. “There is no justification for being a lawyer, pol, or big banker. These wretches have absolutely no reason to exist. They create problems and force everyone else to pay them to solve those same problems. Such creatures are all just caedere vacuum cleaners, menaces to Life. Yet, your father couldn’t get past the thought that he’d eaten a human being. He felt he didn’t deserve to be headman, when the tribe wanted him for the position. He would never accept the honor. He killed a human, sure, but it was a caedere human, an enemy, not a custodian. The guy’s mission was contrary to our mission. But, your father was such a man of personal integrity he couldn’t stop kicking himself long enough to accept the responsibility of a CoC.”
“So, he wasted his entire life.” Estevan said.

Chapter Five
“No. He didn’t do that, Estevan.” Axel said. “He did many positive things for biosustainability. He only hurt himself with his Judeo-Christian “morality”.”
Estevan told Blake about the second RFID chip. Blake said that that was a mistake, but the responsibility for it was not just on Estevan’s father’s shoulders. “Your father may have delivered the blow that killed the monkey. But, inspecting the vanquished’s body is a communal duty. Every warrior shares the meat collected and every warrior needs to inspect every carcass collected. Plus, we all need all the captured RFIDs we can get for our anti-surveillance research. Why do you think the headman always carries that small lead box on every raid? How far could we travel without using counterfeit RFIDs? Every soldier has the obligation to be vigilant for the entire tribe. Not just the one that delivers the killing blow is responsible. Any one of the others was equally as accountable for that error. It’s all part of post battlefield clean-up protocol. But . . . mistakes happen.”
Estevan was beginning to like these cannibals. Axel and Blake spent more time with him than the others did, but Estevan rapidly grew to feel a kinship with the others too. Blake was right. The relatives and friends of the recent KIAs came around in time and accepted Estevan as one of them. Many things he had not learned in his tribe of origin he was now learning in his new environs.
During the following days Estevan spent much time with the men in the tunnels, digging and removing dirt. After a few meters of digging, they would shore up the space with timber braces and then continue digging and removing dirt. Blake called a halt to tunneling work after about a week, and the entire tribe went out into the countryside. There, they planted trees of the same species and varieties that they cut down earlier for tunnel shoring material. The rule for these custodians was ten new young trees planted for every tree sacrificed for custodial use.
That was the usual CoC rule for any plant or animal, except Homo sapiens sapiens apes, sacrificed for human survival needs. Every non-human ape, removed or converted to biosustainability use, was also an animans positive. Every tribe kept a caedere/animans account book. That book recorded and tabulated each member of the tribe’s biosustainability quotient and also the CoC’s debt/credit balance. There was some fudging. But, as cheating served no purpose, it was almost a non-issue.
Tunnels were necessary for CoC success and survival. Digging a tunnel system was considered by all anarchists to be an animans value, as was planting a tree or protecting wild animals. Every predator killed was a plus animans value, and every custodian born was also a plus animans for the father, the mother, and the tribe. Inventing a new tool or discovering a new method to prevent CoC devastation by the Ashkenazim was also a plus animans.
When a child finished its training, the CoC gave it an examination. The examination was standard for CoCs around the world. If the child got a score above an optimum value, that also counted as an animans plus for both the student and the tribe. Truthful books and educational materials were hard to get. Protecting them was just as difficult. Anyone assisting in either their procurement or protection gained animans credit.
There were many standardized caedere/animans rules to which custodians adhered. These biosustainability cost/credit classifications are so numerous that it is not advisable to report them in this history book. The Garlic Peddler does a better job of explaining the biosustainability rules. Biosustainability cataloging points and guidelines changed as needed to reflect modifications in biosustainability knowledge. The standardized caedere/animans principles served as a kind of Natural “morality” primer for all. To willfully violate the sanctity of these rules or even display disrespect for them was grounds for ostracism from the tribe.

One day, Estevan asked what they were planning to do the following day. Blake was reticent. Axel just smiled, when Blake looked at him. As the next day dawned, Estevan found out why Blake was acting so strange. The tribe was planning a custodial attack on a predator facility, and all the men were aware of it, except Estevan.
After they told Estevan their plans, he asked Axel why the tribe had kept the knowledge of its plans from him. Axel replied. “Blake wanted to give you the option of leaving today to find your friend or stay and rehearse the raid with us. He did not want to compromise the tribe, putting everyone at risk, by letting you know the details of our plans if you decided not to go with us.”
“I see.” Estevan replied. “You didn’t trust me?”
“Don’t take it like that, Estevan.” Axel said. “The Ashkenazim can break anyone, and Blake has the entire tribe to protect. If you left before knowing the details of our plans, you would have had only yourself and possibly your friends to jeopardize.”
Blake overheard their conversation and said. “You have only been with us a month. Not having extensive experience with your behavior, we are already running a great risk, trusting you with our location’s secret. We are putting ourselves deep into your strategic awareness. I hope you understand that.”
“That’s why Blake needed to ask you yesterday,” Axel added, ““So, what’s it going to be, Estevan? Are you going with us on missions or after your friends?””
Estevan wanted to go after Oxyfel, but he knew he needed more experience in custodianship too. His military experience also was very thin. In order to risk a military search and rescue operation, like that one which would be required to find and extricate Oxyfel and Amanda, Estevan needed more experience. Oxyfel could be lost in the meantime, true. But, if Estevan left the tribe, inexperienced, knowing secrets, they could all be lost and possibly Blake’s CoC too. This last test was important to Blake. Estevan did not delay in his answer. He saw the wisdom in Blake’s decision and testing and asked to come along on the raid.
“You’ll be his teacher, Axel.” Blake now said. “Ride him hard, but don’t hold him back once the action starts. We want to see how much of his father is in him.”
The raid was to be an operation against a large lumber-cattle-soy combine in southern Para’. The association was headed by a crony of the Ashkenazi ZWO. Combines, like these, were responsible for the destruction of hundreds of thousands of hectares of “protected” jungle forest. Brazilian pols, also cronies of the ZWO big wigs, shared in the responsibility for the devastations by giving it their imprimatur. They received large blocks of reprieved fractional-banking debt in the form of stock shares, “under the table”. A CoC in Brasilia was doing all the planning for each one’s impending assassination.
The section of cut jungle, the targeted combine controlled, was legendary, as was its contribution to global warming. First the combine sent in their loggers. Once the lumber considered the most valuable was extricated, the remaining vegetation was dried and burned. The “fazendeiros” then brought in young cattle to graze on the grass that grew in the fragile sandy soil, well-fertilized from the burnt jungle ash. Cattle were harvested every year, until the soil would no longer support high nutrient value grass.
The agricultural combine then planted genetically-engineered soybeans. Soybeans fix their own nitrogen needs and grow well in nutrient-starved soil. The toxic plumes of glyphosate, the GMO soy required, contaminated everything. The soy grown on sick former-jungle soil was not quality food, and Brazil exported most of the crop. Asian slaves consumed the tainted and underprivileged alimentation. Ordinary Brazilians benefitted little and got weaker and sicker with each successive year’s pollution bequest.
The super-predator agricultural association that ran and profited from the forest devastation operation was located in a high rise building in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil. It was a long way from its Para’ location or the Maranhao CoCs. A number of indigenous Amazonian tribes attacked the local headquarters of the soy operation in Para at various times over the last few years. They were soundly trounced every time and almost wiped out. Blake didn’t want to make the same mistakes, and he also wanted to be effective.
The CoC tribes were in essence the same creatures as the indigenous Amazonian tribes. The difference was that the Amazonian tribes were weaker, quite innocent, and more natural. The CoC tribes were well-educated and aware of the modern world’s technological prowess and great power. Blake and the other custodians knew that they could learn much from the indigenous and did whatever they could to protect the little people. At the same time, they were afraid to teach the indigenous too much about modern ways lest the natives absorb toxic consumer desires and become like the rest of the death-worshippers, predators, and parasites.
The planet did not need more monkeys to forget the mandates and restrictions of Nature, sapping of the energy of humanity. The custodians knew that caedere wealth can buy anything, corrupt anyone. The only effective long-term strategy was to learn innocence from the indigenous tribes, while annihilating the predators and their death-worshipping simian hangers-on. Innocence is often confused with ignorance. This is understandable, considering the several results of their practice on a pragmatic basis. Blake wanted the innocence without the ignorance.
The CoCs, governed by consensus, were naturally limited to no more than roughly 100 custodians. Achieving consensus with larger numbers was very difficult and unwieldy. Such a constraint, however, did not mean they were incapable of undertaking large operations like the soy raid or other objectives of great impact. Objectives like clandestine libraries, printing presses, laboratories, universities, etc. were CoC maintained and running successfully all over the world. Each CoC sent a senior member to a CoC congress every month.
The member carried silver sticks and news. It returned with information and requests. The location of the congress changed every month for security reasons. This month, it was Blake’s tribe’s turn to handle a task of huge importance for all custodians and biosustainability. It was an unpleasant duty. There was no denying it, but no one complained.
What it all meant to Blake was trouble. He needed to solve the problem of getting biosustainability warriors to Minas Gerais. Such a state of affairs translated into many difficulties. The tribe did not have RFID chips in their bodies to pay their passage or prove their identity. Captured RFIDs were of no use at checkpoints.
Illicit possession of them was prima facie evidence of custodianship. Devoid of identification while near the CoC was usually not a disaster. Cops were easy to kill, and eat. For that reason alone, cops would not travel in prohibited or buffer zones unless accompanied by small armies. In a population corridor a custodian could claim defective electronics if a local cop chose to interrogate. If that failed, the custodian’s only recourse was to kill the cop and flee to a tunnel or dig a spider-trap foxhole until pursuit waned. Large separations from one’s CdC, however, were problematic.
Small local raids seldom presented greater difficulty than avoiding ubiquitous surveillance and drones. Just avoiding satellite anomaly surveillance and detection meant using captured RFID-GPS chips. Although it was difficult, some people managed to get waivers to installed RFID chips. For a very few reasons, i.e. homozygote hemophilia, allergy to silicon/ germanium or the plastic used in the device, etc. a ZWO waiver could be issued. Usually, only super-predator status got such waivers.
The CoCs learned to counterfeit waivers and chips. Usual tactics might not work long-term, however, at a great distance from Maranhao. Third generation RFID chips gave rolled-code information in a DNA format about the holder. It contained the holder’s genetic history, fingerprint data, biometrics, bank balance, mental, physical and spiritual idiosyncrasies, and retinal catalog data. The chips also gave a plenitude of physical and physiognomic description along with voice prints, medical history, and all drugs taken.
There was not one thing about a person that escaped anyone with a RFID translating apparatus. What made matters untenable for some was that these translating peripherals were as ubiquitous as yesteryears’ hand calculators. Just using the internet meant showing your RFID to the browser. Most individuals bought the latest model cellphones with the translating peripheral installed at point of purchase. It was as if everyone was naked, everyone knew it, and everyone could see it along with the nakedness.
Nothing about a person existed that every other person didn’t know. If you wished, you could download all your peripheral’s discoveries about your neighbor and keep it in ready reference mode. Privacy was a joke. Most people living, at that time, had never experienced privacy. Simians were even more herd like now than they were in the mid-21st century.
The only “positive” aspect was that anyone could hack and edit anyone else’s profile. Everyone was sure of nothing about the information on their neighbor. So. On a practical basis, privacy was both nonexistent and yet infinite. The ZWO talked a lot about how they were protecting simian RFID security.
They said they ran periodic checks of all RFID data bases. Many accounts were needlessly blocked for weeks, even months, for “privacy security” reasons. It was all pure hype. One could never be absolutely sure of the veracity of snoop data. What was encouraging to CoCs was that normal digital programming glitches and experienced hackers put a large number of RFID holders in the position of being registered as another RFID holder.
Also, bogus data about the holder could be transferred to the desired recipient’s RFID database. The confusion this generated was a glorious imbroglio. If the situation was not so horrifying, it would have been comical. The danger to the anarchists was that sometimes the RFID data was nearly correct, especially as to criminal-custodian detection aspects. Therefore, a custodian would have to be an utter fool to have an RFID installed permanently in its body.
Having any RFID chip installed, even for a mission like Blake’s current one, was asking too much of an intelligent custodian with real integrity. Plus, GPSs were included in the RFID device. That device alone would be a death warrant to a custodian and a CoC if it were not possible to shed at will. Traveling a day’s distance by bus now presented a whole other world of complications. Borders would need to be crossed.
Spontaneous police checks were to be expected. Nostalgia for the yesteryears of false papers and passports was a given. What were they to do?
Each CoC tribe behaved as if it were a provincial mafia. When one lives on the periphery of society, because of one’s philosophy, as they did, one tends to also pick up many of the characteristics of others living on the edge. For whatever reason, and there are many, the more one chooses to adhere to Natural Law the more one’s spirit soars and the more one deviates from Written Law. The price one pays for that exhilaration is what all those who deviate from man-made Written Law pay. Hatred. Poverty. Ostracism. Predation. Violence.
In many ways the difference between criminal and custodian diminished and often disappeared. Even so, the CoC tribes were not comfortable with the pol-corrupting characteristics all other mafias share. Custodians preferred to kill and eat all the pols they encountered. The custodians abhorred politicians and those, like lawyers and judges, who took license from the infernal state to practice their nefarious professions. It was almost impossible to survive as a dedicated planetary custodian.
The word “custodian” lost all connotation with “janitor”. Literally everyone equated “custodian” with “criminal”. All normal simians were against the biosustainability religion. The simian’s credo was “exploit, consume”, “exploit, consume” until the money or the product runs out. Sex, clothes, food, and drugs were the motivating forces behind 99.99% of all simians.
Custodians felt they were the only voice of reason on the planet, and nobody wanted to listen to that voice. That voice violated vested interests and made others uncomfortable with their status quo. Virtually the entire world was looking for the custodians’ scalp. The only reason the current CoCs survived was due to ruthless violence and superior ability. That ability neutralized the negative effects of material shortcomings. Proper direction often confounded the enemy’s advantages of better resources, numbers, and technology.

Chapter Six
Blake opened his raid rehearsal talk with a question. “How are we going to get ourselves and our weapons from Maranhao to Minas Gerais and back to Maranhao?”
Everyone knew the reason behind the question. No one offered any help, until Blake asked. “Doesn’t ANYONE have any ideas?”
One of the men of the tribe, Isolo, a recent arrival from a ZWO-devastated tribe in Roraima, near the Rio Orinoco headwaters in Venezuela, said. “Fortunately, we live in a Catholic country.”
Axel asked. “What difference does that make, Isolo?”
“Well. I’ve been all over the world, Axel.” Isolo said. “I’ve yet to encounter people easier to corrupt than officials in Catholic countries.”
Around the fire, the warriors nodded in agreement. They would have to send a number of their group to Belo Horizonte, carrying refabricated counterfeit RFIDs and bearer waivers. The bearers would have to hope that the real owners of their ersatz RFIDs were not still registered in some associated data base in another locale. Using a refabricated counterfeit RFID was analogous to using a stolen 21st century passport with a phony photo substitute and all the danger to the carrier that that involved. No two persons can occupy the same RFID chip at separate locations at the same time without arousing maximum suspicion that something is amiss.
Hidden arms would also complicate the fact-finding trip. Metal-detectors were ubiquitous. Plastic weapons were unavoidable. In every place where they would possibly be accosted and searched for installed RFID or concealed weapons they would have to attempt to bribe the predators’ agent. It was a risk that only the bravest warriors would undertake.
An agent could refuse to accept a bribe. It could take the bribe and then betray the suborner. Either way, it would mean immediate death in combat, eventual death by execution, torture-into-treachery, or penal servitude to death. Each successfully bribed agent must be noted and remembered by the warrior that suborned it. When the trail-burners returned to the CoC encampment from the investigatory trip they would share the information with the rest of the tribe. Then, all but a skeleton crew, left behind to protect the women and children, would leave for Belo Horizonte with their counterfeit RFIDs and concealed weapons.

Oxyfel looked over at his running mate. Amanda was sleeping peacefully in the boat, under a small tarp, as he stood watch on shore. He knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep even if he tried. His mind was working overtime, wondering if Estevan escaped the recent carnage. “Was he wounded, dead, or just hiding? Was that Estevan that we saw on his knees, falling into the water? Am I proving to be a coward for leaving him without knowing if he is dead or not? It must be about to rain. Both the mosquitoes and the black flies are having a feast on me.”
Then, there was his own situation. He was, effectively, all alone with nowhere to run and hide. Amanda was a death-worshipper, maybe even a predator. She might turn on him at any moment. How would she react to his killing and eating his enemies? It was hard to say.
It would not be long, though, and he’d know. They had no food in the boat, except for the cop livers, and they would be rotten by morning. He needed to kill soon. It would be hard to hide his cultural ferocity from her.
It was about one in the morning of the day following their separation from Estevan. Oxyfel awakened Amanda, and they pushed off into the river. As daylight broke, he beached the boat and tied it securely.
“I need some sleep, Amanda.” Oxyfel said. “You must stay awake and stand watch.”
“I’m hungry.” She said.
“I’ll go hunting when I wake up.” Oxyfel said, throwing the uneaten rotten livers to the ubiquitous piranha and trieda.
He watched, as the water foamed and splashed about in the feeding frenzy that followed, and said. “We can’t travel now anyway. They may be looking for us yet.”
“Okay.”
It was nearly midday when Oxyfel awakened. He set out away from their encampment immediately to look for food, leaving Amanda at the river. He didn’t need the woman screaming whenever someone was killed. It served no purpose. Thinking she would be of only negative help was just part of the reason. He wanted to be alone to regain his sense of balance. After being alone with her for only one day, the woman was getting on his nerves, complaining incessantly.
Her incessant crying over losing her daughter was subsiding. Red moist eyes remained. Everytime he glanced at her, she responded with a look that made him feel she was trying to make him responsible for her loss. It didn’t end there. She complained about her lack of pissing privacy, her hunger, her thirst, having to drink dirty silty river water, no menstrual pads, stiff muscles from poor sleeping conditions, etc. She wanted a bath. Oxyfel had never lived with a woman before, except his mother, and was not aware of how their relentless simian female complaining can inveigle a man’s psyche.
He thought. “Dad was right. Women are anchors not sails. They’re all shallow, helpless and uncivilized. They do not know what they want. But, it’s for damn sure they’ll find some way to make a man responsible for their not having it. They are weak, respect no virtue, must be kept constantly amused, and are ignorant of how to be accountable.”
After absorbing all the woman’s complaints, as if they were somehow due to his personal inadequacy, he knew he needed a break from her. Oxyfel was only gone a few minutes when he came upon a trail, running through secondary jungle. He followed the path, until it ended at a road. Oxyfel reasoned that it was the same road that the three had left when they came upon the river at the bridge. As it was only early afternoon there was no danger of violating curfew and flagging suspicion by walking along it. He did so and began to sense a measure of freedom again. He even found he felt less impatient with Amanda.
Oxyfel thought. “If women were not irresponsible, shallow, and incapable of independent thought only very small children would ever get pregnant. Human reproduction would cease. So, men must put up with them and protect them. True, she’s not very pretty, but she dresses normally for a woman, half-naked, and that’s nice. Like Dad said. “If you take enough clothes off them just about any woman is beautiful.””
“She’s also not one of those common filthy women from the corridors, Dad spoke about, with their face paint, self-mutilated, tattooed, cut & pasted bodies, reeking for fifty meters in all directions of aromatic chemical stenches.”
“Women are relationship addicts. Nature made them that way for a reason. It must be somewhat contagious, because I wouldn’t know how to find the courage now to leave her to the predator cops.”
A car appeared, approaching him as it passed a small hill. He didn’t feel there was much cause for alarm, but he clutched the automatic pistol, he carried in his shirt, more securely just the same. The car passed without slowing down. The windows were covered, so he could not see who was inside. Not that he would know them. Only important predators were allowed cars and driving privileges outside the population corridors now. They would not be anarchists’ friends, whoever they were. Everyone in a buffer zone was a possible enemy, and he had to be prepared for assaults.
It would be foolish to attack a moving vehicle alone. A few more cars passed him and were just as innocuous as the first one. Oxyfel came to a small tributary of the same river where Amanda waited, and he drank from it. Standing back up, Oxyfel noticed four young men watching him, closely. They had been following him only with their eyes, until he drank from the stream. Now they disembarked from their jeep, parked up the road a way.
“Hey, you kid.” One of the four shouted out to him, walking fast to approach Oxyfel. “You’re on private property. This is a buffer zone. Have you got a pass?”
“Yes.” Oxyfel lied.
“Let me see it.” A fellow with a beard demanded, as the other three gathered around Oxyfel.
“I must have lost it.” Oxyfel said after making a big show of looking for it.
“You’re lying!” The beard said. “You know you’re not allowed here. This is a buffer zone, prohibited to your kind.”
“Yeah.” Another one added. “You can’t be drinking from that garipe’. It’s stealing. You’re a thief!”
“No. I’m not a thief. I’m sorry.” Oxyfel shouted back, turning to run. “I won’t drink anymore.”
“You’re damn right you won’t.” One of the biggest shouted, running toward Oxyfel with the others in close pursuit. “Spit out everything you drank, or we’ll take you to Judge Botstein and have you put in a camp.”
“I said I was sorry.” Oxyfel said, becoming alarmed, as they surrounded him. “How can I spit out water I’ve already swallowed?”
The four young men moved closer to Oxyfel, and one said. “Vomit!”
“I can’t.” Oxyfel replied.
Another boy said. “Naw. Don’t vomit. You’ll contaminate the stream.”
“Spit out the water, and do it cleanly.” A boy said.
“How?” Oxyfel asked.
“That’s for you to discover.” The boy replied. “But make it fast.”
As he said the word “fast”, he pushed Oxyfel backwards. Oxyfel stumbled and fell between two of the others.
“Damn!” One of the young men said, telepathically. “Did you get a whiff of that guy, Samuel?
“Yeah.” Samuel replied, also telepathically. “Like a morgue.”
The bearded one, also brain wave enhancement equipped, said. “He must be a cannibal.” Then, he asked volubly. “Are you a cannibal, boy?”
Oxyfel was getting frantic. He was not telepathically equipped, but he could see that they were. Their sporadic silence yet obvious communicative behavior gave it away. Oxyfel knew intuitively that they were not about to let him go. All four were Ashkenazim bullies, looking for some Gaza-style fun. Oxyfel was now an item on their menu.
Ashkenazim could not be judged in regular ZWO courts. They had a special court reserved for them. Murdering a simian, not Ashkenazim, was not a crime in that court. Oxyfel was quite sure that they could not read his mind, because his brain waves were not yet biometrically-registered or cyborg enhanced. It would take a much bigger neocortex than these Ashkenazim youth possessed to amplify Oxyfel’s brain waves sufficiently to decipher his thoughts.
“Please. Just let me go.” Oxyfel pleaded, concealing what he was planning. “I won’t take anything else, drink any water, or trespass on your land. I’m sorry.”
“Let’s kill him, Samuel.” The biggest one said, telepathically. “He’s a cannibal. Cannibals are goy and can’t be Jews. The Talmud and ZWO Law says they’re beasts, and we can kill any of them we want to kill.”
“You think we should?” Samuel replied, walking toward Oxyfel, leering over him. “It might be fun, at that. Go get some sticks. We’ll beat him to death.”
“Are you ready to die, Cannibal?” The bearded one asked.
Two of the four turned to look for some cudgeling sticks. They were but a meter away, when Oxyfel pulled the automatic from his shirt and fired a burst in Samuel’s face. The big guy turned to run, and Oxyfel put him down with another torrent. The other two, thinking they were missing some fun turned back to look. They saw the scene of slaughter before dying the same way the other two died. Oxyfel got up immediately.
He quickly gutted each predator, robbing their bodies of livers and caedere wealth. He didn’t bother to throw the remains into the stream. It would be wasted energy and time. There was no hiding what happened. While he was being interrogated, he noticed that the trees and rocks were equipped with cameras, transmitters, and listening devices. The satellites were undoubtedly observing him too. Everything he did now was probably being collated and added to all the other data on him in the world’s computer “brain”. His virtual dossier and biometric profile were getting more accurate every second.
“How could he not have noticed earlier?!” He asked himself. “Those young men must have known, from a kilometer away, what he was doing. Those devices allowed them every opportunity to approach and torment him. They were cyborgs. Such powerful sensing equipment and being telepathically equipped said it all.”
It took money for that. Only the Ashkenazi had the brains to even desire such surgery, and only they had the resources to effect it. Oxyfel, like all custodians, was devoid of such installed technology. He knew the drones would soon be upon him with police close behind them. Rushing to the jeep, he gave it a quick scan for surveillance technology. There were monitors but only one GPS. Oxyfel yanked out the GPS. He left the monitors intact to watch from a distance how things developed at the stream after his escape.
He started the jeep and got on the road. As he drove, he found himself sympathizing with the nearly extinct wild animals, especially those at the upper-ends of the food-chain, like bears, wolves and big cats. How they must feel or have felt – hunted just for being natural had to be akin to what he was feeling. Using natural camouflage, hit & run tactics, ambush, and hiding from superior technology were just about the only weapons available to the disenfranchised. His pistol and knife compared to drones and digital technology were about as effective as tooth and claw were against high powered rifles, respectively.
Within minutes, Oxyfel was back to the path that went from the road to near the river. All the supplies and useful goods in the jeep he unloaded and stashed along the path. Then, he drove the jeep down the road a few hundred meters and hid it in some high grass. Cutting some palm fronds, with a machete found in the jeep, Oxyfel covered the vehicle. Once the jeep was well-hidden from drones, Oxyfel went back to where he hid the young men’s jeep supplies.
When he returned to the encampment, he surprised Amanda, saying. “Here, Amanda. Help me load the boat. We have to leave immediately.”
“I thought you’d left me here.” She replied, crying.
“Why would I do that?” Oxyfel asked.
“Can’t say I’d have blamed you.” She added, wiping her eyes and sniffling.
“What are you talking about?” Oxyfel asked.
“I was such a bitch, whining and complaining about everything. I’m sorry.” Amanda said. “I won’t be so shitty anymore.”
“Okay. You’re forgiven.” He answered.
“I hope you can understand.” Amanda said. “I’ve never lost anyone dear to me before. My parents died before I was even walking. My baby girl was all I really had that meant anything to me.”
“Your husband didn’t mean much to you?” Oxyfel asked.
“He was okay, but not a soul-mate, if you know what I mean.” Amanda said. “We lived separate lives, until the RFID problem. It almost brought us together again, but it ended so . . .very quickly, as you know.”
“Yes. Sorry, Amanda, but we haven’t much time.” Oxyfel asked. “Are we ready to shove off?”
“Yeah.” She replied, and Oxyfel pushed the boat into the river’s current, Thinking. “I hope these trees aren’t bugged.”

A problem all CoCs faced was how to pay for goods and services that were not CoC internal transactions. Acquiring caedere money was very challenging for a custodian. One almost needed to be a part of the Zionist fascist crony-capitalistic economy. Anarchists, obviously, were largely outside that economy. The tribes were free-market capitalism, but such a system was far from crony capitalism.
So, financing custodial operations against super predators, and the acquisition of manufactured goods & rare materials, was always a problem. Outside the confines of the tribe the only solution was to rob and kill predators, (pols, doctors, big bankers, lawyers, priests), and other parasites. In addition to having the negative distinction of being cannibals, and everything that that entailed, therefore, custodians were of necessity obligated to learn how to be extraordinary thieves and murderers. Most thieves and murderers fall into their professions out of either necessity or desire. Custodians, although also entering from similar motives, made of these crimes an art form.
They studied them in the CoCs from childhood upwards and practiced them as much as the ancient Spartans did. Oxyfel’s and Estevan’s parents were no different. They educated their children in the same discipline, as did all custodians. They taught their children these arts, right along with Sun Tzu, biology, philosophy, mathematics, chemistry, etc.
There were some things that members of the CoCs just couldn’t get without visiting population corridors. Once in a corridor, purchasing was always illegal unless one had an installed RFID. So, to buy something it was necessary to use black-market capitalism. That required the use of barter or currency (tender). The ZWO was actively trying to phase black market tender out of circulation. They got nowhere with that objective.

Chapter Seven
Very soon after the creation of the first forms of money, mediums of exchange, caedere wealth became the tool of enslavement it has been ever since. Bankers evolved and learned to rape and enslave the entire world more efficiently using fractional-banking. With the dynastic bankers, paper money, fiat currency, more recently joined in as a weapon against people. Both were incredibly successful. Now, that the dynastic banking houses achieved hegemony, as the ZWO, only the CoCs, an occasional unaffiliated anarchist, and black-market currency stood in their way.
The Ashkenazim were not just silly simians whose avarice supplanted their souls, as greed did with so many extremely wealthy caedere predators. Some Zionist brutes were human, ZWO human, with missions diametrically opposed to the custodians’ biosustainability mission. The Ashkenazi dynastic bankers were the rulers of the planet even before the ZWO came along. Similar to puppeteers, they manipulated the mob, pulling the strings on their political marionettes. The Ashkenazim had within its midst persons whose mission was the destruction of the living planet. These Ashkenazim were caedere humans, the most powerful of death-worshippers. They made normal death-worshippers (simian Ashkenazim, Christians, Jews, Muslims, etc.) look like small-time wanna-bes.
The super-predators were the de facto gods of the normal death-worshipping religious. For the religious, it was no big step from worshipping death in a mythical “Heaven” to worshipping death in the form of caedere wealth or in those who possessed it. The ZWO was the most powerful tool of the most powerful and richest dynastic bankers to enslave the planet. Ashkenazi Zionists were the new aristocracy. These vicious simians persecuted actual Jewish simians and Black Semites with anti-Semitic pogroms, Holy Bible nonsense, Talmud brutality, genocide, toxic vaccines, poisoned water & food, and contaminated air even more than they did other predators and humans.
The Zionists’ entire Weltanschauung rested on caedere wealth and the Great Lie that their form of death-worshipping made them some kind of special race. The opening salvo against such a claim was, of course, its infantile quality and comprehensive ridiculousness. An imaginary boogeyman, that created and now owns everything, lives in the sky, and likes a few of his little monkeys more than the other little monkeys. The second barrage of fact that these imposters faced was that nearly the entire world knew the Khazars were fake Jews. The only people who could lay even a quasi-specious entitlement, based on ancient texts, to that preposterous status were Black Semites, not Ashkenazim.
The Torah-Talmud “special race”, “chosen by god” menace cum gift was a surviving whopper told by jaded Semitic priests in plagiarized texts written long ago from Sumerian pictograms and sold to ignorant savages. The Khazars used these poor Semitic black people as excuses for all the heinous characteristics and atrocious behavior of the ZWO regime. As in 20th century Germany, scapegoating was the most potent form of fascistic guilt-dodging. Now, in an ironic twist all enemies of the ZWO were accused of anti-Semitism, (whatever that is), not sympathizing enough with the “Jews”, or unfairly exposing past “Jewish” swindles and ersatz injustices.
The valid claims to the Zionist Ashkenazi hegemonic rights was their superior intelligence and the status of being the greatest holders of caedere wealth on the planet. And, with the advent of super-technology they continued to make caedere wealth and intelligence the only arbiters of legitimate supremacy on the planet. They codified this horrible injustice into a serious body of work, formerly called Written Law. They licensed thieves, they termed lawyers, to administer it. Thus, the Zionists became the de facto “God” of the Christians, Jews, and Muslims. The planet Earth was in the grip of an insane drive to kill EVERYTHING and call it wealth.
Ashkenazi dynastic bankers were well aware of how cash could be used as a powerful control weapon. They knew that it was not a great leap of faith to see that in the hands of an equally intelligent enemy it could be used as a powerful counter-control weapon too, employed against themselves. In generations past, until the present, people were literally robbed by the dynastic fraction-banking thugs with fiat currency. Now, even the smallest of predators were suspicious of paper money. They knew it as “faith-money”, pure debt.
That left the super predators with the incentive and capacity to create a new medium of enslavement. Enter the RFID chip. To legitimize the RFID economy, the ZWO outlawed in various ways those people that operated on the periphery of the system. Anyone caught using real value, caedere or animans, as currency were proscribed from the fold. Criminals, custodians, and people whose RFID chips contained no available credit balances were all forced to use what now served as cash. Many types of barter were attempted. The population rejected most of them.
The brutal fascistic ZWO surveillance state of these dynastic Ashkenazim predators was extremely rigid and growing more so. It was becoming ever more adamantine, allowing fewer and fewer opportunities to efficiently corrupt predator agents. Fortunately, enterprising individuals still existed, and the Zionist state was not omnipotent in either its reach, grasp, or control. There were many and diverse forms of crypto and peripheral capital. The only form of portable caedere wealth in the underground economy that everyone accepted was the silver stick.
Quasi-criminal groups melted down junk silver and other silver sources and poured the melt into wallet-convenient bars that looked like blunted toothpicks. After a few days of being handled, fingertip perspiration resulted in oxidation of the silver periphery and the sticks turned silver oxide black. The dull black silver sticks were easy to conceal. Everyone on society’s perimeter knew what they were, and all accepted them as legal tender. As an additional benefit to the CoCs, and their anti-“medical-culture” stand, the sticks could be used in a pinch as an anti-microbial.
There were many antibiotic-deprived individuals and those having antibiotic resistant infections. Throwing a silver stick and a copper nail into a cup of hot vinegar with a drop or two of iodine for a few minutes made a good poultice liquid, especially powerful if, when cool, raw fish bile, onions, and garlic were combined with it. Mangos, bananas, oranges, etc. all made good vinegar in a few days. Such remedies were standard medical care for the CoCs.
They found medical doctors useful only as food and sources of caedere wealth. The custodians felt that one of the main ways doctors create malaise in the world was with their state-enforced monopoly on the use of chemicals. The medical profession alone was licensed to use and generally misuse drugs. Custodians believed that chemicals were a common right of all people around the world. Doctors used that license to profit from sickening people, and prolonging the lives of the already sick, polluting the entire world in the process.
So, the anarchistic communes stole, hoarded, and used this Ag form of caedere wealth to finance their health, lives and biosustainability raids. Oxyfel found a treasure trove of these silver toothpicks on the bodies of the young men he shot. All four predators were RFID chipped, but they also carried these precious-metal sticks. Oxyfel didn’t question why they needed both forms of money. He knew why.
The ZWO prohibited simian slavery using RFID digital currency. It violated their “land of the free” propaganda line. Oxyfel felt sad, thinking about how many simian boys and girls in the corridors were bought and sold, using these sticks. The ZWO just looked the other way and let it happen. Few complained. To do so was to get prosecuted for one of the multitude of offenses the Ashkenazim invented as crimes. Their lawyers were very proficient at fabricating laws easy for people to break and earn a life of exile and punishment.
One of the quickest ways to get imprisoned was to criticize the ZWO or an Ashkenazi. To do so was to be immediately accused of anti-Semitism. Even the most genetically “Jewish” person could be charged with this crime. Like the other catch-all accusation, “hate crime”, it was the charge of choice for life imprisonment. Most true Semites were accused by the Ashkenazim of just such a crime before any other.

Oxyfel thrust the pole into the river mud and gave it as powerful a shove as he was capable. He wanted to get as far from the scene of his culling as he could before the predators began circling. After about ten minutes of floating with the rapid current Oxyfel dared wait no longer. He made for the cover of riverbank vegetation. Riverside vegetation would probably not contain sensing devices.
The local flora changed its cellulose state too often to be cost effective for the ZWO surveillance horticulture to persevere. Oxyfel used his new Ashkenazi machete to cut some vegetation to cover the boat and supplies. He then pulled the boat closer to the shore with branches from low hanging trees. Amanda was rummaging through some of the goods Oxyfel found in the jeep. She found a bottle of brandy and squealed.
“Oxyfel. There’s a bottle of cognac in this satchel. Do you want a swig?”
Oxyfel thought a moment and said. “Yeah. It might do us some good. Does that religion of yours allow it?”
“I don’t think we ever discussed it.” She replied. “I know we never bought any after we got married.”
“Were you always religious?” Oxyfel asked.
“No. I was never religious.” She said. “As a medical doctor, a biologist, I couldn’t accept it. Real biology is opposed to all superstition.”
“But your husband was religious?” Oxyfel asked.
“Oh, yes. He was a true believer.” Amanda said. “He went to church every Sunday.”
“Not you?”
“No.” She replied, starting to cry again. “Except for my daughter’s baptism, I always managed to be at the hospital or in my office at the clinic on Sundays.”
“Were you always a predator or did you turn into one after becoming a medical doctor?” Oxyfel asked, not very diplomatically.
“I was not one of your typical medical doctors.” She said, recovering her composure. “I was an emergency room physician. I never did elective surgery, prescribed medicine for chronic diseases, or subscribed to that “culture of medicine” thing. I didn’t even belong to the AMA. I don’t remember talking more than two minutes to any pharmaceutical sales rep. Other than med school subsidies I never received anything more from Big Pharma than a Merck Manual, not even a free lunch.”
“I guess I’m the one who owes an apology now.” Oxyfel said. “My father and mother never said there were degrees of medical predation. They just told me doctors were the equivalent of planetary auto-immune diseases and needed eradicating.”
“What else did they teach you about medicine?” Amanda asked.
“They said that although the Sumerians seem to have started the mess, we have the Greeks to thank for the promotion of the three greatest human abominations – democracy, medicine, and Written Law.” Oxyfel answered.
“I’m not familiar with that much history, but I know what they were feeling. I suppose I can sympathize with that attitude somewhat.” She replied. “Yet, there are people that would die without medicine.”
“Maybe that’s what they should do, instead of helping everything and everyone in the world, including themselves, get sicker from their treatment and medicine’s secondary affects.” Oxyfel stated.
“That’s a very hard attitude.” Amanda said.
“Yes.” Oxyfel said. “It’s the natural way. The responsible way.”
“I can’t embrace that.” She replied.
“There is no amount of pleasure or joy in this world that can compensate for all the pain and sadness we all experience.” Oxyfel said. “Despair is always more prevalent than hope. We have been placed here to suffer for some unknown reason. Our bodies have all that they need to heal our diseases. When those tools are no longer there, maybe, the Great Castigator just feels those “incurables-without-medical-intervention” have suffered enough already.”
“There’s no room for altruism?” Amanda asked.
“Altruism is akin to the folly of thinking that suffering can be relieved without incurring the wrath of the Great Castigator.” Oxyfel answered. “I believe that every act of suffering alleviation in another causes increased suffering somewhere else. The Great Castigator is jealous of its right to make the world suffer. Any act to the contrary will be paid for with penalties and interest.”
“What about when people get old, and their immune systems fail?” Amanda asked. “What’s to help them?”
“Same reason.” Oxyfel said. “You have to be crazy to want to live long, especially if you’re old & sick. Proof of that is how religious people live longer than humans.”
“Religious people are crazy?” Amanda asked.
“Of course.” Oxyfel replied, without explanation, feeling the statement was undeniable. “Growing old means there is nothing left to assuage the pain, sorrow, despair, and communal revulsion but death, death that refuses to arrive. If you live long enough, sooner or later, you or your body will make a mistake with which you cannot live. Nature is saying it’s okay for that body and soul to separate. It’s an escape clause.”
Amanda made no reply. She just sipped on her cognac, so Oxyfel continued. “My mother told me about that “culture of medicine” preached in those population corridors. The predators need slaves to buy their products, so they program everyone to believe that they must live as long as possible. When they get sick, they are meant to feel like reprobates and shamed if they do not seek immediate medical attention, more fodder for the “disease” industry. The entire economy depends on people doing things that will make them sick. The media is unrelenting in their pushing of that self-destructive & exploitative message. Only when it is no longer cost-effective or people get too old and poor to be a source of caedere wealth anymore, does the medical profession let the Great Castigator throw the incurables to the wolves.”
“If that’s true why does the ZWO destroy millions of people at times with the weapons built just for that purpose?” Amanda countered.
“It’s simply a cost-benefit analysis. The ZWO manages simians like farmers manage feedlot chickens, swine, and cattle. Simians are nothing more than glorified livestock to the Ashkenazim.” Oxyfel said. “When they are de trop, the ZWO removes them. A million kilos of simian life culled means ten times that number of livestock kilos that can be sold or eliminated. Doctors are a tool. The Ashkenazim use you like they use everyone, except the custodians, merely as a predatory tool.”
Oxyfel kept his eyes and ears fixed on the shore vegetation while Amanda kept hers on the river. They barely finished their conversation before the drones began circling over the river and the area around the road. Oxyfel reasoned that the fugitives probably would not know if the drones spotted them until the directed-energy weapons began a sustained fire. Predator agents would soon begin filtering through the riverine vegetation. The fugitives’ position was indefensible in the event of detection. Yet, there was no alternative but to wait and see. Oxyfel felt he was building up quite a reforestation debt due to his foliage depletions in the interest of escaping capture.
Suddenly, he felt a trembling in his chest and a cold sweat, creeping all over his body. Something was amiss, and he expected it was a predator agent getting too close. If the cop got too near, and Oxyfel used a gun, it would mean alerting the rest and certain capture would be the result. He turned toward Amanda and gave her a caution-filled look. She nodded and crouched lower in the boat.
Then, they saw the reason for the increased awareness of danger. A cop was approaching from the direction of the road. As the predator’s presence became clearer to Oxyfel’s vision, he heard the sounds of more cops deeper in the brambles. He was afraid to move lest a drone pick up the non-predator movement. The two fugitives would also be smelled if the cops got much closer.

Chapter Eight
Amanda was not yet a long-time cannibal, producing a rich panoply of putrefaction gases, but she had been eating human livers along with Oxyfel for a couple of days now. Her body’s odor, plus his, would definitely be stronger than just Oxyfel’s alone. It could be more easily picked up by the mobile sensors on the cops’ uniforms or embedded sensors in the cyborgs. What were they to do? The cops just kept getting closer. Oxyfel felt for his combat knife. It popped into his hand without thinking.
The cop was less than three meters from them, but the predator did not yet see the boat. The cop must have been myopic, because at that distance, it could have been visible to most anyone. Maybe he was focused on human objectives so much that he missed obvious clues to human whereabouts. Whatever. He was too far away for Oxyfel to attack without the cop having the advantage. The cop’s shouting out an alarm to the others as he died – if he died, and not Oxyfel, was also an uncomfortable fact.
It could only be the luck of natural providence that determined what happened next. A drone about half the size of the boat in which the fugitives were hiding began making sputtering noises. Directly above the boat it stalled and came crashing down, exploding less than four meters from the boat and directly upon the nearest cop. He didn’t die quietly. Cops further in the bush rushed to the site and viewed the screaming crispy critter evolving before them.
They stayed away from the toasting cop and the river side of the burning drone wreckage. It was obviously well for Oxyfel and Amanda that they did so. The drone’s burning heat was so intense the two fugitives were forced deeper down into the boat. They could observe nothing of their surroundings. Through the flames, the growing dusk, and the river’s slight embankment precipice, the predators could not see details within the fugitives’ camouflaged hiding place either.
Darkness fell deeper as the flames subsided. The paramedics would be by shortly to retrieve the dead cop, Oxyfel reasoned, and there might be unpleasant repercussions for the fugitives. So, he took a chance and pushed off into a droneless night sky and the rapidly flowing river. Within a half-hour they felt relieved enough to speak, and Oxyfel said. “That was really close. I don’t know what I would have done if that drone hadn’t crashed.”
“Nor I.” Amanda said. “Did you see that cop by the side of that big ba’uba tree?”
“No.” Oxyfel said. “I was too preoccupied with the one bearing down on us that the drone killed.”
“Well.” She said. “I know I saw him. I was hoping you did. Even if you’d killed the one the drone killed, the one by the ba’uba would have got us both.”

Estevan waited to find out his place in the coming action, but it was not forthcoming. He knew he would be going on the raid, though, since Blake had indicated as much and had him rehearsing with the other warriors. The objective in Belo Horizonte was to remove from life as many of the biggest predators as they could. That meant killing all the major stockholders, directors, executives, bankers, lawyers, pols, and other caedere wealthy encountered in the building. As the operation was extremely dangerous and of such a great objective, Blake would not be looking to capture any loot.
Should clerks, secretaries, etc. get in the way, they were not to be spared. There was always collateral damage to be expected in any raid on a predator. People working for predators shared in their destructive weakness, if not in degree at least in kind. The strategy was simple. Starting on the top floor penthouse, they were to kill downward until they were either exposed in their butchering or every predator was dead.
Killing was to take place rapidly so as to prevent enemy communication before death. When Blake blew the regroup whistle, the raiders would come together and return to Maranhao. They would leave quickly without experiencing capture or attracting attention to themselves. During the retreat, should they be accosted, they would fight to escape until death or lack of constraint occurred. There would be no surrenders. If any one of the group should surrender, violating the community’s consensus, other custodians would extinguish the surrendered one’s life.
If a warrior was seriously wounded or captured, the others would come to his assistance or remove the threat impending. The group could not allow the predators to get the chance to torture and question one of them and so lose the CoC’s location security. It was Draconian, but there was no alternative for these men. They knew their fate and embraced it. They felt they were in a desperate fight for their posterity, the human race, and Life itself.
Estevan arose from his hammock and stretched. Then, he twisted off a piece of dried monkey meat from the impaling stick on the deccication platform. The women of the tribe sliced the meat thin and bathed it in salt and iodine before roasting and drying it on raised sticks. The meat tasted similar to beef jerky.
Today was to be a repeat practice run of the coming raid on the soy-agricultural association. Another CoC from the Para’ region, one from Roraima, and one from French Guyana were nearby, waiting to collaborate with Blake’s CoC. The additional three northwestern CoCs would be handling the security on the outside of the Minas Gerais building, during the attack. They would also be covering Blake’s retreat after the carnage was over. The Para’ CoC had arrived from the far western part of that state. It had trekked to the Rio Amazonas and gone down it to the furthest point east they could go by water. Then, they went overland into Maranhao.
The Roraima CoCs had voyaged from near the Venezuelan border with Brazil south, up the Orinoco, Rio Apiau, Rio Mucajai, and Rio Branco to Rio Negro and the Amazon in canoes and small tuk tuks. They had then gone down the Rio Amazonas toward the sea. At Macapa’ they met and joined with the French Guyana tribe and together went further down the Amazon to Belem. From there, they went cross-country into Maranhao. The four tribes congregated in Maranhao near Blake’s location and camped together. The three non-local tribes used the local tunnels, Blake’s group made earlier, to hide their gear and weapons. Some were tying their hammocks to trees in the remaining northwestern Maranhao jungle and joining the others later in the day for the practice of night manoevers.
The CoC from Roraima lost a warrior on the way to Maranhao. The lost man was from the Apiaunhai CoC, the village from where The Garlic Peddler originated. The man was in a canoe with another Apiaunhai CoC resident. Two predator agents from ZWO Manaus accosted them on the Amazon river, near where Rio Negro mixes with Rio Branco. They wanted to see the warriors’ RFIDs.
The two warriors immediately opened fire, killing the predator agents. One of the cops returned sufficient fire, before dying, that one of the custodians got hit. The custodians made it all the way to Macapa’ before the wounded one died. The remaining members of the Roraima CoC buried the man on the river’s bank. They waited there until they were joined by the contingency of warriors coming from Oyepoke at the river border of Brazil and French Guyana. The fleshed-out band of warriors then moved further down the Amazon, until it was time to land and go overland through the Maranhao jungle to Blake’s CoC.
The Para’ CoC reached Maranhao without incident and were making rapid progress toward Blake’s camp, when they ran into a band of death-worshippers from a local church. The monkeys were in an evangelical mood, as such congregations of small predators often are. Each parishioner was anxious to display his imbecilic piety for all the other parishioners to see and of which they hoped the others might later marvel. They gave the custodians a typical nauseating ear-beating of glorious evangelical collective dementia, completely unaware how close they came to being sacrificed on the altar of biosustainability. The religionists left the custodians alone not a moment too soon for perhaps both groups.
It was an opportune moment for the custodians to regret for the planet’s well-being. But, killing death-worshipping religionists could be accomplished at any time. These custodians had higher aspirations waiting for them in Minas Gerais. Removing a passel of petty religiously psychotic cowards then was ancillary to their objective. Such carnage could well have been instrumental in jeopardizing the soy-association massacre. The headman called for restraint, and his fellow anarchists concurred. The “other world’ers” went on their way unopposed.
The rehearsals for the raid were getting to be a bit of a bore for Estevan. Perhaps, he let some of his youthful languor show. Axel reminded him of the need for everything to go smoothly. The only way to achieve such a state was for each man to know his job perfectly. If an untoward situation arose, the repetitive rehearsals would tend to hasten the return to performance of behavior conducive to accomplishing the objective. Estevan was receptive to Axel’s counsel and picked up his pace.
For two days now, Estevan took part in the dry runs of the multi-tribal raid. They practiced among the babaçu palms bordering the remaining Amazonian jungle’s frontier. Estevan was not alone as an apprentice acolyte in contemporary guerrilla warfare. The Para’ and Roraima contingents brought along some of their Yanomami indigenous people as well as a few Guyana-displaced Guarani and Amazonas’ Wai’ipi. Indigenous natives were familiar with certain aspects of tribal life that the formally educated custodians were not. It was Blake’s desire to use the admixture of cultures to enhance the overall effectiveness and survivability of all the CoCs.
Each time the Blake warriors entered the two-story mock-up of the 22-story Belo Horizonte high rise, Estevan and the indigenes were with them. They fired their spoils’ rifles (without live rounds in the chamber) exactly as the other warriors did. They learned to recognize the other CoC members and watch the way they maneuvered. Indigenous warriors were often reluctant to take orders from white men. They knew that white Ashkenazi Turks were the enemy, and many of the indigenous people tended to associate any form of Caucasian “whiteness” with that “enemy”. The rehearsals did not always grind along with clockwork precision.
Estevan learned how to put car or truck electronics into a position to steal the vehicle. He showed the indigenes. They all learned the best ways to drive through police roadblocks. The indigenes of Maranhao, the Tl Awa’, showed the other custodians how to hide when escape was not possible. Axel showed them how to dig a small tunnel in less than 5 minutes and hide the dirt so that they could blend into the surroundings without any signs of their presence.
Aerial observation and electronic listening devices were the hardest of enemy weapons to circumvent. They were also the most difficult of enemy technology for the indigenes to understand. These esoteric technologies appeared magical to the simple jungle people. A wild cotton bush should be just another plant, not a high surveillance system. Estevan learned how to manipulate the devices as best he could. He learned that nobody can hide forever, but one of the secrets to defeating enemy invulnerability is to know when to remain motionless and when to keep moving. Never let the watcher put his lead on you.
Axel said. “Any time you discover a listening device or surveillance monitor, rip it out and bury it. If you do not remember having seen another of similar type, remove the battery and bring it back to the CoC for analysis and de-engineering. CoCs need to have the best of electronic protection just as much as the predators do. Also. When a custodian is in the field and a bit of intelligence becomes available on the super predators – super parasites like top pols, Ash Kan Nazi judges, dynastic banking families, high priced lawyers, nuclear power executives, bishops, etc. – remember it. Report it to the headman of your CoC at your earliest convenience. It may be just what we have been in need of to destroy them. One dead super predator is sometimes worth the risk to a custodian and certainly the lives of thousands of mission-less simians.”
A Guarani asked. “What if we get separated?”
“Should you get separated from the group, go northwest. When you hit BR 316, follow it north. Soon, you will recognize familiar terrain. We will leave markers for 4 days to show we are nearby. After that, you are on your own. You need not worry about food.” Blake explained. “Nearly the entire world’s simians are predators of some type. When one needs food, it is almost always available.
Axel said. “Custodians are rare and seldom given to living around death-worshippers and other parasites. Even so, one need not fear that in killing a monkey one will one day discover themselves to have killed a missioned human. It could happen, but not to worry. Not all missioned humans are custodians and friends of biosustainability. Many are our enemies. These latter humans can be butchered and eaten as innocuously as can any caedere-worshipping monkey.”
A Para’ custodian asked. “Are there partisans we can go to if we get separated?”
“No. Unlike paramilitary and guerrilla groups in the past,” Isolo answered. “CoCs cannot use the populace as support. Most simians are ignorant exploitative brutes. The general populace are not our friends. Means of hiding and gaining protection must proceed from the CoCs or individual custodians. Never seek solace from a simian. The simian world is also notoriously avaricious, treacherous, and cowardly. Virtually no simian will aid a custodian at any personal risk unless forced to do so. One must never ever appeal to, trust, or collaborate with a death-worshipper or a predator. Never let yourself become indebted, or vulnerable, to them, except possibly if needed as temporary slaves or hostages. These brutal animals are planetary diseases, and we need to remove them if humanity and our posterity are to survive.”
Matso, a Yanomami that spoke Portuguese, said. “One cannot forget the other forms of Life on the planet. Other spirits are part of our spirit, and we are part of theirs. We are all connected. We must protect them to protect ourselves. We cannot do that and allow billions of monkey spirits to destroy their homes, food, and water too.”

Chapter Nine
Blake made his closing speech to raise the spirit of the warriors. “Remember when the Zionists first started removing resistance to their ZWO? They called for all people to unite against the custodians, the atheists, and the anarchists. When all the death-worshippers and small predators came together in solidarity against us, the stupid Zionists opened up on them with directed-energy drones, and automatic weapons, killing hundreds of thousands. They then blew down their cities and villages, murdering hundreds of millions more of the little parasites. Such shortsighted treachery is normal for the Ashkenazim. They blamed it all on the custodians. But, the truth got out in time. The Zionists proved in one operation that analytical intelligence does not mean dignity, nobility, possession of imagination, or creativity. Our Communities of Consensus gained many converts, following those brutal behaviors of the super predators.”
“Many people thought the Zionists were monsters.” Isolo added. “They were, and are. But yet, they were only doing what they felt they needed to do to survive. As we must. We also are in a war with the monkeys, but we must not be like the Ash Kan Nazis. My problem with the super predator’s tactics was that they were myopic and indiscriminate, as is their poisoning of soil, air, water, and food.”
“Their use of medical doctors destroys all our lives with toxic pharmaceuticals.” Axel added. “They are killing everything, not just those beings that do not deserve life.”
“That is why we must kill them.” Blake resumed his speech. “Starting with those who would rape and murder the forests. They are stealing our clean air and habitat, killing our non-human friends, the defenseless, and disenfranchised. They are poisoning all of us, without regard to worth or human status, cutting short our existence, profaning all Life. THAT is why we are going to enter one of their nests, they think is so secure, and burn it out!”
A few shouts of concurrence with the feeling arose, but Blake resumed his speech. “We are going to do what we can to kill them all and their servile minions. Will more rise up to take their place? Of course, they will. As long as there is limited habitat for simian expansion, the rape will persist.”
Blake paused to let his words lixiviate, and then he continued. “And, we will destroy the new ones too. Monkeys must die if humanity is to survive. Predators must die if Life is to continue. Simians must change their way of life. The health of the planet depends on it, on us. The CoCs are the only force working for biosustainability. We cannot sit back and let other CoCs make the sacrifices for us. We too must pick up the weapon that defends Life. Any one of us that dies tomorrow will die knowing that he died protecting humanity and the planet from the death-worshippers and parasites. His death will have meaning, and it will give his previous life even more meaning. Imagine if, somehow, we should return to Earth in the future, perhaps as one of our own children. We will be on a planet that may be a healthier and more beautiful place than it could have been, without our sacrifice. You cannot have more love for Life than to give your own life in its protection.”
The next morning, Estevan broke his rifle down again for about the hundredth time into its component pieces. It was cleaned and oiled to perfection, but he did it again, waiting for Blake’s call to mount up and leave the enclave. This cleaning would be the last one before they left for Minas Gerais. Estevan did not now reassemble the parts into the working weapon. He hid them in his trousers and baggage along with ammunition. The other warriors were doing the same.
At 5 AM the men left the Maranhao enclave and went with their respective companions to the various planned locations which would serve as entry points for the journey to Belo Horizonte. Estevan’s group consisted of Blake, Axel, Isolo, and another man named Carter. The other CoCs were likewise divided up into 5-man squads. It would be easier to steal transportation or embark on buses if they left separately and at different times. Five men were enough to secure passage and protect each other during the trip.
Blake’s group went cross-country until they reached the BR316 highway, and from there they got on a Guanabara bus to Imperatriz. Imperatriz was the midpoint of the journey. The passage vendor was a corrupted bribe recipient and allowed all 5 warriors to enter the coach without any problem. Their trip was uneventful, until they got to the Imperatriz Policia Federal Rodoviaria checkpoint. Blake noticed that one of the raid groups, leaving the training enclave with them, was waiting patiently outside the police building for something. Blake disembarked from the bus and went over to talk to the leader of the group.
Blake learned that another group was inside the police building, being questioned, because the bribe taker was not there that day and a strange predator attendant was on duty. The attendant was a robot and could not be suborned. The detained group did not know what else to do but wait and hope more of their raiding party came through the checkpoint to notice their situation. There were 15 custodians now at the checkpoint, and it was just a matter of time before the predators discovered their weapons. More interrogators and custodians kept arriving. As Blake was talking with the outside group a helicopter with 8 more police arrived.
Four simian cops, two robots, a pilot and a co-pilot disembarked. Blake saw that there would be no choice but to engage the police in combat there and then. He walked back to the bus and told his four men to disembark and fall in with the other five warriors loitering outside the police building. The men did so, and the bus went on its way without them. Blake went back to the loitering leader and told him to prepare quietly and surreptitiously for a firefight. Blake told the people that were on the bus with him the same thing. All began quietly and surreptitiously to assemble their weapons.
Blake and another senior warrior hoped the five men inside the building would react quickly to the surprise attack and follow their compatriots’ lead. The element of surprise was not to be, however, as one of the newly arrived robots detected the smell of cannibal and also the electromagnetic profile of hidden ammunition on one of Blake’s cohorts. The robot walked directly and quickly over to the man whose ammunition it detected. Blake did not wait for any more proof of an opportune time to engage. He acted with three short bursts of his automatic. First, he blew the control module off the robot. Immediately, turning on his heel, he killed the helicopter pilot and co-pilot.
By the time he was engaging with the other cops, his men were also firing at all the outside predator agents. Inside the building one of the warriors, hearing the commotion, grabbed the weapon the attendant robot held and used it on the machine. His compatriots jumped to get their own weapons out from concealment and assembled. They fired on the surprised cops, but only after a costly delay. Cops killed two custodians while the custodians were still without assembled arms. Blake rushed into the building to engage the cops within and probably saved one or two of those slowest to get their weapons serviceable. Inside of two minutes all but four cops, one of which was a robot, were dead or inoperative. Estevan was also slow to get his weapon serviceable, but when he did get it so, he killed a cop ready to fire on him.
Axel got another one, and Isolo took out the robot. The last cop dropped to his knees to surrender and Carter cut him down the rest of the way. Blake looked around quickly and saw only a few assorted scared passengers, quivering with their hands folded into a petition position. Axel asked if there were any custodians among them. No positive responses were forthcoming. Carter checked them and found them all to be carrying embedded RFID chips. The quivering individuals were collaborators of predators, if not predators themselves, probably all death-worshipping religious slaves too. Within 30 seconds Carter had killed them all.
Blake yelled to Isolo to get the chopper ready. The helicopter was a Bell 212 and would easily handle 13 men. The aircraft was carrying a few crates of ammunition, though, and Blake did not want to dump it. He was concerned about the weight/balance envelope. It was some time since Isolo had piloted a helicopter, and he needed a few minutes alone with the technical & operations manual.
Isolo told Blake that he felt the fuel left in the tanks would get all of them to Belo Horizonte with lift off-hover and no danger of a stall included. Within 15 minutes everything was ready to depart. Carter and Estevan searched the entire area for survivors, until they were satisfied there would be no tales told. They only took two fresh livers for food use during the trip. When Isolo felt ready, he signaled all to embark.
He then lifted the chopper into a seat-of-the-pants examination hover and rose into the noonday sky. Blake was wondering if the predators had had time to communicate to their headquarters the ruckus at the rodoviaria way-station before they died. If so there would be hell to pay before the custodians made it to their Belo Horizonte destination. Yet, if the predators communicated that the assault took place while detaining people coming from the north, maybe there would be a search conducted only south of Imperatriz, leaving stragglers from the north with a needed break. There might even be curtailed ID checking at the Imperatriz way-station, due to the expected disorganized state of that checkpoint.
Brazil has always been a wild country, and the culture of freedom and lawlessness was only abridged by the Ashkenazi ZWO, not eliminated. There would be much incentive among native Brazilian functionaries to tut tut and do little more. Those custodians already past Imperatriz to the south would be long gone by the time the predator operation got going. Another thing in the custodians’ favor was that the predators did not know the raiders destination.
Blake could not communicate with his people on the ground, due to the ZWO’s overwhelming eavesdropping capacity. He could not warn his stragglers, therefore, about the situation on the BR near Imperatriz. They would need to improvise. Blake’s new group needed to leave the helicopter. Drones were much faster than rotorcraft, and the predators would soon be searching for it. That latter problem was solved, however, as Isolo was even then looking for a place to set the chopper down in Minas Gerais. There was no obvious pursuit that needed to be avoided as of yet.

In the state of Nature, there are more species practicing eugenics than those displaying altruism. There are more cannibalistic members than those electing to starve to death from hunger amid plenty. There are more rapists than affectionate mates, more pedophiles and homosexuals than natural selection needs, and more gratuitous sadism than natural culling warrants. The state of Nature is not as gentle a state as humans would choose, but it is an efficient machine that works perfectly. It “ain’t broke”, as the bromide goes.
Why does (what passes for Man) incessantly try to fix it with his inane religious morality, laws, chemicals, machines, castrating judgement, etc.? Nature is cruel but simians are brutal. The Laws corresponding to each are equally so. Both Nature and simians manifest a “Law of the Jungle”. Both are as economically Draconian as the situation will bear.
If palpable rewards are not involved, both honor and censure are meaningless sentiments. When one considers their source. . . monkey judgement, it is understandable. Nature is Entropy’s treacherous handmaiden. Without Her Life would not stand a chance. Protoplasm would be cast into a sea of mindless Brownian quivers and mass action.
Nature was the custodians’ Queen. It was to her that they felt they owed their allegiance. Treachery practiced against Her would be akin to allying with Entropy against Life. To act contrary to what would benefit Life signified to them the ultimate betrayal. It was predation.
Religious people often talk a good line, but they, especially death-worshipping Christians, are the first to condemn their fellow man for showing weakness. Weakness is a relative quality, inherent in all simians, and a characteristic of beauty everywhere. It is the main aspect of beauty which destroys. It compensates somewhat for our need to destroy beauty to survive. It cannot be avoided, as it is an heirloom from our ancestors. The bequest is one that we cannot refuse except on penalty of death. We cannot refuse life except by displaying disrespect for the original bequeather of the heirloom – Nature. Why things are this way is a question for which only the great sadist has an answer.
Weakness only becomes a problem when it endangers Life. When it does that, it must be eliminated. That is why Carter showed no mercy toward the petty predators at the Imperatriz checkpoint and, indirectly, why the Para’ CoC members did not bring down the Christians met on the way to Blake’s tribe. The same kind of mercy or its absence can be construed at different periods as weakness or strength. It depends on the circumstances.
Apart from Man, Nature settles such issues with dispatch. With Man and his casuistry, situations become complicated. The death-worshipping Christians on the road in Maranhao were not refused a well-deserved death because they were not weak, not perverted, or not collaborating. They were all three of the latter. They were spared because their deaths, at that time, might have brought adverse attention, jeopardizing the soy-association raid.
A man or woman of character must choose each battle. Entropy offers a panoply from which to select. The mission is the final arbiter for the custodian. The petty predators in Imperatriz went down before Carter’s weapon because, if they had lived, they would have betrayed facts that might also have brought the soy-association raid into peril. The soy-association raid was a Life and biosustainability issue. The petty predators in both cases were expendable collaborators, mere caedere pawns.
Biosustainability was paramount and the protected objective of the raid. Because of it, quite similar conditions (the existence of weak damaging death-worshipping predators) resulted in quite opposite custodial behaviors and outcomes (slaughter vs. survival).

Chapter Ten
Oxyfel pulled the boat closer to the shore. It was the morning of the fifth day after separating from Estevan, and Oxyfel was almost over missing his company. They were not the best of friends before the raid on their village. Being thrust together to survive made them closer the two days they were together on the run. That mutual esteem was wearing off, and Oxyfel knew he needed to stop thinking about him. He needed to save himself, using his own wits. He could not hope to find Estevan anymore. For all he knew, that guy shot on the bridge might have been him.
Yesterday, he and Amanda finished the last of the livers he took from the jeep-predators. The simian-style food provisions from the jeep were also gone and both fugitives were feeling the dearth. Oxyfel tied the boat to a tree root and went into the underbrush to look for some food. He found a partially ripe raceme of bananas and cut it down. A couple of ripe cacao fruits and a handful of tamarind pods also fell into his clutches. He returned to the boat with his scanty booty.
Amanda was grateful for the snack and immediately ate a banana. Oxyfel too ate a half-ripe banana slowly, thinking about something more substantial with which to calm his hunger sensations. Amanda was getting set to break open the cacao bean and suck on the seeds. She stopped, however, cacao fruit raised to strike on the boat’s gunwale. Oxyfel too didn’t fantasize any further. The reason for the disruption was that both heard voices and the sound of a tuk-tuk coming from down river. The fugitives stopped eating and got further into the underbrush, waiting & listening.
They then heard the tuk-tuk stop and oars begin banging. An anchor splashed into the water. Somebody was obviously planning to stay around the area for a while. It was not welcome news to the fugitives, but it was not unwelcomed either as hungry as they both were. Suddenly they heard a voice say.
“I tell you, Judge, the way things are going, we’ll be able to buy into the feedlot within a week and make a bundle.”
“I do believe you’re right, Mayor.” Judge replied. “All indicators point in that direction.”
“You just have to keep the prison supply company from prevailing over the contract prison.” Mayor said.
“That shouldn’t be a problem.” The Judge replied. “I made a call to the presiding judge on the case, last night, and he’ll get closer to it. They won’t make any headway against the prison, Mayor. We may even find some exposure in areas where we weren’t looking.”
“That’s great! Every new body the prison gets is a feather in our quiver with Brussels too.” Mayor said.
“On that note, we are not in much agreement.” Judge replied. “You need to understand that Brussels does not depend on us for slaves, especially not the one or two we send the prison every day. Brussels goes elsewhere for the lion’s share of warm bodies. It can pick up a hundred thousand permanent indentures in an afternoon if necessary.”
“Well. That last programmed massacre brought the number of potential prisoners way down, I’m sure.” Mayor replied. “I know the government needs to reduce population, and I’m not decrying that. But, it sure makes our procuring job more difficult.”
“I agree. But we can’t lean on that as an excuse. We need to make more laws that are easy to break.” Judge replied. “I can give Draconian sentences all day long, and I do, but I still need subjects before me to indenture.”
“Leave it to me.” Mayor said.
“I have my court to think about too.” Judge continued. “There are many lawyers that use my court, and they need clients. Without warm bodies for them to exploit, they do not prosper. Then, they complain to me.”
Mayor replied. “I’ve been looking into some old statute books we found in an abandoned warehouse. There are infractions there we have never enforced. They must have been copied and translated from North American statutes. I’ll make up a list of them and get it to you.”
“Fine. That brings up another point.” Judge said. “We must keep up rigorous enforcement. The value of an indenture goes down every month. The Ashkenazim are abominable penny-pinchers. You know, for decades Brazil was one of the freest states in the world, simply because the corruption in the courts did not allow strict enforcement of the Law. Other countries were way ahead of South America in apprehension and sentencing. The U.S.A. kept well over two percent of their citizens imprisoned and enslaved at all times for almost laughable offenses. The enthralled population was as docile as were Jews before the ovens. U.S. citizens even assisted the government in apprehension of their friends and neighbors, voluntarily! That country was a perfect example, an archtype, for the rest of the planet on what proper subjugation principles and practice can accomplish.”
“Interesting.” Mayor said. “I hope you understand. There’s not much more I can do in that regard right now. Look over the list of possible infractions I send you. Tell me which ones you think are amenable to prosecution. We must be pragmatic. In the meantime, we’re working on stricter zoning regulations in the occupied corridors. They’ll be nearly impossible to comply with. People love them too. Nothing pleases these animals more than losing their freedoms. The complaining old busybodies will bring a lot more people into your courtroom to dispose of. That should help your lawyer-client ratio.”
“You could do more in the buffer zones too.” Judge said. “Yesterday, I was in the 3rd ward and saw over twenty cops doing nothing. They could be mobilized to apprehend more bodies for the laws people break now. Don’t forget, Mayor. Laws are, and always have been, made only to more easily exploit the less-enfranchised and protect the wealthy from the poor. Right and wrong are only rationalizations for legal implementation. Such ridiculous concepts are as useful as excuses for legal involvement as they are for making total war. No matter how badly a case stinks, a little prevarication and a savvy lawyer will make it smell like a rose. Money and mind win every time. And, another thing. Your apprehending powers in the buffer zones are much greater than in the occupied corridors. The Ashkenazim have made that very clear in both their statutes and procedural law. No burden of proof is even necessary in protected areas or buffer zones.”
“I know.” Mayor said. “But many cops are afraid of offending Ashkenazim apprehendees by questioning their status.”
“I see.”
“And all are afraid of entering the buffer zones in small numbers.” Mayor explained.
“Why?”
“The anarchists.” Mayor replied. “The cops believe the cannibal tribes are growing in numbers. That sentiment makes apprehending sorties more difficult to plan and undertake.”
“That’s a ludicrous excuse, and an unfounded rumor. It’s not what I hear at all.” Judge riposted. “I was talking with a ZWO viceroy last week, and he said we’re making great headway against the CoCs. Their numbers and effects are dwindling rapidly. And besides, that’s what those cops get paid for! If they’re scared, or don’t want to collaborate, they can quit and go back to be with their unemployed cohorts in the population corridor!”
“You’re right.” Mayor said. “If they don’t want to collect prisoners for the state, they can become prisoners themselves. If the behavior you observed is becoming standard practice there, it must be corrected. I’ll look into it.”
The conversation diminished a bit as two pols took out their poles and began to fish for peacock bass. The silty water was not what the multicolored tucanare’ liked, but it was possible to catch them here near where a large black-water garipe’ entered the warmer main river. The conversation stopped, completely, as the men organized their gear. Oxyfel looked at Amanda. She surmised what he was planning to do and looked away. Two pols, at least one additionally contaminated with legal-degree poison, were too much for the custodian in the boy to resist.
Oxyfel’s youth and impulsivity made him so excited with the opportunity to bag a pair of heavy predators that he neglected to think about any potential security the pols might have brought along with them. He grabbed the automatic weapon and quietly placed the magazine in the weapon. Checking the operation and chambering a round made a distinctively threatening noise. The pols heard it.
Both looked in Oxyfel’s direction. As they did, he stood up in the boat and fired at them offhand. Judge fell dead in the boat and Mayor died while jumping out of it. Amanda began screaming during the attack and continued to do so after it ended. Oxyfel dropped the rifle in the boat and pushed his craft over to the pol’s boat with the pole.

Earlier, wanting to talk privately, the two pols had instructed their security to remain just out of an audible distance from them. It just so happened that that distance also was just around a slight bend in the river. High marsh grass obscured the security from Oxyfel’s view. Upon hearing gunfire, the alerted security made haste to investigate. Oxyfel was still in the hijacked boat, removing his knife to gut the judge, when the pols’ security bore down on him.
Seeing the carnage and the perpetrator behaving exactly like a custodian, the security agents wasted no time. They opened up on the two fugitives, spraying them and their watercraft with automatic weapon fire. They cut Amanda’s screaming short, and she sank down dead in the requisitioned boat without further ado. Oxyfel too took a few rounds and fell forward mainly in the stolen boat but with his head and arms on the gunwale of the dead pols’ boat. His belly hung suspended over the water as the fugitives’ boat began slowly sinking. Security immediately approached the boats from all sides except upriver. Finding one pol and Amanda without breath, they noticed Oxyfel still alive.
After the cops determined that the Judge and Amanda were truly dead, they looked for the Mayor’s body. They found it caught among the branches of a partially submerged fallen cashew tree. The security people removed the pol’s bodies from the boat & water and ensconced them neatly in the main security boat. As they did so, a cop asked his senior. “You want me to waste the cannibal?”
“Are you sure he’s a cannibal?” He answered.
“Yeah.” The cop said. “Stinks like a goat and no RFID.”
“That’s sufficient proof for me.” The senior man said. “Don’t off him. You know the Chief. He’s always bellyaching about us not bringing in enough prisoners. We’ll take the cannibal back for everyone to see us doing our job. If he dies en route, too bad. We can throw him in the river anytime.”
“Yeah. Good idea.” The junior cop said, jumping to collect the two fugitives’ bodies. “Prison Corp is supposed to pay a bonus for each criminal we provide. I think it’s true. It’s not much, but my pay stub’s bonus line has been smaller than ever since that last population reduction sweep.”
“One cannibal won’t increase it much.” The senior cop said.
“Better than just a normal bonus line or the bounty.” The junior cop said, taking ex-Amanda’s scalp for the bounty before allowing her body to slowly sink into the river with the bullet-perforated boat. Only the jacarei’ and the piranhas wanted her now.
They removed Oxyfel from the sinking boat and laid him on some rope, covering the security boat’s hold. The below-waterline bullet holes in the commandeered boat now allowed the vessel to sink completely. Ex-Amanda drifted away from the submerged boat. The current grabbed her and took the body downstream. The river soon foamed with the feeding frenzy ex-Amanda produced.
Oxyfel survived the trip back to the ex-Judge and ex-Mayor’s town. The hospital took thirteen slugs out of Oxyfel, leaving three inside, but he did survive the surgery. When he awakened, his wrists were handcuffed to the hospital cot, and a cop was sitting next to him. There were no flowers on the small table to which Oxyfel’s bed was attached. When the cop saw his charge was awake, he rang the nurse buzzer, and a woman appeared. When she left, the cop asked Oxyfel to what CoC he was attached.
“I don’t talk to monkeys.” Oxyfel answered. “Especially when they’re predator boot-lickers. Go to hell.”
The cop took offense at being termed a sycophant. He walked over to Oxyfel and struck the boy’s face with the back of his hand. Oxyfel didn’t yell, figuring it would do him no good. He just laid there and hated. The same scenario repeated frequently over the next few hours. Oxyfel wouldn’t talk. He knew nothing to betray anyway. The cops, however, wouldn’t accept his intransigence with equanimity. A lawyer came in and said, loud enough for Oxyfel to hear, that Oxyfel would be publically executed the next day. Oxyfel said, as loudly as his wounded musculature would allow, that it was better to be dead than to have to breathe the same air as Ashkenazi bootlicking carrion, lawyers, pols, and medical predators.
The next morning came and went without Oxyfel’s execution. Two more days passed, and the lawyer returned to say.
“You’re to be moved to the prison hospital. When you recover from your wounds you will be put to work in the camp for the rest of your life. If you tell us where your compatriots and other deluded people live, it will be better for you. Otherwise . . .”
“Otherwise . . . Fuck you!”

Back in Minas Gerais, Blake directed Isolo to set the chopper down in what appeared to be an abandoned quarry near Belo Horizonte. Not a moment too soon, because the helicopter ran out of fuel as its last hover ended. All thirteen warriors disembarked and spread out looking for possible spectators. There were none apparent, and the men set out on foot toward the nearest road. There was no way of knowing if the rest of the raiders made it past the various checkpoints or not. Blake was determined to make the rendezvous point, come what may.
A school bus came by and Blake commandeered it. He ordered the children out and forced the driver to take them into the city and the rendezvous point. Upon arrival, they discovered the group still in the process of arriving. Most had accomplished the journey without mishap. As the raid would take place immediately, Blake asked the driver whether he would prefer to die then or remain in the bus immobilized for a short time to later help remove them when they completed their business.
The driver did not know exactly what that business entailed, but he surmised it wasn’t a church social event. Either way, it was not a great sacrifice to elect to live a little longer if possible. The driver assured Blake that his loyalty could be counted on. Oh, how true he would be! Nothing! Not fire, nor wind, nor water, absolutely NOTHING would make him move to inform on them . . . (unless he could escape, of course). Blake let him live anyway, well tied.
Weapons ready, the custodians spread out around the impressive high rise building that had been represented as but a two-story hovel in Maranhao. It was much more daunting a prospect now. That was why they had repeated the attack so many times in their minds. The group tasked with protecting the escape route took positions near the building. They also had the responsibility for killing all would-be escapers.
Warriors still arriving were charged with obtaining retreat transportation. Much of it would be necessary to get all of them out of the raid objective’s environs and back to Maranhao. These late arrivals went out into the immediate area to procure retreat vehicles. They knew to return, with or without means of transportation, should they hear Blake’s regroup whistle or fail to hear continuous gunfire for a few seconds.
Blake looked at his men and said. “Top floor. Let none escape.”

Chapter Eleven
Fear enveloped Estevan like a cool wet blanket. His hands felt like cooked spaghetti wrapped around his automatic. But, he charged into the building with the others. Getting all to the top floor took five trips. After all five of the assault teams arrived, they kept the elevator immobile at the top floor. The carnage began as Blake opened up on the penthouse inhabitants. Within five minutes there were no survivors on the floor, and the group descended one story. Some went by elevator and some by stairwell.
The same scenario repeated itself on each lower floor, until they came to the tenth. As they piled out of the elevator they were met with a barrage of firing that brought down a number of warriors. A war-whooping Blake charged, firing continuously, into the thickest part of the fusillade. Rounds seemed to part company with each other, forming an envelope of impregnability around him, as he dove into the melee. His men, Estevan included, pursued him without thinking.
A number fell, but Blake and his troops moved on until all the resistance ceased. He ordered the surviving custodians to descend to the next floor and repeat the bloody behavior they enjoyed on the upper floors. He remained alone to send to another dimension those too seriously wounded to walk. When he finished his ablutions, he joined his men finishing up the carnage on the eighth floor. The knowledge of the raid’s occurrence must have got out since most of the lower floors of the building were now emptied of residents.
Blake made a cursory check of the floors between floors eight and five. Seeing no point in further “search and destroy” maneuvering, he let it be known that their mission was ending. It was time now to protect the orderly withdrawal. Blake sent two men down the stairwell and two down the elevator to test for resistance and spray the last of the fugitives trying to exit the building. There was no resistance.
The custodians rushed out of the building with guns drawn and ready to fire anyway. There, they encountered a small mountain of bodies in a somewhat orderly state of disarray. The rear-guard was busy while they waited for Blake and his men to return. The audio frequency was coming down, as the screaming had almost subsided by this time. It was now more of a low frequency moan.
Blake blew the regrouping whistle, and the first phase of the operation ended. The withdrawal protection group and the transportation acquisition group joined the assault team survivors. All entered the stolen vehicles and the school bus for the retreat to Maranhao. At each checkpoint on the BR north they were met with heavy resistance. Blake had advised, prior to the raid’s commencement, that resistance on the retreat might be excessive. If too much to negotiate then they were to disperse with every warrior for himself.
They were to return to Maranhao on their own at their own pace. He now told every squad leader, coming within shout-hearing distance to disperse as planned. Most men dug foxholes and disappeared into the night within their improvised spider-traps. For those not going to ground, there were many ambushes in between the checkpoints to weather. Drones darkened the sky. Driving frantically to escape one, Estevan saw Axel take a number of rounds. They appeared to enter into incapacitating regions. The wounded man fell and could not rise. Every few seconds Axel would take another round in his already wounded body.
Estevan drove his vehicle toward Axel’s position, but it was no use. Gunfire was so intense that it stopped him. Incoming rounds precluded further forward movement. He had to abandon the conveyance. While he was climbing out, Estevan saw Blake trying to get a good shot at Axel.
The area around which Axel fell was too obstructed and incoming fire so intense that Blake’s attempts were frustrated. It appeared to Estevan that Axel seemed to look at him and smile. It may only have been a grimace, but Estevan waved to Axel anyway. Axel waved back, just as Isolo’s round struck the wounded man in the head. That solved the problem for everyone. Isolo then commandeered a police car and got it moving toward Blake and Estevan.
Both men jumped in and Isolo made their escape. Most of the survivors got back to the tunnels in Maranhao with their lightly wounded at first light of the day following their exit. A few days later, most of those who ensconced in foxholes, until the search for them ceased, also returned. The operation had lost a quarter of its original force. Their mission was a qualified success, but, as Pyrrhic victories go, it came at a terrible price. There was no cause for celebration.
The nightly ZWO news reports said that the President and CEO of the soy-association had only been slightly wounded by shards of glass caused by a group of gun-wielding, drug-crazed junkies. The news reports showed no pictures of ZWO collaborators or soy-association executives. The CoC’s were not called rebels. All the perpetrators were said to have been either apprehended or killed. The media displayed the dead (junkies) custodians on the screen for all to see.
The unceremoniously ejected school children and the bus driver were paraded as heroes in front of the TV cameras for days. The government said there were one hundred thirty-five (junkie) custodian KIAs. Blake and the other headmen counted their KIAs at a total of thirty-five. That was still too much. There were now more than 60 women without partners and many fewer valuable custodians on the planet. The wailing of the women in the tunnels continued all night long for days.
The day after the last survivors of the retreating group returned, when the wailing subsided, Isolo brought two girls, an 11-year-old and a 13-year-old, to Estevan’s space in the tunnel, saying. “These are yours now, Estevan. Take good care of them.”
Estevan was at the age where curiosity about women was adequately satisfied by observing the oft-obscured regions. Perhaps touching the breasts and genitalia was pleasant. But, to be saddled with all the problems and unsavory attributes of reproductive age women in exchange for sexual liberties was excessive, and he replied. “What am I going to do with them?”
“What do men usually do with women?” Isolo queried. “You’ve proven you’re not a boy anymore. These girls need a man.”
“I don’t want them.” Estevan said. “Why don’t you take them?”
“I can’t.” Isolo replied.
“Why not?”
“How would that look, when it was . . . . well, you know . . .” Isolo faltered.
Then it all became clear to Estevan. The girls were dead Axel’s women. Estevan felt bad all over again. The life of a custodian was so hard, all risk and responsibility, and little fun. How can Life expect continued solace and protection from such an improbable existence? Now he had to take care of two girls, like he was a babysitter or something worse.
The other anarchists did not obsess over Estevan’s plight. They were in a similar position. Everyone knew there was tremendous ZWO democidal pressure on custodians to disappear. The super-predators did not care to face opposition to either their ecological devastation mania or their need to annihilate humanity. The CoCs were that opposition.
Custodians must both follow biosustainability & anarchistic principles, while reproducing rapidly, or humanity would fail. Caring for weak procreating women is a human responsibility, a non-profit situation. The other custodians were also accepting more women into their sphere of protection that they didn’t want or need.

Many criticisms were levied against the custodians’ attempt to collaborate with the state of Nature. None of these attempts were more criticized than the tribal practice of early mating. The overall accepted age of initial mating in Yanomami society was eleven years. Under Ashkenazi Law, the ZWO statutes, and western legal constraints, by definition, all Yanomami men were pedophiles.
The CoCs mimicked Yanomami society in many ways, and the Ashkenazi believed that if they could get the populace incensed against the aboriginal tribes they could transfer some of that hatred to the CoC tribes. It was a sound hypothesis, and the ZWO acted on it. They found a prominent Ashkenazi legal analyst and got him to ask a prominent Ashkenazi scientist whether he thought Yanomamis were different from current ZWO males.
“Of course not.” In a Soho bar, the scientist replied. “What normal heterosexual male would prefer an old woman of 35 to a young one of 12? The very thought provokes either laughter or exposes extreme self-deception. Persons not anthropologists or biologists feel pedophilia is an evil manifestation of illicit prurient degeneracy, a grievous lack of personal responsibility. To an honest biologist it is either an inexorable drive or a mechanism that a species resorts to as a way to survive adverse environmental conditions.”
The legal analyst said. “When the light of day shines on its occurrence it is considered to be an obscene anomaly, and punished rigorously.”
“I am aware of that.” The scientist said. “The brutal simian is found in all walks of life. Such brutality creates the legal proscriptions, the prosecutions, and the punishments both in the courts and out of them. Prison lore is rife with cruel stories about extra-judicial secondary gratuitous punishment of prosecuted pedophiles. Persons not given to indulge in pedophilia are often called decent, healthy, honorable, law-abiding, and other epithets geared to ameliorate the deprivation they must endure. The cause of most personal restraint, however, is but fear of pitiless castigation. It is not natural antipathy. The Yanomami culture has made that abundantly clear.”
“And that makes pedophilia right?!” The legal analyst asked. “You agree with the cannibals?!”
“What makes you think Yanomamis are cannibals?” The scientist asked.
“They’re tribal, aren’t th . . .” The legal analyst started to ask.
“You’re trying to put words in my mouth!” The scientist replied. “Those are unfair questions.”
The scientist’s conversation with the legal analyst was surrepticiously recorded and reported. Apparently, the university, where the scientist taught, did not feel they were unfair questions. The scientist’s statements and his ultimate recalcitrance embarrassed the university. As the legal analyst was somewhat of a media celebrity, the university demanded the scientist publically retract and recant everything he had said. His job appeared to be at stake, and he agreed to a large press conference. It was put in place, and the legal analyst again asked the scientist if he felt the cannibals were right or were criminal perverts.
The scientist replied. “In Yanomami society the practice of early marriage is neither criminal nor perverted. Nature has many strange habits. When the tribe or certain members of it are under stress the drive for procreation amplifies. At around 3.5 – 4 years postpartum a female Homo sapiens sapiens simian is often as biologically capable of becoming a mother, as it is of becoming a human. A marginal drive to procreate gets heavily manifested during times of over-population, genocides, or resource exhaustion. In other societies, sodomizing of young boys can also be a response to over-population survival pressures but for reasons of negative procreation.”
The legal analyst said. “There are many injustices and much pain caused by natural proclivities. That is unquestionable.”
The scientist replied. “Simians make the situation worse, however, with their brutality and by trying to force these inclinations to disappear. Subjects of pedophilia prosecutions are fully aware of the consequences of their constitutive and illicit behavior. They often kill their child victims to escape Draconian castigation and extra-judicial punishment.”
“Does pedophilia occur in Nature’s non-simian creations?” The legal analyst asked.
“Frequently.” The scientist replied. “It is handled with nearly as much lack of finesse as it is with the simian response to the peculiar drive.”
“And how is that?” The legal analyst queried. “Do I detect some dissatisfaction with the ZWO’s legal position vis a vis pedophilia?”
“Pedophilia epitomizes the very most powerful drive in Nature both for the individual and the species. In modern society, lacking control of that compulsion translates into a tragic weakness. Victims of pedophilia are often brutalized. Pedophilia perpetrator prosecutions are equally as brutal. Both victim and perpetrator, simian and non-simian, may die from the assaults. The one prevailing difference between the simian and the “state of nature” response is that in the simian behavior the brutality does not end with the attack but continues for the life of the victims and beyond.”
“You find that reprehensible?” The legal analyst asked.
“Yes, I do.” The scientist replied. “Simians, in their obsession with the practice of ritualized brutality enjoy stigmatizing natural drives and making them criminal. They believe they can legislate Nature away. This obsession is even coded over time into a great moral farce, an extreme injustice known as “Written Law”.”

The legal analyst is now a much sought-after consultant with the special Ashkenazi Court System. The university no longer employs the scientist. He makes a small living collecting jungle butterflies and lives platonically with Matanawa, a 12-year-old Yanomami girl.

It made Estevan feel some better when they heard a few weeks later that another conglomerate was buying the much-devalued stock of the now near-defunct soy-association. While Blake’s group had been attacking the high rise in Minas Gerais, the local CoCs, near the jungle-turned-farmland, were attacking the soy field operation. These tribal vindicators wiped out all the slash/burn workers and the local exploitative management. The new multinational company was sufficiently aware of the sting of both these attacks, and it was now reorganizing to reflect a new and different focus in another country. The new multinational stock holders were fiscal cannibals and only cared about the disembodied assets of the soy corporation.
They announced to the world that they were going to let the land go back to jungle, trading it for ZWO debt clemency. They would dissociate themselves of all unsustainable forest investments. The custodians won a major battle. There was a certain amount of satisfaction felt for a job well done, but the wounds were still raw for many custodians. And too, the human race and Life on the planet were still at risk. There were many predators and death-worshippers to remove before any respectable number of sighs of relief would be heard.
About a week after presenting Estevan with Axel’s widows, Isolo came to where Estevan was refurbishing Axel’s tunnel home for himself and his women. Isolo asked Estevan if he wanted to go hunting with him. Estevan asked what kind of hunting, and Isolo said that there was a medical doctor in a nearby town that was performing Caesarian sections where they were not indicated and many other surgeries where none were desirable. He was prescribing anti-cancer drugs to dying people, (keeping sick people alive whose bodies wished to die), accepting many gifts from pharmaceutical companies to push their products, etc.. The quack was one of the typical parasites that comprise 98% of the medical profession, a pure predator but nothing special.
The population corridors were replete with these predators. Isolo singled this one out because of the gravity of the predation, the frequency, and the ease of performing the eradication. These subhuman medical parasites possessed ZWO-licenses to swindle weak sick people, shill for the banks & drug companies, and sell toxic drugs along with false hope. Most of the drugs and surgery that these doctors prescribed made their patients sick, or sicker, and kept them that way. They were choice targets for custodial raiding parties.
Medical predation resulted in a malaise in society and in all Life. Three out of eight ZWO citizens were addicted to prescription opioids. In the populated corridors alone people spent 20% of their income on medical matters. Doctors assisted in giving Life in general auto-immune diseases. That is what human predation is.
Predators in general were planetary auto-immune diseases. They were killing everything slowly. Most human predation was socially accepted. It was rationalized so much into society that people were blinded to its existence and affects. Even the contemporary language created words & idioms that euphemized the affects of human predation.
The office of the medical doctor in question was located in a professional building containing lawyers and medical doctors along with a smorgasbord of assorted planetary auto-immune diseases. Isolo wanted to raid the building, rob the inhabitants, and kill as many of the predators as possible. It seemed like a good idea, but Estevan was not interested. He was still relatively traumatized from the equivocal results of the recent high-rise raid. Plus, he wanted to finish altering his new “house” so that he could go looking for Oxyfel. Isolo pressed him and said if Estevan would help him kill and loot the predators he would help Estevan look for Oxyfel.
Estevan thought about the proposition for a while and agreed to do it. He knew Isolo was getting low on meat and caedere resources for his four wives. It was only later that Estevan learned Isolo had approached others in the CoC. They all turned him down, being nearly as weary of battle as Estevan. Estevan was very young and, on that account, had been reluctant to seek their prior advice.

As soon as the danger of wound infection ended, Oxyfel found himself hauled into the courtroom of an Ashkenazi appointed judge. The judge ordered Oxyfel’s forehead to be branded with a 9cm X 9cm letter “C”. The “C” stood for “Convict”, not “Custodian”. After the branding, he was sent to work in the swamps and garipe’s of Amazonia. The ZWO needed lumber, and the convicts were expected to provide it. Of course, the Ashkenazi overlords’ ecological propaganda was diametrically opposed to such behavior.
Like their fractional-banking money, safe financial systems, just wars, etc., ecological motives were only another Ashkenazim scam. They never intended to make their ZWO biosustainable. They were out to exploit and rape simians and Nature for all that they were worth to them. When Nature or the simian population made that difficult, they bypassed Nature or removed the simians. As the planet became increasingly sterile, the problems did too. It was a direct proportion.
Entropy is a very jealous god, however. “Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” goes the Pentateuchal quote. Nature’s limited-agreement with Entropy did not stipulate Nature’s unlimited permission to restrict disorder just because of Her mistake in creating an intelligent but bull-headed creature. It was more like an “in consideration of marriage” contract. Something would have to give soon. No way could it end with Entropy in the losing position.

Chapter Twelve
The living quarters that the predators provided Oxyfel were not bad. Convicts built the dwellings for convicts, so they were as acceptable as the convicts could make them with the time and materials the Ashkenazim provided. The cabins kept the elements out, but not the insects. Mosquitoes killed relentlessly, and only the youngest and strongest prisoners survived in the camps. The Ashkenazim provided food and water. The food was usually what the rest of the world had in surplus (like garbage) and the water was Amazon garipe’ or swamp water.
Oxyfel did not do too bad for the first few months. His wounds got better, and his work load was not brutally severe. He talked with some of the other convicts and remembered their stories. None mentioned escape. Every time he brought it up, his interlocutor got up and moved away.
Such talk, apparently, was a forbidden subject. Once, about four months after he arrived at the camp, the predators brought in a convict, brutally beaten. The man was caught in a buffer zone after having tried to escape. He died from his injuries soon after being tied out in the rain all night. One of the convicts, Oxyfel had tried to talk to about escape, walked past Oxyfel and said. “Now you see why we don’t talk about escape?”

Leaving his new wives to their old digs, Estevan joined Isolo at the edge of the current encampment. Isolo advised Blake earlier that they would be raiding in the next town. He also counseled Blake to expect his and Estevan’s absence in helping to prepare for a possible retaliatory search and destroy mission by the predators. Isolo said he would leave indicators of his past presence leading away from the Blake’s CoC village. The two raiders planned to be out in the countryside searching for Oxyfel and company. Since he and Estevan would be retreating, post-raid, to the west of the CoC, there should not be a problem. But . . . shit happens.
Blake knew Isolo was very bright and proactive. His type of custodian was needed for biosustainability. As dangerous as Isolo’s behavior was to the tribe, all local tribes, Blake felt it was more dangerous to let the predators have laissez faire to parasitize the planet. Biosustainability doctrine was very clear. It maintained that big bankers, medical doctors, pols, and lawyers were an abomination on the planet. Plus, Blake could not let Isolo’s women starve. Sharing food with those obligated to forage, but who neglected to do so, was a form of socialism not accepted by the Communities of Consensus.
The raid was so near their current encampment it would be unnecessary to send forward observers out as Blake had done with the Minas Gerais raid. Isolo and Estevan would simply steal a vehicle on the BR 316 and ride it into the town. If the driver was a proficient predator, like a pol or big banker, they would kill it, taking the liver for provisioning and the RFID chip for camouflage. If the driver was a small predator, like a common death-worshipping Christian, Jew, or Muslim, they would use it to assist them in proceeding to their destination. Later, depending on the situation, they would decide the parasite’s fate.
Sometimes, custodians allowed their humanity to show, bestowing mercy on a fellow simian, and relinquishing a nutritious snack. The ZWO could destroy the billions of small predators at their own convenience. They didn’t need CoC help. The super-predators were showing the world that they were quite capable of massacring millions, while custodians needed all the help they could get. It was only good guerrilla doctrine.
Isolo and Estevan’s destination was in the same town that executed Estevan’s father. After so little time having passed, arriving there would mean many things to Estevan and elicit many sentiments. As the two custodians approached the road into town, they found a farmer on his knees with a shovel in his hand, looking in the direction of BR 316. The man was apparently hiding in a terrain depression within a small field of beans, corn, rice and manioc. The field was a familiar scene found all over Maranhao’s population corridor.
These small plots of land were rented from Ashkenazi landlords. Small farmers, as petty free-market capitalists, were almost non-predatory, surviving as quasi-custodians. Just trying to find food and potable water was a challenge on a dying planet. It obligated every normal simian to a certain amount of parasitism. As enemies of the custodians, small farmers were the least dangerous of the many that the anarchists faced.
Isolo and Estevan came upon the farmer from behind, surprising the fellow. The man jumped up out of the declivity and tried to run. Isolo grabbed him and set him back down, asking.
“Why are you in such a hurry, and why were you hiding?”
The man lied. “I wasn’t hiding.”
“Sure looked that way to me.” Estevan said. “Tell us why you’re in trouble or you’re in bigger trouble?”
“I wasn’t hiding, really I wasn’t.” The farmer said. “I was waiting for someone, and I didn’t want them to see me first.”
“Sounds serious.” Isolo said.
“Sounds like hiding.” Estevan said. “Why did you want to surprise them?”
“I . I. I.” The farmer stammered.
“Out with it, man!” Isolo said, putting his knife to the man’s throat. “You only die once.”
“Please don’t kill me. I have children and animals that will starve.” The farmer begged. “I was only waiting, hoping to learn what will happen to my farm when the men come here to look at it.”
“Why are men coming to look at it?” Estevan asked.
“Last year I did not make enough on my crop to pay my seed bill and rent too. I spent the money on seed, and the crop failed during the drought.”
“Why didn’t you water it by hand?” Isolo asked.
“The garipe’ dried up, and my well got salty.” The farmer explained. “I had to walk four kilometers to the nearest water that wasn’t brackish. Then, I had to borrow a little water from the lawyer that owned the source. He caught me, and put me in the pre-camp for a month. When I got out, I found that my crop had died. I was also broke. Now that same lawyer is coming to appraise my land and tools. The land is rented, so I only lose my livelihood for a while. But, he will sell my tools to pay my fine. How will I ever acquire new tools? I have no money, no credit. We will starve.”
“How do you know he’s coming today” Estevan queried.
“He told me so, yesterday, by email.” The farmer answered. “He said he was bringing along his legal associates to serve me with eviction papers from the land. He said he also wanted to see if my tools are worth what I owe in penalties for stealing his water.”
“That doesn’t explain why you were hiding.” Isolo said, removing his knife from the farmer’s throat.
“I think it does, Isolo.” Estevan said. “He’s been trounced so much he’s become afraid to be seen by predators, not to mention avoiding the forfeits.”
“Yeah. You’re probably right.” Isolo said, turning to the farmer, saying. “Do you know who we are?”
“No.” The farmer replied. “But, I know what you are.”
“What are we?” Estevan asked.
“You’re anarchists.” The farmer replied.
“How do you know?” Estevan asked.
“You. you . . .”
“We stink?!” Isolo asked.
The farmer hung his head and then nodded.
“He’s telling the truth, Isolo.” Estevan said. “Just not a connoisseur of fine fragrances.”
“Can’t really off someone just because they aren’t as savvy about fine perfume as Coco Chanel, now can we?” Isolo said. “What, indeed, are we going to do with him?”
“We can’t let him go.” Estevan said. “He’ll testify that he saw us.”
Isolo said. “Probably even disparage our taste in scents.”
“How can that hurt you?” The farmer asked. “You’re already felons . . . outlaws. Anyone can kill you that wants to.”
“I was thinking of you, my good man. You know we’re custodians.” Isolo said. “You will admit you knew we were custodians and outlaws. It’s forbidden to even talk to us. You did. You talked to us. And, you will be so scared . . . when they find the bodies of your lawyer friends . . . on your land . . . due to your invitation. . .”
“They’re not my friends!” The farmer replied, as Isolo dug his sandal toe into the dirt.
“And, they didn’t come here by my invite!” The farmer continued, looking at Estevan, as Estevan also dug his sandal toe into the farmer’s dirt.
“And . . and . . and what do you mean “the bodies”. . ?” The farmer stammered.
“They’ll say it was a conspiracy. . accessory. . . You know the drill. Wham, bam, goddamn hit the slam . . mer.” Estevan said.
“You’re screwed, man.” Isolo mocked. “They’ll hang you higher than Haman. We might as well kill you along with them. Save you some time.”
“Oh no, please.” The farmer pleaded. “Let me take my chances with them.”
Isolo looked at his toe in the dirt and shook his head very slowly, and Estevan looked at Isolo and asked. “Do you want him to turn around?”
Isolo didn’t answer, and Estevan asked. “Well, Isolo? Are you not paying attention? Do we kill him now or what?”
“Please, don’t kill me.” The farmer begged. “I’ll do whatever you say.”
“No.” Isolo said. “We must. You’ll run, while we’re cleaning your land of vermin for you.”
“Ingrate!” Estevan said, looking at the farmer in feigned disgust. “After all we’re doing for him, he treats us this way.”
“Aye, Estevan.” Isolo said. “Ingratitude it is. No doubt about it. “Marble-hearted . .” ”
“No. I’m not ungrateful.” The farmer countered. “I’ll help you kill them, or at least I would if I had a weapon.”
“WHAT!? You don’t have a weapon?!” Estevan exclaimed. “How do you protect your children?”
“The police are . . .” The farmer replied.
“The POLICE!” Isolo screeched.
“Coco thinks police will protect him, Isolo.” Estevan said. “A cop lover! Do you believe such criminal naiveté in this day and age?”
“Tsk, tsk. And such treachery! After all we’ve done for him. Appalling, it is. What we have here is a perfidious babe in the woods.” Isolo said. “It’s just too much. Kill him, and let’s be on our way.”
Estevan raised his knife from his belt and walked over to the crying farmer but stopped short of cutting the man’s throat, saying. “Wait, Isolo. I have a better idea.”
“What could possibly be better than offing a predator to alleviate our risk?” Isolo asked, feigning simple-mindedness.
“We can use him as a distraction, Isolo.” Estevan said. “And we’ll make him an accomplice at the same time. Coco knows he won’t be able to snitch on us without snitching on himself too.”
“He might warn them, ahead of time.” Isolo said.
“If he does, he dies along with them.” Estevan said.
“I don’t know, Estevan.” Isolo said. “I think he’ll betray us.”
“I won’t. I won’t.” The farmer pleaded. “They’re my enemies. They’re everyone’s enemies. I want to kill them too. I just don’t have the courage.”
While they were talking, a large black car drove by the field and stopped. Three men got out and began walking toward the farmer and his companions. The question of the farmer’s fate was thus determined by the farmer himself who walked up to the lawyers and said. “I’ve brought my attorneys along with me. Anything you want to say to me you can say to them. Whatever they tell me to do, I will comply with their instructions.”
Lawyers are always happier dealing with persons that have a long-standing familiarity with corrupt and avaricious legal “ethics”. They feel no shame when scheming with other persons who have also always confused pomposity with dignity. The three black-car lawyers smiled, and the farmer’s adversary said. “That’s fine. I’m sure we can work out a plan acceptable to all parties.”
The farmer turned and motioned to Isolo and Estevan to come forward. Both of the custodians stepped forward in unison, until they were about a meter from the lawyers. The farmer’s enemy lawyer was about to speak, when Isolo asked. “Are you all lawyers?”
They nodded, and one of them pointed to another, saying. “He’s also a circuit court judge.”
The judge, pointing at Estevan, and saying to all his companions. “They don’t look like lawyers. They’re dressed like beggars. I’ve never seen any of them in my court. That one is way too young to even be out of law school. What’s going on here?”
Isolo looked at Estevan as if impressed and said. “Did you hear that, Estevan? A judge. We struck pay dirt today, didn’t we?”
“It would certainly appear that way, wouldn’t it?” Estevan said.
“I don’t understand.” The farmer’s nemesis said. “You are expecting to gain much because of us?”
“Absolutely.” Isolo replied. “That car alone is a prize. It will take us into town without problems and hostility. Once there, it will protect us from satellite observation and terrestrial surveillance cameras. I’m sure everyone in Law Enforcement knows the judge’s car.”
“You’re anarchists!” The judge shouted, turning to run, as the third lawyer jumped at Isolo.
“Aw, shucks!” Isolo said. “Was it my cologne, or something I said?”
Estevan pulled out his pistol and shot all of the black-car three before Isolo could get his knife disengaged from the third lawyer’s intestines.
The farmer sank to his knees, vomiting, as Isolo looked at Estevan and said. “Nice work, Estevan. I was jacking my jaws, with piths of Socratic wisdom, but you didn’t let it distract you in the least.”
“It’s all in a day’s work, Isolo.” Estevan said. “Do you want to haul all three with us into town or just the livers?”
“I don’t know, Estevan. Just a minute.” Isolo said. “Can you drive, Coco?”
“Yes.”
“Help us schlep these ex-predators into the trunk of their ex-car, and we’ll all go into town.” Isolo said. “Are you hungry, Estevan?”
“Famished, Isolo.”
“I am too.” Isolo said.
“Coco feels he would like to become a custodian now too.” Isolo said. “He likes our fragrance.”
“I would? I do?”
“Yes, you would, do, or . . . you become our brunch.” Estevan said, as he cut out the farmer’s ex-foe’s liver and handed a lobe of it to the farmer, saying. “Chew on that! You must be hungry, the way you were just wasting your breakfast over there.”

Isolo knew they would be under visual surveillance and subject to audio observation immediately upon entering the town or before. If anything looked suspicious to the predator police, the drones would drive the cannibals to the curb. Predator police would swarm out like bees (Brazil still had some feral bees for comparison purposes) to besiege the custodians. Both of the custodians knew what that meant, and Isolo was determined to avoid it at all costs. If their safety depended on relinquishing the mission, he was prepared.
But, if any way existed to pull it off, even a poor risk of escape, he would give it his all. The lawyers’ black vehicle minimized the risk a great deal. Many suspicions would be laid to rest, betrayed by habit. Managing his terror well, the farmer drove the car with caution, making no attention-flagging maneuvers. The two custodians found the building that contained the quack and told the farmer to stop directly in front of the entrance.
The custodians adjusted the farmer’s desire to flee. Then, with the farmer sandwiched between them, the threesome made short work of removing the predator from his prospective patients. The building was a one-story edifice, and it took only ten minutes for the three to remove surveillance devices, and murder every predator and collaborator, located therein. When they finished the job, they ransacked the building and its contents for caedere wealth, stuffing their soon-to-stiffen victims in storerooms.

Chapter Thirteen
Quickly mopping the bloody floors, they threw the dirty mop in a storeroom with an ex-predator. All three then jumped into the car, and Isolo told the farmer, now well-traumatized, to take them out of town. The farmer did as he was told. As they approached the bridge where Isolo met Estevan for the first time, Isolo asked the farmer if he would have any problem getting home from their current position or did he want to come along with his new associates. The farmer said he would be glad to part company at that point and moved as if to exit.
“Hold on, Coco.” Isolo said, handing some silver sticks to the man. “Unless there was some surveillance in the office building of which we are not aware; you are not under any suspicion by the preds. You need fear not. No one saw you in town. We will never betray you. Take this loot. You earned it. Walking, you will be back with your family by tomorrow. Be careful about straying into any buffer zones or stay off the road tonight after curfew. Say nothing to anyone about what happened to you today. When the cops come to question you, you tell them the lawyers never arrived to meet with you as they said they planned to do. You never saw them or the black car. I’m sure no one saw us together to contradict your story. If they did, deny it. All the surveillance cameras and tapes are here with us. Use the loot sparingly, and you’ll be fine. If you snitch on us. It will do you no good, only serve to implicate you with your own words. They will kill you and all your family for what you yourself said you did. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Isolo.”
“You understand also that we cannot let you use the car to get home?” Estevan said. “When they find it, the preds will suspect the perpetrators are nearby and start investigating.”
“Yes, Isolo.”
“We’ll get rid of it, and these three professional thieves in our trunk, a long way from your farm and your family.” Isolo said.
Estevan pushed the man out and said. “We may meet again, Farmer. Good luck.”
Isolo accelerated. The last they saw of the farmer was in the rear-view mirrors. He was looking back, watching them moving away. It must have been the most exciting day of his life. He obviously wanted no part of a life that promised a replay.
Isolo said. “The last time you saw your friend was right about here, I believe.”
“No.” Estevan said. “Axel said it was the last time he saw who he thought was my friend. But, I believe he did too.”
“So.” Isolo said. “We get rid of this car and begin searching for your friends? Sound like a plan?”
“Yeah. Just one was my friend though, Isolo. His name was Oxyfel.” Estevan said. “He was from my village. The woman was a pred we picked up on the trail.”
“Could that be dangerous?” Isolo asked.
“I don’t know.” Estevan said. “We saved her life from the cops but, who knows?”
“I think we should move down river.” Isolo said. “That’s the last direction in which we think they were moving, and it may lead to clues to their location. Plus, it will furnish a spot to hide the car.”
“Only if you do a better job of car-drowning than I did on my last trip along this road.” Estevan admitted.

Oxyfel, with five other convicts, picked up a fallen tree and delivered it to the mill path. The tree would serve as a roller bearing or skid to deliver the bigger trees to the saw blade. As they returned into the forest, they approached a small clearing. Prisoners often congregated here, when guards were not too close. The man that was on the opposite end of Oxyfel’s log asked. “Is it true you’re a cannibal?”
“I’m a custodian.” Oxyfel replied. “That usually obligates me to be anthropophagic.”
“You eat the food here that the Zionists provide.” He said. “Doesn’t that go against your religion?”
“I have no religion, unless you consider biosustainability to be a religion.” Oxyfel answered. “And, the alternative here is certain death.”
“Seems like a betrayal of your beliefs to me.” The convict replied.
Oxyfel countered. “Perhaps. I think it’s because you neither understand the biosustainability ethic nor caedere wealth. I’m still young. Biosustainability will not be promoted by my throwing my life away. I’m serving biosustainability by staying alive now to serve again in a greater capacity some other day. I am also not hoarding any caedere wealth I receive from these predators.”
“You have purpose. “Another convict said. “I can see that. People say that you cannibals believe that if a person has an objective, a mission, then that person is a human being. Others are just monkeys. Is that so?”
“Yes.”
“I guess you would say I’m a monkey.” The man said. “I only want to survive, or can that be a mission?”
Oxyfel replied. “I don’t think so. Everyone, every living thing, wants to survive. So, it renders no distinction. It’s like the death-worshippers. They say they want to die and go to heaven. That can’t be a mission either since death happens to everyone.”
“What can a mission be, then?” The man asked.
“A mission is a dream that you want to realize, an aspiration.” Oxyfel said. “An objective that gives your life meaning and makes you responsible.”
“Like what?”
“Well. If you just dreamed of having a house. That would not be a mission. That would be a fantasy, like believing in a heaven or a hell. If you set about planning to acquire a house, that would be a mission. Not a big one, but a mission. If you wanted to build a palace. That would be a mission too, and an even bigger one. You would be more human the bigger and more difficult the objective or the more responsibility you choose to accept.”
“And what is your mission?” The man asked.
“I work to further the cause of ending both the ZWO and the rape of the planet.” Oxyfel said. “I have dedicated my life to that realization. I work to see anarchy and biosustainability reign supreme, if that isn’t an oxymoron.”
“I guess I’m almost a human.” The man said. “I also want to see the end of the ZWO. The Ashkenazim murdered my whole family during one of those directed-energy massacres to reduce population. I only survived by living in a buffer zone, until they caught me.”
“Do you dream of revenge?” Oxyfel asked.
“Without a doubt.” The man said.
“What is your name?” Oxyfel asked.
“Blader.” He replied.
“Well. Congratulations, Blader.” Oxyfel said. “You are indeed almost a human.”
“Really?”
“Yes.” Oxyfel said. “But to be a real and valuable human being you must have more than just a fantasy to rely on. You must act on your dream so that it is not just a fantasy. It must be a beacon for your life.”
“That takes courage.” Blader said.
“Yes, it does.” Oxyfel agreed. “And accepting responsibility.”
“I was thinking of committing suicide,” Blader said. “I can’t handle much more of this life.”
“Why waste your life? If you want to die, kill a predator. Others will kill you, and you’ll be free.” Oxyfel asked. “Or, are you religious?”
“Yes.” Blader replied. “I am.”
“Homicide is a sin, no?” Oxyfel asked.
“Yes.” Blader replied.
“Isn’t suicide a sin too?” Oxyfel asked.
“Yes, it is.” Blader replied.
Another man, everyone called Poesy, because he was a prison poet, overheard the conversation and said. “That’s bullshit! Suicide is not a bad deed or even a display of weakness if it is undertaken to eliminate pain or tends to reduce suffering. It’s not a sin.”
“I disagree.” Another convict said. “It’s madness.”
Poesy said. “Ahh. Madness. What is that? A splash of virtual reality where it doesn’t belong? We’ve all been put here as some kind of experiment. We’re lab rats, here to see how much suffering we can endure, before we break. We all break in the end. Suicide is just a breaking of the will before the body.”
“It’s weakness, cowardice.” A convict added.
“A sad fact of existence.” Poesy said. “The greatest and most beautiful human minds are also the most fragile.”
“I don’t think suicide is crazy.” Blader said. “I think it’s depression too deep to control.”
“And depression is not madness?” A convict asked.
Poesy said in reply. “Seeing the world as it is isn’t depressing?”
“Yes. I guess it is.”
“So, reality is madness?” Poesy asked.
“Paradox.”
Poesy said. “The responses to the appearance of reality are variegated. What if a large percentage of depression isn’t disease, but symptomatic of growing wisdom? Whatever. Sadness and madness are lovers, walking hand in hand along the road of despair and dashed dreams, into the village of suicide.”
The man who said suicide was madness said. “Suicides go to Hell.”
“Oh, that’s really bright.” Blader said. “It’s madness that puts people in Hell?!”
“Life is Hell, driving us mad.”
“Madness protects from Hell.” Another convict said.
“Hell doesn’t exist.” Oxyfel said.
“Oh, Hell exists, Oxyfel. It is here.” Poesy said, stamping his right foot on the ground. “Hell is a condition of life which allows our reason to neglect the existence of ignorance and weakness, leading us to effect actions which bring on horrible consequences. Retributions arrive that we never intended to have occur but for which we must pay with incredible, unrelenting, nearly unbearable suffering. Since we believe we alone are responsible and but did it to ourselves, the pain is especially severe, demeaning, and interminable. Because there is no way to expunge the unfortunate deed, retrospection and each evolving day only adds more trauma to the suffering. Life is truly Hell.”
Oxyfel said. “Shakespeare said. “And sometimes we are devils to ourselves, when we will tempt the frailty of our powers, presuming on their changeful potency.””
“Sort of, but you got my meaning, Oxyfel. The bard puts the blame clearly on us, however.” Poesy said. “I can’t see that. Only people with their eyes closed believe in free will. . . It’s of no matter. Either way, life is Hell on Earth.”
“We’re in Hell.” Blader said. “That’s for sure.”

A few days later Blader said to Oxyfel. “There is a guy here that said you mentioned escape to him.”
“I may have done so.” Oxyfel said. “I have indeed asked about it.”
“Be careful what you say to these people.” Blader said. “There are many snitches among us. Capitalism, you know.”
“Yes.” Oxyfel agreed. “I guess it was foolish to speak about such things without knowing well to whom I was speaking.”
“Well.” Blader said. “Now you know. “Sin no more”.”
The more Oxyfel thought about his situation the more he wanted to escape, regardless of the consequences of capture. Most of the convicts, among whom he rubbed shoulders, were simple simians and religious nonentities. The ZWO captured them in the act of some petty crime. Possession of prohibited substances or illicit resource procuration put most convicts under ZWO tutelage. They knew nothing of jungle survival or the killing of other simians for food.
Most believed in, but did not practice, something vaguely resembling the teachings of Jesus Christ, church-adulterated. Except for the meat their bodies had to offer, they represented no worth beyond that of slave labor. Their religion itself served as a drug. It appeared to Oxyfel as a philosophy made for slaves. They accepted their servitude with alacrity as if it were their chosen lot in life. In addition to ZWO brutality and neglect, these irresponsible and cowardly people were the cause of most of Oxyfel’s impatience with imprisonment. He now understood the necessity for rigorously controlling his need to communicate. Special favors and capital privileges recompensed any convict that informed on its fellows.
These constraints left Oxyfel no recourse but to research, on his own, all possibilities for escape. He watched silently, observing all comings and goings of guards and convicts. Oxyfel even let himself get picked for the most arduous tasks if they were near buffer zones. There, he could see first-hand how the ZWO controlled their slaves’ observance of freedom and how it prevented escapes. Oxyfel made himself visible but never volunteered for these jobs. The young cannibal made it seem as if he was just unlucky to have been picked for them.

Isolo ditched the black car in the river, and the car sank below water-level without even the suggestion of an obligatory push. Estevan’s sincere envy of such prowess was obvious, as he said. “I’m going to have to take lessons from you in car drowning, Isolo. I can’t even see the roof.”

“You’ll learn.” Isolo replied, smashing the remains of the surveillance camera and tapes from the office building. Throwing the broken pieces in a tatu’ hole, he said. “Let’s go. We need to get underground before night falls. We’re in a zone, and if they get wind of our movements after curfew we can kiss our fragrant behinds goodbye.”
Buffer zones did not look much different than prohibited corridors. The border was often more political than physical or ecological. The ZWO used the prohibited corridors as its own personal farmland with principals having privileged access, and slaves having obligatory access. Buffer zones contained predators, their predatory agents, persons with wide-ranging rights of access, and fugitives. No one could legally enter a buffer zone without ZWO permission and an RFID chip installed. To do so, and be caught doing so, was to be shot or find oneself placed rapidly in a prohibited corridor, branded, and in chains.
Although Isolo and Estevan were in a buffer zone, they were still a long way from the prohibited corridor of Oxyfel’s privileged position. They began their search for Oxyfel and Amanda at a four-night float-journey upriver of the point where Oxyfel was captured. Estevan and Isolo were unaware of his capture, of course. Like freebooters, they walked through the jungle, looking for clues to his whereabouts. At times, they took a chance on the road, furtively looking for predators and death-worshippers to kill and eat. The first night they dined on a vacationing doctor’s meat. They ate him raw, throwing his remains in the morning into the sandy ex-jungle soil of their abandoned foxholes.
Palm leaflets and chiririka vines, twisted and filled with other local jungle vegetation, covered their foxholes as if a spider-trap was the objective. Isolo showed Estevan where to dig his foxhole and how to make the spider-trap covering. Should unwanted visitors or predators come near, the vegetation lid could be raised ever-so-slightly to observe the impending invasion. The raised lid was virtually invisible to any approaching predator. Many custodians could even boast of taking down predators, under such surroundings, when the unaware predator was less than a meter from the concealed custodian.
Both Estevan and Isolo were heavily armed. The sandy soil was anathema to effective firearm functioning. Sleeping estranged from one’s firearm was not advisable. Isolo showed Estevan how to keep sand from the foxhole out of the breech of his automatic as he slept. There was no way to sleep well while being forced to befriend blood-sucking insects, but they did sleep, nevertheless.
The third day following the raid on the medical doctor, Isolo and Estevan were still following the river downstream. At times the secondary jungle was too thick to keep close to the riverbank and they would walk along the road for a while. There was a chance that they could miss a clue to Oxyfel’s location, but there was also very little chance of discovering anything, trying to navigate around chiririka vines, snakes, and alligators. As cars came along, the cannibals ducked into roadside underbrush. They knew that every time they did so they were taking a chance that their erratic behavior would be picked up by ZWO satellites, listening devices, and cameras. When the risk felt too great they would return to the river and navigate its shallows or trek the secondary jungle.

Chapter Fourteen
The preceding events were just a small depiction of the state of affairs to which the new ZWO had reduced human beings. Only the caedere rich, Ashkenazim, and friends of the Ashkenazim were real citizens. Just to survive, and help their also-rans to survive, each human was forced into the position of behaving like a common thug. The future looked very bleak for Oxyfel, Estevan, Isolo, and their compatriots. To an impartial observer, the future of all human beings around the world appeared equally ominous.
The only alternative to being an anthropophagic human i.e. a missioned monkey was to be either a predator or a glorified rat. Except for very unusual circumstances the doors of ZWO aristocracy were closed and cyborg or transhumance status locked against humanity by law, choice, caedere wealth, or intrinsic intelligence. Only the caedere wealthy and/or accident of birth possessed the standard keys to the kingdom. Either way, the ZWO was the gatekeeper, bent on the destruction of unenslaved humanity. It was a knee-jerk response to save itself and its caedere wealth from biosustainability. Liberty and preventing simian-caused ecological desolation were not ZWO priorities.
When the ZWO Sustainable Development Law passed the United Nations General Assembly the vast majority of the world was not aware of it. The news media and the internet were stringently controlled pabulum providers. Real news was not available. People accepted the pabulum along with the rest of the bread & circus, happily enslaved. Within a few weeks of the new Law’s passage, having encountered no viable opposition, anywhere, the ZWO began the national fractional-banking debt- for-land swaps.
A few months later, the interrelated Ashkenazi dynastic banking families had commandeered the entire planet. They ran it as their private fiefdom. Soon after the obvious success of their Law, the Ashkenazim began demarcating the three environmental regions. It was a Draconian operation. Formerly populated regions became unpopulated rapidly.
Most areas were either entirely evacuated or populations heavily abridged by mass forced migrations to conform to the new state of affairs. Billions of people were too heavily invested in their belief that the papers their lawyers had given them meant that they owned their own land. Since many people would not leave their homes willingly, the ZWO found it necessary, initially, to employ the military industrial combines to massacre the most obstinate. Millions died. Ashkenazi media, word-of-mouth constructs, and rumors passed throughout the planet that the causes of the democides were democratic wars to make Written Law & political freedom universal. The cattle ate the lying fodder along with the ruthless silage.
As private arms were banned in the newly created population corridors, resistance there was sporadic, not sustained. Only the CoCs managed to maintain a viable rebellion. It took years, but people did finally awaken to the fact that getting the truth was impossible under ZWO auspices. It made little difference to the submissive surviving population. Phony wars continued to be the most common excuses the ZWO gave to justify their thinly-disguised operations to move or remove survivors. Even so, slave-corridors grew more densely populated with each passing year. Simians reproduce proportionate to the misery they enjoy, insuring the permanence of the enthralled condition.
Giving credit where it belongs, the democidal massacres did sometimes occur for sound ecological reasons. The ZWO still called the exterminations fortunes of war, but everyone knew that very few soldiers died. Robots weren’t destroyed, and only civilians died. Actual wars, under ZWO auspices, were growing very parsimonious. The Khazars had selected groups and investments to protect. Apparently, although caedere wealth is death, and symbolizes death, it must be protected from death. Mind-boggling how far the death-worshippers will go to prove to themselves that accumulated death symbols give security.
The Ashkenazim fortified the boundaries between buffer zones and populated areas. Robots, cyborgs, transhumans, surveillance apparati, seismic sensors, dedicated satellite observation, etc. all multiplied in these regions. It grew progressively more difficult to pass from populated zones into buffer zones and visa versa. Boundaries everywhere grew to resemble Berlin Walls. Biometric devices accompanied all authorized entry points. Those that attempted to circumvent proscribed passage were usually only the die-hard custodians and other anarchists. It often involved either tunnels or pitched battles with the predator police agents.
As time went on the CoCs made it possible for others to escape the populated zones. Initially, they were very successful in this endeavor. Yet, with their success in that regard came profound wrinkles. They forced the ZWO to get much better at their interdiction measures. Those wishing to escape could not do so without making an animans accord with the custodians.

To do that it was necessary for the prospective fugitive to use reason and rethink human purpose on the planet. Value changes were needed to resist the ZWO, the dynastic bankers, and Ashkenazi hegemony. Most simians were unprepared for such leaps of virtue & reason. The vast majority of ecological propaganda, the Ashkenazim pushed, was only self-serving rubbish. True values changes were obligatory to prevent Life’s extinction.

Reason and faith in the possibility of biosustainability’s success were needed more than ever. When vested interests, emotional beliefs, and simian frailty were involved, reason met with insurmountable obstacles. Custodians didn’t just express their philosophy intellectually. They lived it. The CoCs ACTED on their beliefs.

They became enemies of virtually everyone. The death-worshippers (religious & other caedere slaves) were cowards and too weak to fight the predatory Ashkenazim. They collaborated with the Ashkenazim, et al, snitching on their friends, family, and simian disenfranchised alike. Stalinist Russia & the late USA, once again, became the Ashkenazi model for an ideal simian society. Now, unless one was obviously a demarcated anarchistic custodian there was often no easy way of telling who was predator and who was just a common monkey. Custodians were zealots for anarchy & biosustainability. They smelled worse than a painted and perfumed old woman, wore no RFID chip, and never went anywhere unarmed.

Death-worshippers and non-Khazarian predators were slaves, whether or not they lived in the concentration camps. The concentration camps but pulled the veil off the ghastly situation a bit. Also, even if the run-of-the-mill simians didn’t willfully collaborate with the predators they were still predatory and enemies of the custodians. The custodians never hid from the fact that they had one common goal with the Ashkenazim. That was to reduce the overall simian population.

In the interest of biosustainability, custodians were trying to remove unmissioned petty-predatory simians along with the larger predators (doctors, lawyers, pols, bankers, thugs, prison industry workers, compassion vultures, nuclear power workers, etc.). The super predators (Top pols, military generals, dynastic bankers, etc.) were determined to eradicate the CoC movement along with 95% of the lesser predators and others that were not top Ashkenazi predators. The super predators used perception distortion tactics to dupe the lesser predators into believing they were all brothers. Caedere wealth, and all it involved, made that possible. Even after the directed-energy genocides, most simians were oblivious to how the powers that controlled simian contingencies perceived them. They behaved as would any species of livestock.

The apes went about their enslaved existences as if there were no cloud of doom hanging over them. The custodians were not so willfully blind. But, like Adam & Eve and the fateful knowledge tree, there was a price to pay for that awareness. They needed to hide their understanding, their belief that a Garden of Eden was possible, and their very existence, or the Ashkenazim would put them to the flaming sword. The only places the custodians could find substantial refuge was underground, literally and figuratively, or in the mountains.

Tunneling got them into population corridors, buffer zones, and prohibited areas. It became a way of life. Tunnels were ubiquitous. Anarchists became experts in camouflaging their tunnel entrances. They made tunnels their homes, building dummy tunnels, and providing escape routes to use when the ZWO discovered real occupied tunnels. Small CoC tribal villages were used less as habitations than as decoys to distract attention away from tunnels. The tunnels were so prevalent and successful that the ZWO organized a special army regiment just to find and destroy them. That special unit was the largest regiment in the ZWO Army.

It used many methods to discover tunnels, most of which included radio frequency vibrations. The problem with using normal sound and compression waves was that they wouldn’t work well or accurately in wet soil (like tunnels in clay) or if the tunnel was deeper than 40 feet. Many false alarms occurred, especially if the tunnels were near windy areas or close to noisy places like vehicle traffic congestion. So, the ZWO took to using seismic measuring robots, equipped with sonar dishes, to ferret them out with dispatch. Seismic sensors with imaging software showed the robots spaces underground which had lower microgravity than did the same volume of solid earth.
Other robots, which carried weapons, accompanied seismic robots. The army programmed these armed machines to enter tunnels discovered and to fire at will. Other robots and cyborgs came furnished with Geiger counters. More muons inhabited tunnels than they did solid earth, and these robots could detect muon discrepancies. Armed robots and cyborgs also accompanied muon-counting robots.
Even with all the technology the Ashkenazim developed to find them, tunnels continued to proliferate. CoC survival was at stake, more than that of the ZWO. Much of the CoC’s limited budget was devoted to attacking, destroying, and fleeing the Army’s special tunnel regiment. Whenever possible, custodians harassed and sniped at the ZWO unit’s remote members. They booby-trapped abandoned and phony tunnels.
They hit the predators hard and disappeared as if never there. Spider traps were everywhere that the ZWO didn’t expect them. When discovered, tunnel-associated occupants were 100 meters away, firing at them from another spider trap. A kilometer away, the rest of the custodians were escaping, perhaps with a liver or an otherwise dismembered cyborg, transhuman, or simian.
As the custodians removed life and meat from these quasi-unaccompanied soldiers, they also confiscated the sonar and other electronic modules from the tunnel-detecting robots. Custodians brought the “cannibalized” pieces to their tunnel workshops and laboratories. Here, custodian engineers and scientists de-engineered the units, looking for machine weaknesses and ways to circumvent the devastating damage to their tunnels and revolution. The cannibals discovered certain methods & materials, like unusual magnetic installations and metal foils, respectively, that “foiled” the sonar and atomic particle detectors into giving conflicting messages. These distorted messages were not infallible escape mechanisms, and were only defensive maneuvers, but they did make it more difficult to say for sure whether a tunnel truly existed or truly did not exist below the surface.
No clear evidence for a tunnel’s real presence caused problems for the ZWO. It often became too expensive, logistically, for the ZWO to destroy all tunnels for which it discovered habitation evidence. For example, the usual method of killing rats in a tunnel is with cyanide. Cyanide worked on custodians too. The problem for the penny-pinching Khazars was that they could use a hundred liters of prussic acid, trying to kill all the tunnel’s inhabitants, all for nothing, and not even know it.
The ZWO might not know if the tunnel was truly uninhabited but would have to proceed as if it was. Their resources were deployed to destroy something that could have been nothing more than a highly sophisticated ant mound or maybe even two. When has enough poison been administered to only kill ants? Is 100 liters enough? Why not 200 liters just to be sure, or 300, or 400? Answering that question could prove very expensive. Protecting tunnel-destroyers’ lives, as well as their immediate environment, from cyanide or other gases was expensive too. Ashkenazim did not like wasting caedere resources (money).
The custodians had chemists too (not enough) that could turn the toxic gas into innocuous compounds as fast as the ZWO dumped it into the empty space. But that required expensive counter-chemicals that custodians often did not have. The CoCs found other methods that were more cost-effective. Booby traps and dummy tunnels immediately adjacent to real tunnels protected many custodians from Ashkenazi-enslaved tunnel-rats. The Khazar agents wouldn’t know, sometimes for hours, if they were just wasting their lives, time, and materials.
If they knew they needed to blow up fifty 20-kilometer stretches of innocuous countryside just to get one bona fide tunnel formation, they opted to wait for a better promise. There was additional incentive to not prosecute a tunnel’s demise if protecting their tunnel-rats with two or three battalions of soldiers was necessary. One custodian in a spider trap a kilometer distant could frighten 500 tunnel-rats into demanding such expensive protection. Robots obviated such fears but were also much easier for custodians to avoid, confuse, or destroy.
Once the ZWO felt a tunnel emplacement was destroyed it moved on to another putative system. When they did, the CoCs returned and dug new tunnels. These newer tunnels were slightly deeper than the originals or so near the destroyed ones they allayed ZWO suspicions.

It was from experience in surviving counter-tunnel crews that Isolo learned what he was now teaching Estevan. Estevan was familiar with much of what Isolo was teaching him but not all. Having skills taught to one, while a small child, by one’s father is not the same as having those same things reintroduced, at a later age, by another practitioner. One other survival tactic Isolo taught Estevan that Estevan’s father, (by his behavior), did not. That was ruthlessness.
Estevan’s father grew up in the days of “democracy”, “Rules of War”, “Written Law”, religious morality, and other nonsense. He was sold on such sophistry; until he realized it was mostly sham. The man spent the rest of his life trying to winnow the seeds from the chaff. He never succeeded.
Estevan’s father even believed in the sanctity of human life. After his error was thrown in his face hundreds of times, he was still not convinced that Nature was not infallible. He could not accept that She meant for some of Her creatures to survive and others not. The man believed all humans deserved the life they possessed and did not need to prove they had a right to exist. He was “God-contaminated”.
Isolo knew better. Not from tutelage but from experience. If a missioned monkey’s undertaking was to sicken or destroy Life, the planet, or custodians then that human must die. It was not a matter of right or wrong. It was a matter of survival. Some life was more sacred than other life. Predators, human or monkey, were diseases and must die if Life was to continue, if biosustainability was to be.
When Estevan mentioned how Isolo differed from Estevan’s father, Isolo replied. “I know how your father felt. He wanted a world with a set of perfect instructions, a how-to-do-it manual, a new Bible. He never found it. He dreamed of one-day taking out a top dynastic banker or pol. I think only that would have made his life complete. He never found a way to penetrate the security apparatus and thousands of bodyguards these super predators employed. He also started out with the old Communities of Consensus shackles on his ankles. Those tribes were doomed from the start. The infernal ZWO could not abide anarchy, just as fire will not abide water. Members of passive peaceful communes were living in a dream world. They thought they could institute a functional enduring anarchy by throwing flowers at the state agents that came to kill them. Passivism does not work, Estevan. It sells seats, but somebody always inevitably yells “Fire!”. The ZWO had already destroyed many CoCs before your father’s CoC was destroyed. He was in shock for a long time over his CoC’s destruction. Violent CoCs arose in response, surreptitiously, and your father delayed too long in joining them. I started out in one of the latter ones. I was already aware of those earlier errors. Your father was only one of many that made such errors in judgement.”
“It’s a hell of a way to live, taking up arms, making war on the entire world.” Estevan said.

Chapter Fifteen
“Yes, it is. CoCs are all Julius Caesar come latelies. But, even if we are not sure that biosustainability is the highest human mission, it’s a good way to live. It gives our lives meaning. We don’t need to die to obtain our life’s meaning. Just being willing and capable of dying for Life gives us great purpose. We also have a responsibility to posterity and our “also-rans”, Estevan.” Isolo said. “We could exist in greed and cowardice, like the death-worshippers, for a time. But one sees the increasing slavery and destruction of human and biological values everywhere they wallow. Just about the entire world is learning to believe the comfortable lies, the rulers want them to swallow, but not the horrible truth. Such willful ignorance is due to fear, just ordinary fear with a good handful of caedere greed thrown in. Every day the artificial intelligence, biometrics, and surveillance grows deeper, stronger, and more pervasive. The corridors participate in futile public demonstrations and civil disobedience to no avail. The Khazars murder them without pity, as they should. How ridiculous, lambs asking lions for mercy and expecting it! It’s necessary to kill, whether we want to or not. Nature mandates it. Whether we think it is wrong or not. If we do not kill, we will be annihilated!”
“And the essential missions of biosustainability and anarchy will disappear.” Estevan said. “Life will fail.”
“Yes, it will.” Isolo agreed.
“No matter how much we would like to have a different world, we cannot have it.” Estevan said. “It’s our Hell, Isolo.”
“That’s right, my boy.” Isolo said. “To believe in a contrary hypothesis is to make a fatal error. If we avoid biosustainability, there is no way to exist much longer as a viable species on planet Earth. Just to face the inevitable future without doing something in our own defense, one must accept madness, like religion & caedere avarice, as one’s constant inveterate companion. We must either risk our lives, well-being, and freedom to survive or we must accept membership in a collective psychosis. How long does an existence predicated on lies have? How long can an edifice with a foundation of mud last? We survive only under constant auto-deception, either way.”
“Why, either way?” Estevan asked.
“We live under the dominion of a collective psychosis, much graver than that of religion and Written Law.” Isolo said.
“We do?”
“Yes.” Isolo said. “There is absolutely no biological or physical basis for the existence of either free will or personal responsibility for our actions. It’s a tool of the tyrants, a slave belief. Biosustainability is the only chance we have to evolve and one day understand consciousness. The simian world survives and prospers on lies and deception. It demands it. An “honest” business man panders to his customers’ love of prevarication. He is effectively a “crook”, but his business flourishes. He knows his business is inherently anti-social, but he believes that his phony smile and friendly manner will protect him from umbrage. On the other side, all tellers of truth are considered criminal, odd, heretics, outliers on the periphery of society. They are usually poor and hated by all. But that’s not the only dementia manifested by our genus. Almost everyone is comfortable with existing within the madness of impending doom. If we are holograms, as Shakespeare and quantum physicists intimate, then we exist in illusion. Dreams dreaming. The only difference between our conscious lives and our sleeping lives is in the degree of subjection to our dreams or nightmares. Awake, we generally concur in the qualities of reality with our neighbors. Semi-consciously, we do not. In neither are we in control. That makes our values vapid and illusory. Chasing the accumulation of silver sticks or digital currency slavery, believing the caedere artifice of value, is symptomatic of collective lunacy. As custodians, there exists slightly more hope for a healthy consciousness, united as we are into Communities of Consensus, CoCs. As members of a CoC, we bury some of our collective dementia. We drown our avarice and cowardice in the culture of meaning and courage that dwells within the CoC’s diurnal confrontation of near certain death. I don’t think there are many deeds that humans might do in the interest of removing a super-predator’s caedere power that would be a blow to Nature. Removing predators, human or otherwise, may be dangerous, but it’s morally neutral. All other things being equal, it is surely bio-positive. Other than base pusillanimity or unmitigated greed there is no justification for refraining from killing predatory bankers, lawyers, and pols whenever they are encountered.”
“Are you saying my father was greedy and a coward?!” Estevan said with audible heat.
“Not in the least, Estevan. Absolutely not!” Isolo replied. “I knew him. He was neither. He could kill simian predators, and he never refrained from it. He also always felt contaminated by it. It was his religious upbringing, standing between him and self-actualization. Any simian, especially a member of a freedom assemblage, like a Community of Consensus cell, that cannot kill a predator does not deserve the name of “human being”, “Homo sapiens eusapiens”. THAT is what held your father back, kept him from achieving his potential. Your father was fighting the devils in his conscience, Estevan. He knew the word “human” was a state of mind, and he did not feel comfortable in that state.”
“Religious people . . . Christians, Jews, Muslims, Mormons, and such are pusillanimous, ignorant, and superstitiously demented monkeys.” Estevan riposted. “How can you say my father was that way, Isolo?”
“I didn’t say that.” Isolo replied, with sympathy. “Physically, as you know, Homo sapiens sapiens members are just like us, Homo sapiens eusapiens. But that pre-human species will probably go extinct, because it is either too stupid, deluded, or too weak & cowardly to be selected for survival. If you wish to change the sick civilized things in this world to a healthier uncivilized state, Estevan, you must adhere more closely to Natural Law. Written Law, the state, and religious proscriptions against violence prevent you. The ZWO feels it should have a monopoly on the use of violence. Why do they feel that way?”
Estevan answered. “Because they know nothing changes politically without violence?”
“Exactly!” Isolo said. “Life means growth. Growth entails change. They do not want change. They are becoming ever more rigid, and rigidity means death. Biosustainability is not just sound biology. It’s also a political idea. The super-predators know this. Your father knew it. We have no alternative but to take matters into our own hands and act with violence or be a part of the problem and its victims. Your father knew that too, but he still sympathized with the monkeys, too much. He just couldn’t accept . . .”
“Accept what, Isolo?”
“How Man is that little boy in the crowd, noticing that Nature has no clothes, and didn’t fall under the spell of illusion.”
“I don’t understand, Isolo.” Estevan said.
“There is no meaning to Life, Estevan.” Isolo replied, softly. “Man is the only part of Creation that can see that and ponder on its implications. The appearance of meaning does exist. That illusion serves but to churn out an ongoing stream of limitless agony. Homo sapiens eusapiens was one of Nature’s great mistakes. She needs Him but can’t hide her nakedness from Him. Only Man can make the system work now with an imposed appearance of purpose, biosustainability. Will he accept such a grave responsibility? If He does, He must allow the agony to continue. Your father didn’t know whether he wanted to be a collaborator in the sadism.”
“I see.”
“He let proscriptions against using violence corrupt his times of repose. That anti-violence defensive strategy of the slaves ate away at him and made him less than what he could have been. The Ashkenazim too only discovered that mistake after it nearly wiped them out during the World War. Now look at them. The world’s tyrants. They’re destroying humans & simians right along with the real Jews. Simians in the corridors are like lambs, begging for clemency, and the Ashkenazim are like savage voracious wolves.”

Oxyfel watched the guard beating and poking at the bush with a rifle. The guard was not interested in Oxyfel’s observation but only noticed him, nevertheless, when Oxyfel let his obvious curiosity be noticed.
“What are you looking at, cannibal?” The guard shouted.
“Not much.” Oxyfel replied.
The guard riposted at the disrespect, saying. “You wantin’ a beating, cannibal?”
“Hadn’t thought much about it.” Oxyfel taunted. “Have you a proposal?”
“You’re making it awful tempting.” The guard said.
Neither wanted to pursue the direction the conversation was leading, and they separated. Another convict observed the dispute and asked Oxyfel. “Why do you antagonize the guards, Oxyfel? Don’t you know they take it out on us?”
“Is that my problem?” Oxyfel riposted.
“It would be if you cared a little more for your fellow man than what he tasted like!” The convict replied.
“You have the same options I have.” Oxyfel said.
“What’s that?”
“If you can’t handle the treatment you receive, you can do something about it.” Oxyfel said.
“Like what?”
“Kill the bastards, mock them, escape, or shut up.” Oxyfel said. “Or all four.”
“So why don’t you exercise all of them?” The convict said. “Instead of just antagonizing? You don’t like the treatment you receive. All you do is ridicule. Why don’t you shut up? Better yet, why don’t you bolt?”
“Who says I don’t like the treatment I receive?” Oxyfel asked.
“Oh. You like our life here. What are you . . .a masochist?”
“I do indeed like it here.” Oxyfel said in burlesque. All the good food I want – only the best chemicals and garbage available – even more than you get in the population corridors. Tasty swamp water to drink – better than the polluted fluid the Ash Kan Nazis give you elsewhere. Plus, there’s that never-failing opportunity to be slavish. That’s what pleases you Christians so much, isn’t it? You just squirm with joy to be able to turn the other cheek, to forgive 490 times.”
“Fuck you.”
“No, really. What’s not to like? I even get to play with the guards at times.” Oxyfel answered, still sardonic. “If the guards waste a few of you, that’s your problem, as I said. Less work for me.”
“You one-way bastard!”
“At last, we’re finally circling the truth.” Oxyfel said.
“Maybe I’m not as brave as you, but I’m no cannibal!” The convict said.
Oxyfel replied. “Ahhh. That is indeed your misfortune.”
“Why? Asshole””
“What I did with my anthropophagy was infinitely more positive than what you and the rest of the death-worshipping parasites here did or do.” Oxyfel replied. “You criticize me but bless the infernal state and its brutal “business as usual”. You help the bastards drain the planet of Life. Our species is looking forward to an alternative of eternal war, nuclear devastation, resource exhaustion, starvation, pandemics, universal despotism & slavery, collective dementia, mass suicides, democides, genocides, and ubiquitous ecological disaster. It will result in unspeakable horror unless you wake up, recognize the reality of your situation, and act on the solutions.”
“What are your solutions?” The convict asked. “You have none, because there are none. The human race is doomed.”
“There are no solutions that you can see, because you are willfully blind.” Oxyfel said.
“What am I not seeing, oh great all-seeing, all-knowing one.” The convict replied, mimicking a servile position sans genuflecting.
“Devastating over-population, for one thing. It’s the most important matter for humanity to consider at this time. There are more problems, but that’s the greatest.” Oxyfel said, ignoring the derision. “It’s the cause of the others, like resource exhaustion, pollution, etc. Absolutely nothing reasonable and effective is being done to remedy the situation. Only the Khazars have taken some steps toward that end . . . and the CoCs. You and your death-worshipping predator ilk are so plentiful you, all by yourselves, are causing natural resource exhaustion and desolation of all disenfranchised species. Building the Great Bridges, experimenting with some of the successful eugenics practices of primitive Man, adopting some of the enlightenment of past millennia, or cheering on the Ashkenazim, (and we anarchists), appear to be the only options. The CoCs are trying to deal with the state by attacking it. We are trying to deal with over-population by killing the predators and death-worshippers. The CoCs will overcome, must overcome, these problems or we’ll all rot in the same coffin. It will take time. There will be mistakes, but I believe the CoCs will prevail. With which of these solutions, I just mentioned, do you take issue?”
“I’m not sure.”
“So, you persist in your willful blindness.” Oxyfel said. “Doing nothing.”
“I’m not doing the wrong thing, at any rate. You are.” The convict said. “Cannibal!”
“You’re not sure of that.” Oxyfel said. “Are you?”
“I am!”
“You’re not! You’re a lost lamb in the forest, about to be eaten.” Oxyfel said.
“By you, I assume?” The convict asked.
“Well, you’re beginning to think a bit.” Oxyfel said. “But you’re still too scared to ask and answer your own questions, and the questions that matter.”
“Why?”
“Because you are a coward, mainly, and because you cannot yet see that you are living in a dying world.” Oxyfel said. “You are not yet experiencing a life completely without hope, devoid of food, water, beauty, and all freedom. You are not yet confined to the loneliness of a planet without wildness or any forms of life other than food animals and simian derivatives. The orthodox offal that you religionists and other caedere predators vomit up keeps you drowning in slavery and won’t allow you to escape from that situation. Resource exhaustion from simian over-population is dooming our species. We are sustaining our bloated population on chemicals, using up other species. Breathable oxygen, fertile soil, and clean water are disappearing, because we are poisoning the planet. Toxic waste and pesticides are killing us slowly, as we kill rapidly everything else. Soon, the last crop of food shall have been harvested. The ZWO will own it. How will the world deal with the famine?”
“I have no idea.” The convict said. “Why don’t you tell me?”
“The caedere wealthy and the well-connected will produce all the food and resources they need. Great greenhouses and food factories will arise. If you are not part of the privileged system, you will starve. You may die of thirst, cholera, or other dysentery from drinking water worse than what we drink here. The corridors are already beginning to experience a scenario such as I’m describing.”
“Why?”
“Without a cheap source of clean energy, to deal with the population excess, the world cannot recycle enough water, soil, and air to continue.” Oxyfel said. “Removing pollution to where it is no longer poisonous is energy intensive. We only have toxic polluting energy in relative abundance. Tarbaby.”
“I don’t believe it.” The convict said.
“Right!” Oxyfel said. “You can’t bear to believe it. You bury your head in the shit that the Ashkenazim peddle, and you will die in silence. The Ashkenazi-controlled media, and their censors, will not let anyone know about the actual situation. They keep everyone enthralled with lies, toxic bread, and inane circuses. How long can you survive without clean water? Without ocean algae, where will you get oxygen to breathe? Where will you turn to avoid the disintegration of every cell in your body from nuclear radiation? Where will you find healthy fruit without the bees?”
“If it’s as bad as you say, the ZWO is on it and already have ways to remedy the problems.” The convict countered.
“The ZWO is “on it”, indeed, and their ways to remedy the problems are democides, distractions, and duplicity.” Oxyfel said. “None of which solves the problems. They just kick the bomb down the road a few more meters. The bomb is still there, primed and ready to blow.”
“You’re negative as hell and ask too many questions.” The convict said.
“And you ask too few.” Oxyfel retorted.
Chapter Sixteen
It was late afternoon of the fourth day since Estevan and Isolo ditched the black limo in the river. They were going through secondary jungle that was nearly impassable. The river current was too fast to negotiate on foot. Just as they were about to give up and head road ward again they stumbled on a trail that bordered the riverbank. Isolo was reluctant to take it. A perfect path at that point was just too convenient to him. He feared some ambush or monitoring electronics. It was getting dark however, and Estevan suggested that maybe the devices would not be that effective at night.
Wishful thinking or not, it worked as an excuse for Isolo, and they followed it for a few hours. It was nearly 3 AM when Isolo called the trek a night. They dug their foxholes and put a few leaves over their heads, without taking the time to construct proper spider trap covers. In the early morning Estevan awakened and found himself surrounded by four men. He quickly reached for his automatic but had it kicked out of his hands most unceremoniously.
The men flipped over Isolo’s light cover of leaves and grabbed his rifle too. Estevan and Isolo were now prisoners of the four men.
One of the four asked. “What are you doing in my buffer zone?”
“I WAS sleeping until you woke me up, maggot.” Estevan riposted.
“So, you know you’re in a buffer zone?” Man One asked in Isolo’s direction.
“Of course, I know! What are you doing in MY buffer zone?” Isolo asked. “You have a pass?”
“We don’t need a pass.” Man Two said.
“Everybody needs a pass, except cannibals.” Estevan said.
“You calling me a cannibal, runt?” Man Two said.
“Yeah. I’m calling you a cannibal.” Estevan replied.
“And, I am too.” Isolo said. “You stink to high heaven.”
“Like you’re fragrant lilies yourselves. How can you tell what we smell like over your own not too pleasant odor?” Man Three asked, beginning to smile. “You stink to higher heaven.”
“Name’s Isolo.” Isolo said, smiling too and offering his hand to the first man to speak to them.
“Tomas’.” Man One said, returning Isolo’s rifle and helping him up out of the foxhole. “What brings you to our tribe’s bailiwick?”
“We’re looking for a lad and a lady, might have passed by this way some time ago.” Isolo replied.
“In a boat?” Man Three asked.
“Yes.” Estevan replied. “Have you seen them?”
“Sort of.” Tomas’ replied. “’Bout a month ago?”
“That’s right.” Estevan answered. “Did you see which way they went?”
“Yep. But, if they were friends of yours, we have some bad news for ya’.” Tomas’ said. “The preds killed the girl and took the boy.”
“You’re sure?” Estevan said.
“Yep. Sure am.” Man Three said. “The cops took the kid to the hospital, and left the girl in the river. From that point, where they took him and what they did with him, who knows? I have no idea.”
“We can show you where it happened.” Man Four said.
Estevan looked at Isolo. Isolo looked at Tomas’ and indicated an assent. Estevan asked. “What are the chances of your returning my rifle?”
The man holding Estevan’s rifle looked at Tomas’, and Tomas’ nodded. The man returned the machine, and all began a trek to the river.
Man Three said. “I was alone, looking for bananas. I saw the cops get the two. I had no chance of interfering successfully. The lad might even have been dead. I couldn’t hear everything they said.”
“Is that all?” Isolo asked.
“It appeared to me that the kid attacked without first reconnoitering the area. He shot a mayor and a judge.” Man Three said. “Minutes later the pols’ security entered the fray. I didn’t do anything. All the mayor’s and judge’s security were involved, and it appeared your friends were dead. I’m sorry.”
“I showed up on scene about a minute after the first shots were fired.” Man Four said. “He’s right. We did nothing. It would have been suicide or worse. We might have jeopardized our tunnels.”
“That’s true.” Tomas’ said. “I can’t fault my people. Your friend acted hastily, and it cost him his life. Inexperienced. If he’s still alive it’s only because the pols he killed weren’t Ash Kans.”
“I understand.” Isolo said, as Estevan just looked at their faces for signs of disingenuousness. “But if the kid was dead, it seems there would be no need for a hospital. They’da’ just left ‘im in the river like they did the girl.”
“Yeah.” Tomas’ agreed. “Makes sense.”
“The place was crawling with cops and robots for days after the capture.” Man Four said. “We had to keep strictly in the tunnels.”
The four men led Estevan & Isolo to the spot where the security platoons sank the boat with gunfire. Estevan waded into the river to make sure it was Oxyfel’s boat. It was as close to what he remembered it being, as he needed it to be, to believe the men.
“Where is the hospital?” Isolo asked.
“In the next town downriver.” Man Three said. “But, the place is a ZWO hub, and you need a shitload of passes to get inside any ZWO building.”
“And RFID chips.” Tomas’ said.
“Can we learn anything about the kid by asking questions in the town?” Isolo asked.
“Don’t know, but dressed like you are now?” Tomas’ said.
“You don’t approve of my sartorial splendor?” Isolo asked.
“That shirt and your perfume will get all your questions answered without you even asking.” Tomas’ replied. “You’ll be visiting him real fast, and he can tell you himself.”
“If he lived, when he recovered, they’d have put him in the concentration camp over in the northwest prohibited corridor.” Man Three said.
“They might have shot him.” Man Four said.
“I doubt that, as bad as they need slaves and simians for lumber and gold.” Tomas’ said.
“And their transhuman experiments.” Man Three added.
“Yeah, it does appear that they’re still working on that kind of stuff too. They sure haven’t succeeded yet.” Isolo said. “The robots they send out after us are much easier to terminate than their simian cops. I’m sure the cyborgs are coming in below expectations too.”
“That won’t continue.” Man Three said. “The new robots are almost as good as the monkeys are.”
“They still can’t originate a thought as fast as a simian.” Man Two said.
“Or communicate with their fellows.” Man Four said.
“That’s because they use artificial intelligence with phone circuitry in all the robots.” Man Three replied.
“That won’t continue, either.” Isolo said. “I don’t know about you, but for us, it’s the cyborgs that give us the most trouble. Those telepathy modules are taking one hell of a toll.”
“They’re putting hybrid telepathy modules in all the new robots too.” Estevan said.
“Really?” Tomas’ said.
“And that’s not all.” Estevan said. “Robots will soon be programmed on site to better communicate with simians and A.I. The frequencies, cell-phones use, are not yet capable of directly changing human consciousness, purposefully. But the technology and frequencies are changing fast, and they will soon do so.”
“And, if some simian refuses to accept a cyborg modem in its body, just like the RFID chips, they’re screwed. The ZWO will force it on them under penalty of penury, death, or outlawry.” Isolo said.
“Frequencies from central points will solve the problem or do the job without the simian’s consent.” Estevan said. “Brain wave master oscillators will be here VERY shortly.”
“Transmitting orders from a central facility?” Tomas’ asked. “Like pheromones and a bee hive.”
“Yes.” Estevan replied. “My father and I visited one of our labs studying captured technology. Talking to the technical experts there, I learned it’s right down the road. The predators may still need to have the warm body in their possession to install the function, but not for long. Distances from central programming centers may soon be just a question of cost-effectiveness.”
“It keeps getting worse and scarier.” Tomas’ said.
“It may not work, if we’re just holograms, simulations.” Man Three said.
“No. Isolo replied. “If we’re simulations, people will discover it. Our slavery to technology may become too expensive for the Ashkenazim.”
“Don’t bet on it.” Estevan said. “Simian guinea pigs are cheap, and the Ashkenazim have all the resources they need.”
“Whatever.” Tomas’ said. “Soon, simians will become just life-support systems for cell phones. My father said he could remember when telepathy was just in the realm of conjecture and fantasy.”
“And now it’s commonplace.” Isolo said.
“Hard to believe, isn’t it?” Man Four said. “Turning us into cell phones.”
“Already, heavy holders of caedere wealth are not really human.” Estevan said. “Some literally and some figuratively, even if they do appear to be missioned. And maybe that’s by design. Some of the cell-phone techs I talked to said that it won’t be long and the ZWO will be able to use a cell phone frequency to exfoliate viruses from simian bodies. That can cause any number of diseases in those with simian DNA. They can use an amplified cell frequency or utilize the RFID to focus it.”
“Maybe the preds feel that having simian DNA is a liability.” Man Four said. “Better to be a cyborg or transhuman as much as possible.”
“That still means having simian DNA.” Isolo said. “They will need a way to insulate themselves, cyborgs, and transhumans from those frequencies.”
“Especially if they plan to use those frequencies as democide generators.” Man Three said.
“I don’t understand why the common Ashknazim don’t put a stop to it.” Tomas’ said. “They will soon become subject to the same technology abuses by the dynastic families that the other simians are.”
“Nature of the beast.” Man Three added. “The boiling frog scenario. Remember your history. It was the dynastic families that caused all the pogroms of the 20th century that the Russians and Germans implemented.”
“I agree with you, Estevan.” Man Two said. “Unmitigated avarice is an essence-less, subhuman quality. At least, I don’t want to believe it’s a human quality.”
“So.” Tomas’ said. “Cyborg and transhuman status will be only a small adjustment for many “essence-less” simians.”
“It appears that way.” Man Three said. “Or even all simians. Just look at how they live in the corridors. Programmed every day & every night by electronic media to accept the Ashkenazi-desired Weltanschauung. The culture, laws, religion, regulations, etc., all bullshit, accepted . . . and by Khazarian design.”
“Oriental despotism.” Isolo said. “Agromanagerial society. Corvee labor. We will all be coolies.”
“I don’t think you’re thinking correctly.” Tomas’ argued. “The super-predators are insatiable hedonists. There will be a limit when the two drives conflict.”
“Their callous caedere-vacuuming behavior already resembles that of the automatons they envision, create, and emulate.” Man Two argued.
“Smaller bankers, lawyers, and state minions follow in close pursuit like ducklings after a duck.” Man Four said. “What the CoCs need is a way to control all the tools and weapons the Ashkenazim have, a super-brain.”
Tomas’ broke up the conversation saying. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Turning to look at Isolo, he said. Do you want to come with us to our village or are you on your way?”
Estevan said. “Do you think there’s any chance of breaking my friend out of the camp?”
“Not with just my people.” Tomas’ replied. “It would take at least a hundred men more than I have, and you can bank on at least 50% casualties.”
“I thought as much.” Estevan said.
“Is your friend worth that much to biosustainability?” Isolo asked Estevan.
“I don’t think that question should be asked of me.” Estevan said. “I can’t answer it.”
“We’ll visit your site and then be on our way.” Isolo said, answering Tomas’.
The four men took Isolo & Estevan to their CoC, and they shared a meal together. Getting acquainted with other members of the tribe, Isolo discovered he knew a couple of them from an earlier time. One man asked Estevan about his family. He then expressed his condolences to Estevan, as the man knew Estevan’s father. He said that, long ago, they had participated together in a three CoC confederation raid on a sanitarium for the mentally deficient near Belem, Para’.
“We took out more than 200 retards and close to thirty doctors during that raid. It was a tremendous success. Over two hundred and thirty predators removed, and we only lost one custodian to an embedded security guard.” He said.
“I remember that raid, Estevan.” Tomas’ said. “It wasn’t the unqualified success he implies. The preds hit our CoC later that same week and took out almost a third of our best warriors. It took almost a year to regain the tunnel infrastructure we lost.”
“You’re guessing it was due to our raid, Tomas’.” The man who knew Estevan’s father said. “You can’t say it was due to our raid’s success.”
“No?” Tomas’ said. “I suppose I can’t say bankers, lawyers, and pols are parasites either?”
“The real question that needs to be asked is how much longer can we continue, destroying preds, before all our custodians are gone?” Isolo asked. “How many young simians in the corridors are becoming custodians? How many, like Estevan here, do you see stepping up to replace those of us who give our lives for Life?”
“That’s true, Isolo.” Tomas’ said. “We cannot reproduce ourselves as fast as the death-worshippers and parasites do. We don’t even come close.”
“I don’t think we really want any help coming from the population corridors.” A custodian with one eye said. “Young people there are sadistic brutes, totally enslaved to Ashkenazi media, technology, and ignorance. The ones with some heart agonize over the circumstances of alley cats and pigeons and forget all about the species that go extinct during that same period on their watch. The general level of consciousness there is enough to drive any sentient being to suicide.”
“Only our own communes give us replacements, and that’s precious few.” Tomas’ said.
“We can start capturing women, like the indigenes do.” Man Four said. “Each man takes four or five wives?”
“How do we keep them from running away and turning us over to the ZWO?” Man Three asked. “What woman, not a dedicated custodian, is gonna’ live in a tunnel?”
“In a very short time, they’d bolt, and betray us.” Tomas’ said. “That’s for sure. I never met a woman that wasn’t a nester, the more comfortable the nest the better.”
“In time that may become our only option.” Isolo said. “Custodians may have to keep women like the Amazons kept men.”
“The ZWO is killing so many, and the state is becoming so invasive, that it won’t be long and many women might feel they could be happier as cannibals.” The one-eyed man said.
“You’re dreaming, both of you.” Tomas’ replied. “Capturing women is a sure-fire way to lose your CoC. You’ll cause the very affect you’re trying to avoid. What I know of simian women is that they will always choose the side of better living conditions, in time, no matter how much virtue or even safety lies on the side of lesser luxury.”
“You’re probably right, Tomas’.” Isolo said. “We cannot use our values to understand how any woman will behave. Men can die when everything is going good for them, but women can survive when everything that makes life worthwhile is gone. Killing politicians, lawyers. bankers and medical doctors, eating their flesh, is not always a pleasant occupation. It certainly is not a fine and recommended way to gain the love and admiration of women. But, it’s a job that needs doing. Somebody has to do it.”
“This discussion really makes me appreciate our women more.” Estevan said.
“That it does.”
“Yet, unless we can find a way to recover our losses, I do truly think that we are in grave danger of losing this war. The predators may very well determine the fate of the planet and the human race.” Isolo said.
“I couldn’t agree with you more on that, my friend.” Tomas’ said.

Chapter Seventeen

Thinking he was finished talking to the convict, Oxyfel turned to walk away. But, the other man grabbed him by the arm, and asked. “What questions am I not asking?”
“Leave me alone.” Oxyfel said. “Your level of consciousness is too low to understand.”
“Oh, you’re so much smarter than the rest of us.” The convict said. “A genius, too good to speak to poor Christians.”
“It was your “Savior” said it better than I ever could.” Oxyfel replied.
“What?”
“I’d be “casting my pearls before swine.”” Oxyfel replied. ““My bread upon the waters.””
“So now I’m a pig?” The convict retorted.
“In a manner of speaking, yes.” Oxyfel said, noticing the conversation was collecting an audience. “Your lack of self-awareness is monumental.”
“I can’t think of where to begin,” another convict said, “but, suppose I ask YOU some questions?”
“O.K. shoot.” Oxyfel answered.
“Why do you call us death-worshippers?” The convict asked, looking around at the others, as if a spokesman.
“You need to ask?” Oxyfel answered.
“Yes.”
“Your paradise is a place you go to after you die!” Oxyfel replied. “You hate Life, prohibiting the use of everything that makes life enjoyable. You despise Life and look upon It, your own, and others as but a way-station on your road to paradise.”
“Oh, that’s really accurate, coming from you. You condemn us, when you’re a cannibal” The other convict said. “You call killing and eating people not worshipping death?”
“Yes.” Oxyfel replied. “I do not worship death. I eat those who worship death and those who prey upon humans and Life.”
“Okay. Okay. Skip the minor details. How are you different than us and those who you call predators?” The convict asked. “Don’t you prey upon humans?”
“No.” Oxyfel answered. “I prey on simians and those simian-like creatures that are not humans or those that are but violate the principles of biosustainability.”
“So., You ARE a predator?” The convict said. “You just admitted it!”
“I would have to agree with you that I am a predator.” Oxyfel admitted. “But, my brand of predation follows the constraints of my mission. Like my mission, it is different than most missions and most predators beca . . “
“That’s bullshit!” The second convict shouted. “You admit that you kill and eat the same type of people that you are, but you condemn your victims for doing the same thing or far less heinous things than what you do. Inconsistent, hypocritical, and wrong-headed. I don’t know anyone that you condemn that kills people and eats them. I think you are far worse, because you even violate universal moral principles.”
“There are no universal moral principles.” Oxyfel replied. “Your morality is a conditioned illogical imposition of limits in response to fear. We kill the people that enslave, bleed, and sicken others. Those who prey on Life, or, like you, those who believe that only when everyone is dead will any meaning be found . . . sure, we kill them. We do not sicken others. And, we kill only to survive, not to line our nest or in response to legalized castigation & judgement.”
“Oh. No punishment for criminals!” A convict shouted. “You do not punish criminals? What do you call it, killing those that you call predators?”
“Self-defense.” Oxyfel replied. “We do not judge or punish.”
“That’s semantic bullshit!” The convict said. “It amounts to the same thing. You judge EVERYONE. I’ve heard you say that everyone but cannibals must die if the planet is to be healthy.”
“I said everyone that is not a custodian must die.” Oxyfel said. “If you are a simian or a human, not an advocate of biosustainability, you’re a disease, a plague. I suppose our philosophy must seem rather recondite to most, but you must be culled, nonetheless.”
“You don’t care if people are evil or good before you kill them.” The convict said. “It doesn’t even matter to you.”
“No one is either good OR bad.” Oxyfel replied. “Everyone is an admixture of weaknesses and strengths.”
“That’s crazy!” The convict said. “No bad people?!”
“No.”
“What a fool!” The convict said, turning away in disgust.
“People say you hate lawyers.” A new convict said. “They captured you right after you killed two of them. So, you must have hated them. You must think they’re evil, right?”
“No. We kill lawyers, pols, and other parasites.” Oxyfel answered. “That is true. But not because we hate them. The legal profession has rigged the System to benefit themselves and their predatory way of life. Lawyers are not “bad” people. They are just weak parasites that we need to kill for the benefit and survival of all.”
“That is absolutely wrong!” The convict shouted. “My lawyer nearly kept me free. Some bastard snitched, and I was exposed. That doesn’t mean my lawyer should be killed!”
“Who made the law that said your crime deserved whatever sentence you received?” Oxyfel asked. “It was some lawyer. Just like the judge sitting in judgement – another lawyer. Who did the prosecuting? Another lawyer. Lawyers insure the caedere wealthy stay wealthy, and the poor stay poor. Lawyers insure the healthy and strong go to prison or die. They insure the weak and corrupt rule, rape, and rob but go free. Lawyers, judges, and pols all must die, all of them!”
“You’re sitting in judgement, condemning all lawyers.” The new convict said. “You enjoy playing God.”
“Custodians do not believe in right or wrong, good or evil.” Oxyfel said. “We kill those who are too weak to be a force for biosustainability. If you want to weaken or destroy custodians & people who protect the planet then you are a predator, and you must die. It’s a question of universal survival and economical custodianship. It’s natural justice, not ethics.”
“Killing is killing.” The convict countered. ““Thou shalt not kill.””
“Custodians don’t agree with that commandment any more than contemporary Christians do.” Oxyfel said. “It’s impossible to obey such a ridiculous commandment. Murder is inherent in any judicious definition of life. Everyone has a different concept of who has a right to exist. I’m with Nature.”
“That commandment is the Word of God!” The convict said. “Or don’t you believe in God?”
“Of course not! Only ignorant unthinking people believe in such childish nonsense.” Oxyfel said. “Not even religious people believe it. They only say they do because they’re irresponsible, superstitious cowards, and it fits nicely with the crony capitalistic economic system. It’s a shibboleth.”
“Atheist!”
“Yes. I guess you could say that.” Oxyfel replied. “It’s not important. Any name given me for not electing to willfully believe in nonsense is as good as any other, I suppose.”
“Whether God or anyone else condemns it or not, killing is still wrong.” The convict answered.
“Nature certainly doesn’t agree with you. We try to follow Nature.” Oxyfel said.
“How doesn’t Nature agree with that?” The convict asked. “Killing is killing.”
“You would not survive one second without killing.” Oxyfel riposted. “In your food, your immune system, and internal ecosystem too. You do not have free will, especially with regards to choosing or not choosing to kill. Your body demands that you kill. It forces you to kill.”

“You know we were talking about human life not animals or plants!” The convict said. “You’re trying to confuse the issue.”
“No. You’re now putting restrictions on the issue, not me.” Oxyfel replied. “A minute ago, you said, “killing was killing”, period. Now you want it both ways. Your belief is nonsense. You can’t think, because your religion condemns it. You call your demented condition “having faith”.”

“So, what is rightful killing?” The other convict asked.

“That’s a nonsense question. Killing to survive is only necessary. It is not right or wrong. It’s biology. Biosustainability justifies killing to survive. We custodians also distinguish between the types of weaknesses that plague the planet.” Oxyfel said. “You do too, but you call them evils. If you love Life, you can take a life, but only if that life does not love Life.”
“Who, except suicides, doesn’t love life?” The convict asked.
“You’re mistaking constitutive survival instinct for love of Life.” Oxyfel replied. “They are not the same. Killing Life, trying to kill Life, or sickening Life is predation.” Oxyfel said.
“So, why don’t you kill yourself?” The convict asked, just to be obtuse.
“Because we protect Life and the protectors of Life. That includes us.” Oxyfel said, trying not to notice his interlocutor’s willful obtusicity. “We only kill those that make a business out of predation, i.e. those who kill for death-worship or accumulation of caedere death symbols. And, since these types of people are killing us fast enough, we need not assist them in that endeavor.”
“So, they aren’t as weak as you would have us believe?” The convict said.
Oxyfel ignored the observation and said. “We don’t need to kill ourselves.”
“Why not?”
“I just explained that to you. You were more interested in talking bullshit than in listening and trying to understand. We are the only group that stands in the way of the ZWO and the predators who are wreaking havoc on the entire planet.” Oxyfel said. “You know that’s true. You’ve seen some of the carnage they promote. Yet, you see only a small part of the whole. They do not kill with discrimination. If you are not among their select few, you are de trop, and they wipe you out! They kill willy-nilly to reduce simian population. Their hegemony is destroying everything. We kill only those, like big bankers, doctors, lawyers, pols, etc., who exploit simian weakness to the point of being detrimental to biosustainability. Ours is an esoteric, dangerous, and financially very unrewarding profession. And . . . “
“And what?” The convict asked.
“And that is why you do not help us to kill these people that are killing the Life on the planet.” Oxyfel said. “You’re either a coward or a greedy fool.”
“No! It’s wrong!” The convict said. “It’s a sin what you are doing, trying to protect this planet! This world is nothing more than a constant death. It will pass away, when Jesus Christ returns, and a new perfect Heaven and a new perfect Earth will take its place.”
“Bullshit!” Oxyfel said. “You religionists are too weak to think. That is why you follow unreasonable doctrines like that and blame everything untoward that happens to you on “God’s Will”. You’re too scared to risk your life for Life. You attribute the author of your cowardice and greed to that God monster or Jesus Christ about which you incessantly blather.”
“How are we to control our instincts if there is no good or evil, no point of reference? No free will, no personal responsibility to control anything?” Another convict asked. “You cannot have it both ways.”
Oxyfel looked embarrassed, and he said. “You’re right.”
“Well?”
“You’re absolutely right.” Oxyfel answered. “I can’t answer that objection very well, except to say. You are not the same person you were a second ago. Neither am I. We are always in flux, changing in response to Entropic demands. Even if only in small ways, when we change so rapidly, it is impossible to know ourselves. The mission satisfies the discrepancies and inconsistencies in the conditions.”
“Oh. The mission does that?” The convict asked, mockingly.
“Yes.” Oxyfel answered. “As you say, since there is no free will, there cannot be personal responsibility. So, why do we seek to punish irresponsibles, i.e. those manifesting weakness with respect to our criteria for conforming & obedient conduct? Why? Because we are sadistic little monkeys and want to play God, punishing weakness in others and usurping Nature’s prerogatives. Nature and the winds of Entropy sanction much weakness. It is often, if not always, a characteristic of beauty. If we but destroyed these disobedients, in the interest of our survival, it would not be deleterious, as Nature does not frown upon destroying the defectively weak. She does not smile upon brutal punishment practices, however, short of destruction. Doctors, lawyers, politicians, priests, biological misfits, etc. are deserving of destruction, because they all manifest defective or dangerous weaknesses, revealed as intraspecies predation and extreme caedere worship. If there were free will, indeed, they would perhaps also be liable to simian punishment for their weakness. The problem comes when we observe that they are neither punished nor destroyed for their crimes or weaknesses in either scenario. This leads us to assume that constraints, laws, taboos, and social mores are but trivial nonsense, (like ethics, morality, character, goodness, badness, etc.), except when they impinge upon biosustainability issues, like survival of life and Life. The people that have done the most for the human race were its greatest criminals. Now, the criminal human race is threatening the very existence of all Life on the planet. How apropos? It sickens but explains how we feel. Only by following the end can the means be correctly managed. Lucan said it better than I can. “Keep to moderation, keep the end in view, follow nature (servare modum, finemque tenere, naturamque sequi).”

“Like “God” satisfies the discrepancies and inconsistencies in the conditions for us.” The convict taunted. “How do you know what is biosustainable and what is not? There is no good or evil.”
“I have biology and mathematics to help me know and correct my mistakes. Your God doesn’t do anything toward making a more effective good or evil diagnosis than does my mission, and HE makes you a coward in the process.” Oxyfel said. “Your “morality” was passe’ hundreds of years ago. You throw your responsibility to effect changes on “God”s’ shoulders. Miraculously, he makes all your guilt go away. I must live with my mistakes and make up for them in changes of my future behavior.”
“No!” The convict replied. “I’m not a coward, and I still don’t see how you are any better than those you call the parasites.”
“”None so blind as those who would not see.”” Oxyfel quoted.
“You’re no different.” The convict said.
“We ARE different. Custodians do not worship caedere wealth.” Oxyfel said. “We do not accumulate caedere wealth. We do not spend our lives and energy on turning a living planet into a wasteland to acquire caedere wealth. We kill those that do, and we try to protect innocent Life when we are not killing its destroyers. Nature blesses our quest. Nature is economical. She does not provide for surplus food. There are not enough resources for all, unless we consume the surpluses. That’s why we are cannibals. Non-missioned simians, death-worshippers, and predators are surplus beasts that sicken and weaken Life by their existence.”
“You cannot have it both ways.” The convict said. “You cannot have free will and not have free will at the same time. You are doomed to fail.”
“We may fail.” Oxyfel said. “But, if we do, we’ll all rot in the same coffin. I think it’s better to have at least made the effort to find a way to survive as men, protecting the planet’s Life, than as slaves. You are unaware of anything that smacks of purpose. You are nothing more than an Ash Kan Nazi monkey minion.”
“But, I’m a monkey with free will.” The convict said.
“No, you’re not. You’re just a monkey.” Oxyfel said.
The convicts all left Oxyfel at that point. The first one to confront him fired a Parthian shot as he turned to leave, saying. “Stop agitating the guards.”
“Never.” Oxyfel said, preventing the convict from concluding his exit with “honor”.
“Leave them alone, or we’ll make it impossible for you to harass them anymore.” Another convict returned to say.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Oxyfel asked, as another convict approached the three disputants.
“I think you know, cannibal.” The third convict said, pushing at Oxyfel, until he tripped over his chains and fell.
“Leave me alone, death-worshipper.” Oxyfel said from the ground. “Or go to your Hell.”
“You’re the one going to Hell, cannibal.” The first convict said, kicking Oxyfel in the ribs.
“Oh, now isn’t that just like a Christian, kicking his enemies, when they are chained, prostrate, and defenseless, while professing to all how lovely, forgiving, and compassionate he is?” Oxyfel mocked. “Which cheek do YOU turn, fag?!”

Chapter Eighteen
The second convict picked up a rock about the size of a cantaloupe and was about to let loose with it on Oxyfel’s head. Oxyfel tripped him with his chains and the man went down on top of Oxyfel. The rock fell within Oxyfel’s reach. Oxyfel grabbed the rock and smashed it on the second convicts head. The other convicts, not wanting to hang around and have the guards see them as accessories to the mayhem, didn’t stay to watch their compatriot die. All turned and ran.
Oxyfel tore open the second convict’s stomach with a stick, his teeth, and his bare hands. He yanked out the liver, while the heart was still beating, and began devouring it. Guards and the first convict arrived just in time to see Oxyfel finishing the largest lobe of the vanquished convict’s liver. The guards pounced on Oxyfel and began pummeling him with fists and feet. He was quickly subdued.
Pulling Oxyfel to his feet, the guards led-dragged his badly-beaten body to the guardhouse about 500 meters away. They threw him in a cage and mocked him, asking why he didn’t try to escape. Oxyfel stood mute, and the guards lost interest in interrogating him. Hating Oxyfel seemed to be the general sentiment in the camp. Both guards and captive simians concurred on that. Anyone that has ever been in the unenviable position of being hated and despised by all will know how Oxyfel felt. Ostracism does not mean solitude, and the benefits of the latter do not always extend to the former.
Guards, everywhere, always choose to get rid of their problem convicts any way they can. Ashkenazi-owned guards were no different. An opportunity to kill Oxyfel was not immediately available. Management frowned upon beating good slave labor to death. The only brutal beatings the Ashkenazim accepted were in response to escape attempts. The guards now chose the only alternative open to them while still maintaining a large measure of sadistic pleasure in the process. They submitted Oxyfel’s dossier and care to the cyborg prison’s aegis. There, he would be used as a guinea pig for the Ashkenazi scientists.
The other convicts were soon aware, (via the first convict’s interpretation), of what happened. Oxyfel was the only cannibal among them. He found no support for his situation among the other prisoners, not to his dismay. He neither wanted nor needed simian succor. The guards solved their problem, and nobody complained. Complaints would have fallen on deaf ears anyway. Guards only listened when alternatives made guard lives more agreeable or convicts’ lives less so.
A few days later, a medical doctor and his entourage entered the guard house and began asking Oxyfel questions. Oxyfel was equally as communicative with the quack, et al. as he was with the guards. The next day, the predators brought a jeep and a crew of orderlies to the Roraima guardhouse. They took Oxyfel to a holding cell in a prison in Belem, Para’. On the Amazon River delta, Belem was within the populated corridor near the Amazonian protected zone.
The largest transhumance-cyborg laboratory in Brazil was also located in Belem. Some of the scientists, trained at the world-famous Aloirav transhumance laboratory, deep in the Amazon jungle, now resided there. The Aloirav lab built the 135 series of trans humans, the first superhumans to exist since the putative genetic manipulations of 500 millenia ago. To that Belem cyborg lab, formerly an institution and hospital for mentally deficient simians, the orderlies eventually brought Oxyfel. They placed him in a cage made comfortable for a human.
His situation seemed to be improving. What Oxyfel didn’t know was that he was destined, or rather part of his brain was destined, to be used in an ongoing artificial intelligence experiment. The current work of this nature in that facility required the neocortex, part of the hypothalamus, and little else. That meant Oxyfel’s existence was soon to take place sans his body and much of his brain. After about a week in his new home, Oxyfel was getting comfortable. Then, one day the director of the A.I. facility notified the doctors that they were required at surgery within the hour to remove Oxyfel’s tissue surfeit.

About the time Oxyfel was arguing with the convicts in the concentration camp in Roraima, a meeting was also being held in a special section of the trans-cyb laboratory. It was a few hundred meters from where the orderlies billeted Oxyfel and less than a hundred meters from the A.I. facility. At that time, the meeting’s attendees did not know they were meeting to discuss Oxyfel’s fate. Any old guinea pig was at issue. They soon narrowed their perspectives. A medical doctor, obviously the lab’s Director, turned to his colleagues gathered in the room and said.
“What we need is a young healthy human male. This is our most advanced digital brain developed to date. We can’t use just any convict. We need one that can absorb the energy requirements of the artificial intelligence aspect. We included in the plans for the prototype module the future requirement for an EMP-shielded cranium. Obviously, I need not mention the requirement for sufficient musculature to support its mass. We also will need a very gifted specimen, one with a quality Ashkenazi intelligence level, as there will be some loss of biological neural circuitry during the installation surgery.”
“I doubt you will find one with those qualifications coming from the population corridors.” A scientist responded.
“I agree.” An older scientist said. “I think you will need a cannibal.”
“That’s true.” A military scientist agreed. “The cannibals are the only ones with that kind of musculature and can still match the Ashkenazim in intelligence.”
“Do we really want a subject with such a history controlling such a powerful capacity?” The medical doctor Director asked.
“We will need to be especially rigid in our testing and security measures. We must incorporate special control features in the prototype that will obviate any undesirable attempts at independence.” A social scientist said.
“A fail-safe device?” The military scientist asked.
“Yes, General.
“Actually, that should not be a problem.” The medical doctor Director said. “I was talking to our radio-frequency lab just yesterday, and they are putting the finishing touches on just such a device as we speak. The technician I spoke with said that it will be ready in a few days and can be installed in an available port near the volition sulcus of the frontal lobe.”
“I was under the assumption that volition frequencies come from an area between the parietal and premotor cortices. How is it that you will be placing the device in the frontal lobe?” The military scientist asked.
“There IS input from that area, General.” A neural scientist answered. “The frontal lobe volition fissure and its associated gyrus interact with those frequencies. There is some question as to the exact position. We are not certain as to all the superheterodyne characteristics of the matter yet, but we hope to answer those questions with this experiment.”
“Why couldn’t you answer all those questions, prior to this experiment, with your disembodied neocortex research?” The military scientist asked.
“We could have.” The neural scientist replied. “It seemed more practical to answer them while answering some A.I. questions at the same time. It was discussed at the A.I. lab, and we decided we could save resources and much time with just this one experiment.”
“Really?” The military scientist asked.

“Yes, another incentive for us was that turnover, among the nurses that work in that area, is very high.” The neural scientist added. “It causes many delays.”
“I see. Well. I’m enthusiastic, and I’m also sure the army could use a weapon like this in our CoC eradication maneuvers.” The military scientist said. “The CoCs are wreaking havoc with our army. We need something that will take them out. I’m for going ahead with the search for a suitable subject.”
The meeting adjourned. A week later the medical doctor Director called another meeting of the brain cyborg-transhuman group to introduce Oxyfel. When everyone was assembled, the Director said.
“We have found the perfect specimen to use to prototype our new Artificial Intelligence module. It was sheer luck too. The only cannibal in the entire ZWO prison system, and we got him. As you all know, in our last meeting we talked about the characteristics of a desirable subject in which to install our prototype. From previous experiments, we have pinpointed some volition frequencies coming from an area between the parietal and premotor cortices with input from frontal lobe convolutions. Now that we know where the primary volition centers are in the brain, and have been successful in cloning bat cortical stem cells, we have a unique opportunity with this cannibal. He has all the pre-operative characteristics that we need to unite digital machine circuitry with Homo brain tissue. In addition, he has the historical background we want for our new cyborg weapon trial.”
“Is that all we need to know . . . volition frequency location?” A psychiatric member of the group asked. “Aren’t there other salient areas with which we should be concerned?”
“We have known the interfaces for the rest of the cortex for quite some time.” The Director riposted, curtly. “They are of no concern. It will be a fourteen-hour long surgery, with two post-op adjustments, and afterwards this cannibal will be ours to manipulate as we see fit.”
Another doctor asked. “Why did you choose a cannibal, Director?”
“You were absent at our last meeting, doctor. We discussed all that then. Cannibals use cognitive aspects of the cortex to the exclusion of emotional coercion better than other subjects.” The Director replied. “We can get a better grasp of how our new technology works when there is less introduction of spurious emotional energy, tending to elicit erroneous conclusions. If you are really interested in pursuing this further, doctor, I can get tapes to you of our more general reasoning.”
Another doctor said. “We’re ready for the subject with which you provide us. Of course, we shall require a few small sessions to measure the topography of the associated tissues presented. In a few days, if all is functioning correctly, immediately subsequent to the surgery, we can insert the new EMP-shielded cranium constructed to protect the re-worked brain and the A.I. module. Skin & musculature requirements are out of our realm of responsibility. All we can provide is neural circuitry-digital interfacing with stem cells.”
“Of course, doctor.” The Director answered. “We shall keep you informed.”
An artificial intelligence – technology expert said. “From what we have seen of this project, we have no objections. Our overall program allows us to make adjustments to the algorithms as needed a hundred times before the A.I initiates its own re-programming, re-writing, and cellular cum DNA re-working changes.”
The military scientist said. “What we are talking about here is a hypothetical creation that will manifest the very latest in technology, A.I., and molecular biological engineering knowledge, to date. Is that not right?”
“That is correct, General.” Another technology expert said. “And materials science too, with the new EMP-shielded cranium.”
“What exactly will occur if the cannibal’s own brain gets involved in the re-programming?” The military scientist asked.
“Well. It will, General.” The Director said; looking at both the military scientist and the technology expert. “We designed it to work that way. We agreed, at an earlier meeting, that the procedure would not work if the subject’s brain does not feel free to accept and allow unlimited interchange with what the A.I. inculcates.”
“We know that we can digitally co-opt both brains’ volition faculties. But, we know virtually nothing about consciousness, so we cannot interact with its emotional interfaces.” A psychologist said. “For that, we need to allow the simian brain, initially at least, much of its autonomy.”
“Why can’t you interact with the emotional and consciousness interfaces?” The military scientist asked. “I’m not comfortable with such a hiatus.”
“Well. In all frankness, General, we do not know what consciousness is, let alone where it is located.” The psychologist answered. “There are over ninety trillion cells that contribute to such matters; That’s 90 trillion influences on behavior. Who knows how many trillion chemical reactions every second are doing the same thing? Neuron pathway velocity differences & cognition superiorities & deficiencies, transmitter idiosyncrasies, etc., all enter the fray. However slight each ones’ influence may be, each has its own distinct input or lack thereof. We are doing this experiment to make advances into just those parameters.”
“Oh, that’s great!” The military scientist said. “What if the A.I. takes control?”
“It will.” The Director said. “The A.I. module can intimidate and overwhelm the simian brain. But, it cannot do so schizophrenically. It needs the initial go-ahead and continued permission from the simian’s animal-specific circuitry. If the A.I. circuitry gets analog permission, the sky’s the limit. With sufficient A.I. and digital influence we can take control of some of the emotions and to a limited extent even the consciousness. As this extensive an analog-digital integration operation has never been attempted on a simian, we do not know how much it will affect his representational content, functionally or causally.”
The psychologist said. “What the General is concerned about doctor, is this. Correct me if I’m wrong General. What if the A.I. module commandeers the transhuman-cyborg or vice versa, to our detriment? With all that the cannibal’s brain holds against us, what happens if it uses A.I. to its own ends, or A.I. uses AI to its own ends? Am I right General?”
“Yes.” The military scientist said, looking directly at the scientists brought in from the Aloirav facility. “I need not tell you how much we could benefit from an instrument like this. Such a weapon to use against the CoCs and other anarchists would be invaluable. CoCs are making inroads in every one of our vulnerabilities and even in some of our strongest assets. In tunnel eradication alone, a creature like what you are describing could prove priceless. But! We could have a formidable enemy on our hands if the CoCs get an instrument with this one’s capability in their arsenal. We do not want another 135A scenario.”
“Clearly, we do not.” The psychologist said, also looking directly at the scientists from the Aloirav facility.
The technology expert said. “The brain-wave master-oscillator circuitry and tuned tanks will monitor telepathically each salient overture and each transformation the A.I. module makes. Our monitors will record every electrical impulse that passes from animal tissue to digital circuitry and vice versa. The A.I. module also has radio frequency tuned-tanks that will receive and experience our overriding commands. Each change can be monitored and adjusted from here. We have plenty of sovereignty to observe and make changes well before we release the animal to field trials. Nothing can go wrong with the transhuman-cyborg unit that we cannot obviate or neutralize from here.”
The Director said. “One thing I forgot to mention, General, is that the animal will not be equipped with any weapons at all.”
The military scientist said with a sardonic grin. “I’m not so sure of that.”
The Director looked at the General quizzically but said nothing, until the General said. “That enhanced brain could prove to be the most powerful and formidable weapon in the world, ever, doctor.”

Chapter Nineteen
Isolo and Estevan left the CoC of Tomas’ and the others. The consensus of opinion there was that until they knew more about where Oxyfel was, it was a lost cause to go after him. Roraima alone contained thousands of hectares of jungle prisons. Venezuela, the Guianas, and Surinam contained even more. The custodians could spend years of very dangerous searching and still find nothing. So, Estevan and Isolo set out to travel back to Blake’s CoC.
They needed to warn the tribe that Oxyfel might be telling stories that could work to the detriment of all CoCs. It was nearly 3 AM when Isolo called a halt to the trek. The two made their spider traps in the expected shade of a towering babaçu grove. The small group of oil palms was in the Maranhao BR 316 buffer zone near the ex-Tl Awa’ indigenous reserve. Isolo remembered that, long ago, there was a small village named Fugido nearby.
They would need to be careful upon awakening. Native predators might be close. Although it did not happen often, the ZWO did issue permits to indigenous people, giving them the right to live in a specific buffer zone. Such rights came with collaboration provisions. The indigenous would inform the ZWO of all rebel, CoC, or “Terrorist” activity they observed.
These protected indigenous took their responsibilities seriously. They were frightful ZWO snitches and could prove quite injurious to the anarchists. If there were even just a few natives nearby, they might not be friendly. All non-predatory indigenous people were involved with CoC tribes these days. The Tl Awa’, not CoC affiliated, in buffer zones, would be potential enemies of custodians just as much as any religious grouping could be.
As it happened, when Isolo and Estevan arose about 9 AM there was nobody in sight. They buried their spider-trap covers in their foxholes and set out easterly for their tribe. It was about 3 PM when they met their first predator. The parasite was a death-worshipper, a priest. While the sacerdote was basking in the light of the caedere blessings from the imaginary control-freak in the sky, he experienced car trouble.
The man o’ the cloth had let his battery leak energy over the course of his trip. There was now not enough to keep the electric car going. Isolo and Estevan did not hesitate to come to the holy fellow’s aid. The kind custodians quickly helped the parasite out of this world, spiriting him exactly where he always told his parishioners he wanted to go. Estevan and Isolo then finished a sacred lunch, garnered from the ecclesiaste’s less celestial form.
They disposed of the cleric’s untransportable remains and took inventory of the car’s contents. There was a sizable cache of silver sticks, God’s accounting records, the tithing debtors’ names, and some “holy” water. They each took a few swigs of the holy water and pocketed the silver sticks. They left the rest of the car’s contents to other scavengers. It was the custodian’s tithe.
They were sure to be hunted again. God was now pissed off! He doesn’t take lightly the offing of his bootlickers. One does not kill a protected psychological-drug-peddler like a priest and hope to “live long in the land that Jehovah thy God hath given thee”. Isolo proposed leaving the BR 316 environs and once again moving off cross country. It was fine with Estevan, quite content with his stomach filled to the top. It was a wise decision, as the sky over the highway became filled with drones as night fell.
Isolo and Estevan watched the show all night from their spider traps. As they dozed off and on during the night the cops never came closer than 500 meters from the cannibals’ covered foxholes. Most of the morning was wasted for the custodians, however, as the cops did not want to give up on locating the brutal anthropophagistic killers of a sacred pederast. But, in the end, they did indeed appear to give up. The drones pulled out before the cops.
About an hour after observing the last of the predators get in choppers and cars, Isolo motioned to Estevan to leave the depression. The countryside was now free of obvious predator contamination. There was still danger of detection. Predators often left hidden cops, indigenous trackers, listening devices, and cameras behind. Satellites never slept. Isolo and Estevan were watching the cops, all day, and they observed no one attaching anything to stakes or trees that might be surveillance-related gadgets. Cops could be under the grass, as were Isolo and Estevan. The grass, itself, could contain cameras, but that would not be apparent until it was too late. Waiting too long was not an attractive option either.
The two custodians removed evidence of their presence, hiking quickly through the day toward their CoC. When they were about two kilometers from the tribe’s location, Isolo called a halt. He did not think they were being followed, but he felt it would be only prudent to wait and check for any possibility that they were indeed observed. Entering the tunnels in the night’s darkness would be safer. One can imagine the disaster that would ensue if the predators followed them to the CoC’s.
It would be akin to treason, leading death to their village. The custodians would have no chance to prepare for battle. Isolo was no novice at his chosen calling. He saw a copse of castor bean bushes on a small rise in the terrain. It offered a good view over a possible field of fire.
He instructed Estevan to hide there, and he would do the same in another one a hundred meters away. The savanna grasses between the two copses was not high, and there would be no danger of being caught in a crossfire situation. After waiting for fifteen minutes, he was about to suggest to Estevan that he return to the tunnels alone from the opposite side of the village. When Isolo thought longer on the idea, he changed his mind. The two would remain hidden until dark. It was with good reason, but to no avail.
If Estevan had returned to the tribe, he would have found it nearly as it was when they left. Blake had recently returned, as well, after having made a small raid to the East. The tribe was well-fed. Estevan would have related how their raid on the medical doctor went and their lack of success in finding Oxyfel. He would have still been speaking when the tribe would have heard the gunfire from the west. As it was, everyone in the village knew instantly that the predators were attacking some of their own people.
Blake impetuously ordered mobilization. It would cost him his life and tribe. Warriors began filtering out of the tunnels in disparate locations like bees to confuse drone and satellite observation. The parasites may have followed Isolo and Estevan from the priest-culling location, as Isolo thought might happen. It could also have been a delayed reaction to Blake’s earlier raid to the East.
Whatever. Blake’s rash decision was not unlike the decision he made when he first rescued Estevan from his car-drowning fiasco at the bridge. But, that rescue was predicated on attacking fewer parasites and drones. This time, he did not order a reconnaissance first, and initial predator strength was four times what it was at the bridge. Gunfire erupted when the predators came within Isolo’s sight.
Isolo knew he’d been spotted when he saw a directed-energy laser hitting in the castor bean bushes within a meter of him. The castor copse in which he hid was much further from the predators than the one in which Estevan was hiding. After Isolo downed the laser drone, the two cannibals began picking off predator forward observers. Drones and more predator cops were still deploying as Estevan saw the first of the arriving custodians. Blake was just beginning to see his fatal error.
CoC warriors were within sight of Estevan’s position. But, both the returning warriors knew how to keep their positions relatively free of enemy observation while returning fire. That meant they were also nearly invisible to their own forces. Neither Isolo’s nor Estevan’s positions were perceptible to the tunnel-leaving warriors. Blake could not focus any attack. He could very easily have compounded his error of impetuosity by leading everyone into an even more untenable position.
If he continued deploying, they might become surrounded by parasites with nothing but disaster to ensue. So, he stopped forward movement and stayed on the ground, determined not to expose the tribe further without knowing where exactly the parties to the conflict were positioned. The gunfire seemed to be concentrated on an area about a hundred meters south of the incoming warriors’ location. Isolo and Estevan were, as yet, unknown participants to him.
Blake sent a man to belly crawl toward the concentrated gunfire to get a better idea of what they faced. The risk was great, but it was less than that which a blind charge would bring. Blake didn’t want to attack while achieving nothing more than a score of dead, wounded, or incapacitated cannibals. As it went, a drone or satellite picked up the tribe’s location, scent, or movement, anyway. The drones began a concentrated fire directly on top of Blake’s men.
Within a few minutes, Blake lost half his men, and within a half hour all of them were dead or nearly so. The cops walked among the bodies and shot the surviving but not yet dead. A few minutes after the last of the predators and drones cleared the area, the vultures descended and began their feasting. The feeding frenzy continued as more and more vultures arrived from distant kilometers. Around 6 PM the vultures left, and only the ants remained to host the vigil.
Why the predators did not return to search for the tunnel, from which Blake ascended with his warriors, is a mystery. The parasites must have had satellite and drone footage showing men deploying. It was out of character for the cops to leave unprotected women un-raped and unslaughtered. At the very least, over a hundred bodies for the camps would have been a sizable bonus, not to mention a feather-in-cap. How would the person in charge handle all those cops complaining over not receiving that tidy extra sum in the paycheck?
One can only assume there must have been someone in charge, not completely in the Ashkenazi pocket, controlling the cops or maybe even a rebel in the making. About ten o’clock the following morning a girl of 12 years old entered the killing zone and began bothering the returned vultures. She was soon joined by the other women of Blake’s former CoC. The women wandered around the bodies and wailed their individual experiences of loved-one discovery. Some buried their dead in situ, and some left them to the birds, rats, ants, and tatu’.
Isolo’s women found Isolo’s twisted and broken body a hundred meters from the rest within a declivity under a large rock, surrounded by a knoll of castor bean bushes. They buried it with the surrounding sand in that same depression. Estevan’s two wives found his body after noticing vultures, afraid to descend, trying to stay perched on some castor bean branches. The spot was equidistant from both Isolo’s remains and the majority of the rest of the dead warriors. The young women began digging close by to get enough sand to cover the boy’s form.
While doing so, one discovered Estevan to be still slightly breathing. His wounds were extensive but the worst wounds were covered by castor bean leaves and a fallen branch from a cashew tree. The branch appeared to have been ripped off the main tree with drone gunfire. Much of what appeared to be blood was cashew tree sap. That fortuitous event stopped a hasty bleeding-out and also may have prevented the predators from seeing an available body for which to deliver a coup de gras bullet.
The girls called for an old woman of about 30 years-old to look at the moribund body. The old woman instantly took out her sewing kit and began stitching the worst wounds. The woman spent an hour sewing Estevan’s wounds, leaving most of the bullets where they were. She chose to just wash and inject an iodine solution into the wounds, foregoing any deep bullet extraction. While the seamstress finished her stitching, the tribe’s other women built a travois to pull him back to the tunnels.
There, they washed the blood, sand, cashew sap. and leaves off his body. They laid him on some dried grass in an area of the tunnel where it would be easy to bring him out into the sun every day, should he survive. An hour after the stitching, Estevan’s growing fever reached a maximum. The many infections, resulting from: the wounds, all night in the open, embedded bullets, and non-sterile needle-work, were refractory without antibiotics. The silver-copper-bile-garlic-vinegar-iodine poultices were plastered all over him, and the women took turns bathing him in clean fresh cashew sap. The boy was not unhealthy prior to the firefight, and that was in his favor. The fever continued for many days and no one expected him to survive. Estevan was the only warrior to do so. He survived the embedded metal, the wounds, the surgery, the poultices, and the resounding infection, but his weight dropped precipitously.
Other than Estevan, the only males in the village now were boys that hid in the tunnels on their parents’ orders. These boys and some of the girls would now make multiple forays out into the countryside to look for supplies. Passion fruit leaves, cu-shah, mushrooms, and firewood came in first, but insects, fruits, and wild vegetables also arrived. The women gave Estevan broths of leaves and palm insect-larvae to drink when he was conscious, which wasn’t often. Somehow, he hung on.
One of ex-Blake’s wives, a girl Estevan’s age, made it her task to watch over Estevan. Every midday she corralled a few women and got them to help her to bring Estevan’s naked body out into the sun. While there, she would turn him and baste his wounds with silver-iodine water like he was a roasting chicken on a spit. One of the boys caught a rat. He was taking it to his mother, when the Blake-wife saw it.
She grabbed the small animal and wouldn’t return it. The boy’s mother demanded she relinquish it. The Blake-wife made ready for battle. The rightful rat owner turned in defeat, and the Blake-wife used the rat to make a broth to give to her quasi-moribund charge. Whether Estevan was conscious or not, every day the girl whispered in his ear. “Please, Estevan. Don’t die. Please don’t die.”
Sometimes, when no one was near, she said it directly to his face. “Please, Estevan. Don’t die. Please don’t die.”
Estevan didn’t die, but he took weeks to recover from his wounds. The fever and infections were devastating. His face and skull began to look as if only a dead person could possibly lie within. After the first few weeks of recuperation passed, the tribe’s women often talked with him. He was the closest they had now to a whole man in the CoC. They wanted to look to him for everything for which women look to men.
Estevan was young, an adolescent teenager. Until the firefight, he was still developing a man’s sexual proclivities. With nearly eighty single women in the tribe, now, he could hardly be expected to withhold his favors for long. He developed a fondness for the Blake-wife and often took what she offered when they were alone in the tunnel together. But, other women too were demanding his favor. Sex was not the only aspect of maleness for which they wanted him. They needed other companionship and . . . meat.

Chapter Twenty
The predators took all the weapons that the dead custodians used on the battlefield. There was nothing the tribe could muster in the way of arms other than what the custodians left behind in the tunnels before their last battle. Less than 30 rifles and pistols, total, could be found. But, even with those weapons there were no men to wield them.
Blake-wife said. “We need more food, Estevan. Other than wild rabbits, cats, rats, and mice, as you know, probably the same in your own tribe, we do not eat wild animals. There are so few. Even pigeons are growing scarce nearby. We do not eat domesticated animals because . . . “
“Doing so assists in the destruction of all Life.” Estevan finished the biosustainability doctrinal maxim for her.
“We cannot go waltzing into the predator towns and buy vegetables without RFID chips.” She added.
“We must have more meat.” Estevan said. “I can see that for myself. It appears that I am the only one getting flesh to eat.”
“Just wild vegetables and fruit do not satisfy for long. And, a rich variety of vegetables is not available to us.” Blake wife said. “Meat is the answer. The children need meat to grow. How are we going to get it?”
“What you are asking is when and how am I going to make a raid on the predators?” Estevan said, smiling.
“Yes.” Blake-wife said. “We have no alternative but to question you. Over a hundred mouths use a lot of food. We are all hungry and getting skinny.”
“There are no men.” Estevan said. “How can I make a raid without warriors?”
“Women can kill too.” Blake-wife said. “We are weaker than men, and that means, if given the chance, we can be much more cruel and brutal than men.”
“You’ll need to learn how to use weapons.” Estevan said. “Despite the self-serving Ashkenazim lies about female/male combat equality, women cannot fight men pound for pound, kilo for kilo, and remain alive.”
“No. We cannot. But, guns and cunning equalize a great deal of male/female differences.” Blake-wife said.
The other women agreed with Blake-wife. They knew they needed to fight. The youngest would stay back on the first raid. There were not enough weapons to give each woman a gun anyway. They would leave 50+ women and all the children behind with five weapons. Twenty-five women and the remaining weapons would go with Estevan on the first raiding party made since the democide.
Estevan did everything he could to teach the women how to kill. There were not enough bullets to do any target practice with live rounds. Each round was too precious. They trained by “snapping-in”. Estevan made them practice everything, except the actual firing of live bullets.
All hoped they would not need to use firearms. It would mean the raid had failed. Nevertheless, each woman learned how to break a gun down, clean, and reassemble it anyway. Knife training completed the abbreviated boot camp. For the first raid, they chose a small town on the population corridor’s outskirts a day’s hike to the Southeast, still in Maranhao. They didn’t want to cross any state borders and be forced to demonstrate a lack of identification and RFID chips. By-passing the population corredor checkpoint would be dangerous enough. They would enter the town in twos.
Once they were all in the town they would keep each other in view. They were after food on this raid, nothing else. It did not have to be a bloodbath. The only reason for so many was that the meat would have to be cut up and transported back to the CoC in increments. Estevan would enter a building and make the kill, using a knife. Minutes later a demarcated select five would enter the same building to clean up the blood and put the meat into five meat sacks. These five warrior women would take the meat back to the tunnels.
The amount of meat needed required many backs. Numbers they had. Those numbers might also be required to extricate all of them from unanticipated problems. Estevan hoped to keep everything clandestine. But, he knew that the best laid plans, “gang aft agley”. Estevan felt he needed to take every precaution. Preventing a disaster, that he and the others could not foresee, was on everyone’s’ mind.
They would be strangers, and that meant they would stand out. Some people would remember them. In the process of killing, dismembering, stuffing meat into blood impermeable bags, and dividing responsibilities for transport, there might be problems. Blood, too, can be an extremely unwieldy substance. But, they were custodians, and they were hungry.
The CoC had only one alternative. It was either raid or starve. They chose to raid. They left for the predator village before sunrise on the chosen day, one man and 25 women. Some of the women were as young as 13 and some were old. Estevan’s body seamstress was the oldest at 30.
They could not transport 500 kilos of meat in sacks alone. It would raise suspicion. They needed a car. Their first kill was on the road, past the checkpoint, during the process of acquiring that transportation. The vehicle they chose was traveling away from the town where they planned to gather their provisions. The warriors entered the village about 4 PM, as they planned. No set of two was either too close to draw undue attention or too far apart to be unable to keep watch on the others. Estevan entered a building that promised to be filled with professional predators. On the first floor of the building he entered an office and found an attorney all alone. Lawyers were pure predation. Custodians never found one worthy of life. It was prime time for this one’s harvesting.
Within minutes five warriors were on their way back to the tribal village heavily laden with lawyer meat. Estevan and twenty women remained. The next sally uncovered a small-time politician and a lawyer together in an office. Estevan did not feel comfortable about attacking both without making a sound. He discussed it with Blake wife and they planned a course of action that promised to be quiet.
Blake wife would enter the office with Estevan, and together they would pretend to be looking for an associate. They acted upon their plan. With the two potential victims distracted by Blake wife’s youth and feminine pulchritude the two custodians dispatched the predators almost without a sound. The raid later found one other lawyer victim in the same building. The transporters filled their knapsacks with the kills and made for the tunnels.
Three lawyers and a politician completed the custodians’ hunting for that day. Estevan and his remaining attendants finished cleaning up the last traces of blood. Those five unburdened women, still with Estevan, stuffed their bags with the remnants of untransported meat. They then followed the former meat transporters and acted as the rear guard. Estevan hoped it would be the following day before the four predators were missed.
It was not to be. In the early morning, Estevan’s platoon was just a half an hour from home. It looked like it was going to be an uneventful raid. Then, the sirens and drones filled the evening sky around the plundered village. Estevan and his women picked up their pace, as the commotion came within their range of notice.
There was no criminal evidence, (that Estevan could think of), left at the crime scene, pointing to custodians. Of that Estevan was sure. Missing persons are not important to police for 24 hours. There must have been some unseen electronic device or an overly-observant citizen that gave them away. Perhaps somebody recognized the car. Now, there would be satellites to take into account.
They made it back to their CoC location before the first drones started circling over the CoC tunnels. The last custodian was well-ensconced underground before the first drones could be detected overhead. No invasion of the tunnels occurred that night. When the last of the drones left the sky, the custodians breathed a bit easier. They started their fires in the deep tunnel kitchens and roasted some of the state-licensed predators.
Special drying chambers in the tunnels desiccated and smoked the uneaten deboned meat strips. Bicycle-driven fans also brought smoke to each part of the tunnel system instead of releasing it into the evening sky. It protected the cannibals from predator detection as well as mosquito-borne diseases. The work lasted throughout the night, and the food lasted in the village for weeks. Estevan was a hero to his six score women and children charges.

Oxyfel had no idea what was in store for him. Nobody seemed to mind that he refused to talk to them. They gave him meals, and he ate the food offered. He would have preferred real meat, but the ersatz stuff they served him went down and didn’t come back up, so he accepted his fate. The clothes they provided were comfortable, and his prison room was air-conditioned.
One day, after Oxyfel was in his new prison for about a week, three simians in white clothing entered his room. They informed him that they were going to cut his hair and measure his head. He didn’t see any reason to deny permission, knowing it would do him no good. They would just force him to submit in any event. So, they began the process.
They shaved his head and put a large quantity of a gel all around his cranium. When it became stiff, they peeled it off. Next, they put a machine, connected to a computer, on his bald pate. They were done with the entire procedure within a half-hour and left Oxyfel in peace. The next morning three big brutal-looking simians entered and grabbed Oxyfel by the arms.
They lifted him onto a gurney, fastened his wrists to the sidebars, and wheeled him out of the room, without any explanation.
“What are you doing?” Oxyfel asked. “Where are you taking me?”
The guards continued to be noncommittal but kept moving him forward, until they reached a room with the words Pre-Op painted over the door. After they checked him in with the head nurse, they turned, looked directly at him, grinned sardonically and left the building. The last one to leave took Oxyfel’s picture. Oxyfel lay on the gurney for the rest of the morning. He was without food or water or the use of a bathroom. His yelling for attendance gained him nothing.
About the time the director of the A.I. facility was ordering his doctors to the operating room, next door to the pre-op room, nurse Ester Wolfert entered the A.I. pre-op room by chance. It was about 2:00 PM when, through the glass door, she saw Oxyfel, shackled to the cot. The most beautiful teenager she had ever seen was all alone, screaming obnoxiously for attention. Although Ester had seen many non-Ashkenazim before, she had never come in contact with a cannibal. Her German Ashkenazi heritage did not allow any fraternizing with goys. Something clicked in her mind, now, and she could not take her eyes off Oxyfel.
She approached the gurney and read the clipboard, hanging on the bed. It indicated that Oxyfel was waiting to be prepped and anaesthetised. The only name on the clipboard was “Oxyfel”. It seemed too succinct a name for nurse Ester. She asked him for verification of his name.
Nurse Ester was a beautiful pre-med student with long blond hair and blue eyes. Seeing a pretty girl looking down at him and smiling was not unpleasant to Oxyfel, and he cut short his screaming. He had not been eating much meat since his liver feast on the Christian in the camp. He no longer reeked of putrefaction compounds. He thought about that and felt he might not offend the girl by communicating with her in a normal fashion. So, he told her his name. And, she walked away.
Why he was apprehensive about her feelings regarding him he didn’t know, but he was. Oxyfel was also extremely disappointed at her behavior. He attributed her reticence to residual volatile organics. Thinking he must still stink, he tried to put her out of his mind.
His screaming for attention continued to be held in abeyance, however, out of concern that he might possibly offend her. A few minutes later, she returned and asked him why he was in the pre-op room. Oxyfel said he did not know. He said the guards just brought him there and left. He told her that the only person he saw all morning and afternoon was a nurse that hung the clipboard on his gurney and Ester herself.
Ester replied, putting her hand within Oxyfel’s. “I’m Ester, Oxyfel.”
“Pleased to meet you, Ester.” Oxyfel said, twisting his right hand up as far as it would go, within the limitations of the wrist restraint, to grasp her hand in a normal handshake.
Ester asked the head nurse what Oxyfel’s problems was. The head nurse said. “Nothing. He’s as healthy as you are. He’s to be disembodied at 3:00 PM.”
“No!” Ester said, vehemently. “That can’t be.”
“And why can’t that be?” The head nurse asked, impatiently.
“It just can’t be.” Ester repeated without any reason for her statement.
“Oh, yes it can be. Look for yourself.” The head nurse said, pointing to the words on the operating room’s schedule-clipboard. That doctor is the A.I.’s surgeon, and it says right there. “Neocortex and hypothalamus to be sent to the life-support station immediately after surgery.” Satisfied, Missy?”
Ester said nothing, vocally, but her eyes said much, all that was necessary. She looked from the nurse to Oxyfel and back to the nurse. If the head nurse had been a little more perceptive and not so preoccupied with her work she would have seen the desperation growing in Ester’s eyes. Instead, she said.
“It’s 2:30 PM now. It’s time he was prepped. The doctors will be arriving in a few minutes. You do it. All my other nurses are busy in the wards. It will be good experience for you.”
Ester did as she was told and approached the gurney. She took the cap off Oxyfel’s head and saw his bald pate. It clinched her belief in what the head nurse said. She began the prepping operation. It began by her trying to remove all Oxyfel’s prison-issue clothing.
She stared a little too long at his nearly naked body before trying to put the surgery smock on him, and Oxyfel asked. “Haven’t you ever seen a naked man before, Ester, or are you admiring my scars? I think they’re quite attractive, don’t you?”
Ester still stared, saying nothing. She fumbled with the smock, trying to get it on over the prison shirt that was still hung up on the wrist restraints. She knew it was impossible and thought about cutting off the shirt.
“I can’t do it.” She said, suddenly stopping. “I just can’t.”
“Why don’t you get someone to unlock my arms?” Oxyfel said. “I can’t see how you’ll ever get my shirt off and that white shirt on me unless you do.”
Ester pulled the smock off him again, throwing it on the floor. She then started crying and didn’t stop.
“Why are you crying, Ester?” Oxyfel said. “It’s not such a big problem. Just ask someone for some help with the wrist restraints, and you can do what you need to do.”
“Oh, my God, Oxyfel.” Ester turned to him. Her reddened blue eyes flashed at him, as she asked. “Don’t you know what they’re going to do to you?”
“No.” Oxyfel answered. “They measured and shaved my head yesterday, but they didn’t say why.”
“I don’t know why they measured your head.” Ester said. “But, I do know why they shaved it.”
“Why?”
They’re going to remove your brain in less than an hour unless you escape from here.” Ester replied. “The surgery is scheduled for 3:00 PM. That’s less than fifteen minutes from now.”
“How can I escape?” Oxyfel asked, resignation fighting desperation plainly visible on his young handsome face. I’m fastened to this bed!”
“I don’t know.” Ester said. “I’ll try to find someone to unlock them. I can’t prep you without it, anyway. Well. I can. I can cut off your shirt and lay the smock over you. But I don’t want to. What will you do if you get free?”
“Run like hell!” Oxyfel replied.
“Where to?” Ester asked.
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Oxyfel answered, but it seems better than just laying here waiting to be murdered.”
“I think you’re right.” Ester said. “I’ll get somebody in here. Good luck, Oxyfel.”
“Whatever happens, thank-you for telling me and for trying to help, Ester.” Oxyfel said.
Ester said nothing. She just turned and left the room.

Chapter Twenty-One
If Ester had been an experienced nurse, she would not have hesitated to cut off the prison-issue shirt and drape the smock over Oxyfel. But, since she was not so experienced, it gave her a one-time excuse for going to look for a guard to unlock the restraints. That was the only chance, albeit slight, that Oxyfel might have at saving his life. Ester would have to find a guard equally as inexperienced (as Ester would have to pretend she was) or a very stupid one. She chose the latter, but without knowing it.
Although she was not trained in the seductive arts, Ester knew how valuable her sex was to its opposite counterpart. Not being a painted & perfumed whore, she had an even extra-special appeal. When she cozied up to the guard, stationed at the pre-op room’s door, he was only too willing to chat. Her eyes were still pinkish from her earlier weeping and that too made a favorable impression on the guard. A few brief but valuable minutes of plaintive conversation later, and the guard was putty in Ester’s hands.
As hospital wrist restraints were no more escape-proof than police handcuffs, the keys to unlock them were also quite as simple and standardized. The guard had a set, and it was just a matter of finding the right fit from the assortment on his ring. He fumbled around for a few minutes but came up with one, eventually. Then, he stopped for a moment, almost as if thinking. That not being this guards most striking feature, he instead asked Oxyfel if he released Oxyfel’s arms for the nurse’s prepping was the boy going to behave.
Of course, Oxyfel would be only too willing to help them decapitate him. He agreed to be the very soul of propriety. The guard didn’t release one wrist first and wait for the nurse to fix that arm, re-locking it, before unlocking the other. The wrist restraints were both opened before the guard felt his job was discharged correctly. The guard, having released both restraints, stepped back for Ester to do her job, waiting to replace the restraints when she indicated she was finished.
Both Ester and Oxyfel were amazed at the man’s un-Ashkenazi-like stupidity and remained motionless with trepidation until the restraints were BOTH removed. Ester stepped forward to make as if to take off Oxyfel’s prison shirt, and Oxyfel raised his torso at the same time. As Oxyfel started to take off his shirt to assist Ester, the guard seemed to awaken. He jumped forward to push Oxyfel back down on the gurney. As the guard’s hand came within his reach, Oxyfel grabbed it and pulled the guard toward him, knocking Ester onto the gurney as he did so. The girl’s face slammed into Oxyfel’s genitals as the guard’s neck approached Oxyfel’s teeth. When the neck was close enough, using both his teeth and his nails, Oxyfel tore the jugular vein and carotid artery out of the man. Blood covered the gurney, Ester, and Oxyfel’s entire naked body. Very quickly the pre-op floor also was covered in guard blood. Oxyfel pushed the dying guard off the gurney and lifted Ester’s face off his genitals.
The girl’s face was covered in blood and she said. “Why did you have to do that?”
“What?” He asked, thinking she was upset because he separated her from his genitals.
“Kill him!?” She screamed. “Why didn’t you just run away, like you said you would do?”
“I plan on doing just that.” Oxyfel said, as the clock moved to 3 PM. “Thank you very much Ester. Good-bye.”
Oxyfel grabbed the guard’s pistol and jumped through the swinging pre-op room doors, still naked, except for his bloody prison shirt on one arm. He looked right and left before running down the hallway to the left. Within a few seconds, Oxyfel was outside the building and cowering under a bus stop bench in the hospital’s prison compound. The walls around the enclave were topped with concertina and machine-gun posts. He neither knew what to do nor where to go.
Attacking a machine-gun-armed guardpost, with just a pistol, did not appear sensible to Oxyfel. His nakedness did not give him a very imposing appearance either. The alternative was to be cut to ribbons trying to scale the concertina-covered 15-foot-high wall. Pure animal fear and indecision immobilized him. The guards found him, still cowering under the bus´stop bench.

As Oxyfel charged through the pre-op room’s doors, Ester ran screaming into the administration room, trying to explain what happened. The hospital staff were not very understanding, and Ester lost her job, poste haste. She went home with the fear that being so discharged might reflect on her pre-med chances of getting into medical school. The fact that she had committed a capital crime was not yet bouncing around in her mind. Ester was, however, in serious doubt about her behavior, even though most of it sprang from altruistic and humane motives.
In other quarters, people were not so altruistic and humane. Assisting in the escape of a cannibal was a capital offense in the special Ashkenazi court. Although she did not do the actual releasing, the guard was dead. He could not take full blame and exonerate her. The prison’s legal staff sent an investigator to Ester’s residence, and he made her aware of the trouble she could soon expect.
Ester was very much involved for the next few days in some powerful soul-searching. “Did she do wrong? Would she be charged with the guard’s crime as an accessory or with his death as an assessory? Why did she keep her face immersed in Oxyfel’s genitals so long after she was thrust there by the falling guard?”

Oxyfel, still naked, covered in blood, tried to use the dead guard’s pistol on the approaching guards attempting to capture him. The dead guard had not been too assiduous in his weapon’s maintenance. Oxyfel got off only two rounds before the pistol jammed, refusing Oxyfel further assistance. The guards grabbed him and hauled him back to the hospital. The disembodying surgery was postponed, but the guards held Oxyfel for a nurse anyway.
The nurse gave him an injection, and Oxyfel was soon sleeping like a baby. When he awoke, he had a terrible headache. His arms were attached to the bed as they were after he was captured on the river and before Ester got him a brief reprieve. When he tried to lift his head off the pillow, it wouldn’t move. As hard as he tried to move his head, it was totally immobile.
A nurse entered the room, and Oxyfel asked her why he was immobilized. She referred him to the doctor. Oxyfel did not know doctors from nurses in the place he was, so he asked each person that entered why he couldn’t move his head and why he was restrained. He refused to talk, without his sentences being replete with vituperative content, until he got some answers to his questions. Finally, he got an answer. It was because a psychologist needed to explain a few things to him first.
When the psychologist arrived, Oxyfel made his concerns quite clear. “Why can’t I move my head, and why am I in this bed? Why are my arms always being attached to beds?” He said. “What did I do wrong?”
The psychologist said. “Why should I tell you anything when you refuse to cooperate in even the most basic of matters?” The psychologist answered. “You know what you did wrong, and you won’t even hold a decent conversation with us.”
“Fuck you! Bastard Ash Kan Nazis!” Oxyfel said. “I’d just as soon talk to a pit of snakes!”
“Suit yourself.” The psychologist riposted. “You’ll just make it worse. How are those headaches?”
“They’re terrible. I can’t live like this.” Oxyfel said. “You’re inhumane.”
“Yes. I suppose so.” The psychologist said, turning to leave. “Don’t bother me anymore, until you’re ready to cooperate.”
Oxyfel swore at the man and continued to do so after the man was no longer even in the building. For days afterwards, he swore at the fellow, the fellow’s mother, the fellow’s father, all Ashkenazim, etc. etc… But, in the end, the outbursts diminished. Oxyfel told the nurse he wanted to talk to the psychologist. The psychologist returned after a day’s hiatus in the colorful language.
When he entered Oxyfel’s room, he asked. “Are you finished cussing and ready to cooperate with us?”
“Yeah. I suppose so.” Oxyfel replied.
“What?!”
“I said I was, didn’t I?”
The psychologist said. “If you hadn’t been so nasty, we could have given you some pain relief. The pain must have been extreme.”
“I handled it.” Oxyfel replied.
“Yes, you did.” The psychologist said. “The way you handled it is now legendary, part of this hospital’s lore.”
Oxyfel understood to what the psychologist was referring and smiled, as the psychologist asked. “Now. Can we begin?”
“Yeah.”
The psychologist waited while the nurse gave Oxyfel a shot for pain, saying. “This will make the headaches go away.”
“Great. What do you want to know?” Oxyfel asked, apprehensively. “I don’t know what I can tell you that you don’t already know. If you want me to betray anyone, we’re both screwed. I do not have any tactical information to share. I’m just a kid, running from you preds. All the real custodians, that I knew, are dead.””
“We only want your help in understanding how you are doing and growing.” The psychologist explained. “We don’t need information on your past or your friends.”
“Really? Why not?” Oxyfel said. “You were never that interested in just me while I was in my last prison. What’s changed?”
“You.” The psychologist replied. “You’ve had an operation to make you super intelligent.”
“Taking out my brain has made me more intelligent!?” Oxyfel asked, referring to Ester’s sub rosa information, without indicating from where he got it.
“We only removed a small part of it, less than ten grams, to more readily connect it to our digital module.” The psychologist explained. “That other surgery, to which you are referring, was never supposed to happen. Someone screwed up, intentionally or otherwise.”
“Why did you want me to be so intelligent?” Oxyfel asked. “Are intelligent prisoners that much easier to control than stupid ones?”
“No. If anything, it’s the very opposite.” The psychologist said.
“So, stupid slaves are more valuable than smart ones.” Oxyfel said. “Why did you want me to be of less value to the ZWO?”
“You are part of an experiment.” The psychologist said. “We needed to know something.”
“I see.” Oxyfel replied, beginning to sense something different about himself.
The psychologist continued. “We were extremely fortunate that a young nurse-trainee at the A.I. hospital made a courageous move that saved you for us. We’ve been following your case since the concentration camp incident when you were first brought to our attention. You were somehow lost briefly and scheduled to be disembodied by mistake in the interim. Administration scheduling snafoo or someone wanting you to be so scheduled, unbeknownst to us, put you outside our aegis, temporarily.”
“What will happen to the nurse?” Oxyfel asked.
“She is Ashkenazi, so her case will go to the Ashkenazi Court. She will probably be arraigned on murder charges there.” The psychologist replied. “The guard, you attacked, was Ashkenazi, and he died from his wound.”
“And me?” Oxyfel asked. “Will I be likewise arraigned on murder charges?”
“Not likely.” The psychologist explained. “You belong to the state already and we’ve invested the equivalent of over a billion redshields in digital silver sticks on your future.”

Over the past few days, Oxyfel had noticed his self-image and peace of mind changing. He didn’t know for sure whether it was an overall positive change or a negative one, due to his immobilized condition or not, but it did make him sad. He was remembering things he did not remember memorizing. Mathematical formulas and puzzles danced around in his head. His mouth was always dry, and his appetite diminished. Biological questions plagued his sleep.
He felt his weight dropping, and he couldn’t defecate. He couldn’t sleep, and when he did he awakened in the early morning hours, thinking about dying. When he wasn’t thinking about dying he was feeling guilty. The young nurses that bathed him couldn’t even get an erection on him. Oxyfel also felt what can only be described as pessimism and early stage misanthropy.
He found himself with a need to withdraw inward. Talking with people was becoming a real chore for him. He was losing patience with having to repeat himself to nurses because they didn’t understand immediately what he said. All the negative things, he felt, were worse in the morning.
On one of his visits, the psychologist asked about the things Oxyfel noticed. Oxyfel admitted them freely, and the psychologist left. He returned a few moments later and said. “Everything is as we expected. There is nothing to be concerned about.”
Oxyfel wasn’t worried. He was sad and uncomfortable. He was also not paying much attention to the psychologist who was saying. “ . . . disturbed some neuroendocrine pathways with the operation. That will pass. You are now much more intelligent than we are, than anyone for that matter, and we need for you to understand that before we return to you your freedom of physical movement. We need your agreement that you will not try to kill yourself or anyone else. If you agree to those conditions, we will release you back to your room.”
“If I’m so intelligent why would I want to kill myself?” Oxyfel asked.
“”Moderately wise each man should be, not over wise, for a wise man’s heart is seldom glad.”” The psychologist quoted. “If you search your memory banks you will see that high intelligence correlates positively with unhappiness. It’s a very depressing quality to have higher intelligence than others around you. Super intelligence is just that much more depressing. Do you understand, Oxyfel?”
Oxyfel did not reply to the question but said instead. “That was wisdom quoted from a very old Viking publication called the Elder Eda.”
“Yes.” The psychologist replied.
Oxyfel said. “I remember the book, and the passage. But, I do not remember ever having read it. How can that be?”
“We loaded your new composite brain with the most extensive library in digital form we could find.” The psychologist said. “We felt that being raised in a CoC you would not have had a sufficient background in human thought and wisdom to handle your new capacity for reason. An extensive background in literature, philosophy, and other disciplines might help you better adjust.”
“Cannibals are ignorant uncivilized beasts, hunh?” Oxyfel replied.
“Not that, so much as. . .” The psychologist started to reply, but Oxyfel cut him off saying.
“It’s all right. I think that was sound reasoning on your part. We do indeed not have extensive libraries in the tunnels. But, even with all those “works of lore” in my memory banks I am beginning to imagine the agony that I must soon begin to feel when I discover that I know more than does the entire world but still can’t answer the most basic of simian questions.”
“What questions, Oxyfel?” The psychologist asked.
“Why?” Oxyfel replied. “Where did it all begin? Where is it all going?” Why does no purpose exist except for that which we impute to ourselves? Why must we believe we have free will, when it is clearly an illusion? What reason can there be for our trust in consciousness? What lies beyond? How do we live with the futility of existence?”
“I see.” The psychologist said. “Those questions.”
“Among others.” Oxyfel pondered, sadly, almost mumbling to himself. “When Man first appeared on this planet, Life was paradise. Man survived for 40-50 thousand years in harmony with Nature. What happened? Why did he become Sumer’ized? How did Man’s “Law” get dominion over Natural Law? How did intra-species predation get such hegemony? If extraterrestrial DNA has formed us from ape antecedents, so unnaturally, can we get rid of it? If we can someday rid ourselves of the toxic nucleic acids do we really want to? Will it be obligatory to save ourselves and planetary Life? If we can never be cleaned of such an inheritance, is there a way we can avoid the deleterious consequences of its possession? And, one of the biggest questions; Is Man possessed?”

Chapter Twenty-Two

“Clearly, those questions do not have readily available answers. We are not equipped to help you answer them. But, once you are comfortable with your new brain, and we see you are adjusting as well as possible, we can activate unused sectors of your new cortex, until you are at full cognitive capacity.” The psychologist said. “That may help you to answer them, but it will be up to you, because once full-activation is in place we cannot decommission it without doing irreparable harm. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” Oxyfel replied. “You want to know how well I handle being God?”
“So, do we have an agreement?” The psychologist asked, not replying to Oxyfel’s question. “Do you promise to be good?”
“I’ll be good.” Oxyfel said, willing to agree to almost anything to be mobile again.
The psychologist pushed a button and the wrist shackles opened on Oxyfel’s arms. His head moved slightly also. He tried lifting it, raising it some. It was much heavier than he remembered. He said. “My head is more unwieldy than I imagined it would be.”
“That computer attached to your simian brain is going to take a great deal of getting used to in many ways.” The psychologist answered. “You will need to do some neck exercises and work with a posture therapist for a while. There is a cost you must pay for being so much more intelligent than before. No one can pay it for you; nor can they remove its sting. Unlike normal people, your extensive cognitive ability will also not allow you dreams or illusions in which to bury your loneliness.”
“Can I remove it, myself, if I wish?” Oxyfel asked.
“No.” The psychologist answered. “It will be a part of you for the rest of your life. Should you try to do so, you will immediately experience a brain hemorrhage and die.”
“Why did you put it there?” Oxyfel asked. “I never asked to be so much more intelligent.”
“I thought I explained all that.” The psychologist answered. “You are a ward of the Khazarian World State. Your person does not belong to you anymore. You belong to us. What you want or care about is of little concern to us. Be thankful, Oxyfel. It’s the only reason you are not due to be executed for killing the prisoner that brought you to our attention and the guard in the A.I. hospital.”
“My wishes mean little to you, except if I wish to off myself?” Oxyfel asked.
“Yes.” The psychologist admitted. “Should you do that, it will represent a loss on our books. Therefore, I am required by my employer, the ZWO, to ask you not to do so. Should you refrain from such negative behavior the ZWO will compensate you for your cooperation.”
“So, you made me a cyborg.” Oxyfel said. “You did so without my permission and now you think I should be grateful?”
“Yes.”
“And you want my help?” Oxyfel asked, snidely.
“Well. Yes.”
“Just exactly what am I?” Oxyfel asked, “Define Oxyfel, doctor.”
“Technically you are a transhuman-cyborg, as you have a number of species added to the basic Homo sapiens sapiens body along with a super-computer.” The psychologist admitted and explained. “You will discover you have enhanced night vision as well as telepathic powers. It will take time to get used to all your new capacities. We will help you to work through the difficulties.”
“What exactly did you put in me?” Oxyfel asked, as if the previous conversation never occurred.
The psychologist answered. “We’ve been through all that, Oxyfel. I would rather not repeat it just because your emotions are not yet ready to internalize & accept it. You do not need me for it, anyway. You can access all that information yourself. All your capacities and technical information included in the module is accessible via the information properties sector. I can say succinctly here that you have a transgenetic control nanoprocessor, an Intel Gentium – DNA hybrid chip attached electronically to your RFID.”
“I don’t have an RFID?!” Oxyfel almost screamed.
“Oh, yes, you do.” The psychologist countered, looking steadily at Oxyfel, until the boy was convinced, saying. “Look in the mirror.”
Looking in the mirror, seeing his expanded cranium with its very large frontal aspect, never seen in other simians, Oxyfel said. “I can’t ever go back home.”
“No, you cannot.” The psychologist said. “Why does that bother you? Your home no longer exists and you couldn’t as a convict either. You were doing a life sentence.”
Oxyfel said. “What did you do with my “C”?”
“Why?” The psychologist asked. “Do you miss it?”
“I was growing used to seeing it there.” Oxyfel said touching his forehead and not feeling any traces of the “C” branded into him. “Was that included in the delux cyborg package?”
“We thought you would be more comfortable without it. Our plastic surgeons removed it and replaced the scar tissue with skin we removed to insert the new cranium. Your neocortex and digital brain are EMP-shielded where that skin used to be.
“What are you going to give me if I put up with you?” Oxyfel asked.
“The ZWO will insure that your every need and most desires are met.” The psychologist said. “You can have a much better life here.”
“But, what does it profit me?” Oxyfel said. “I’m no longer human.”
“Of course, you are.” The psychologist said. “You are a super human.”
“I’m a glorified monkey.” Oxyfel cried. “You’ve taken from me my animal innocence and my aspiration.”
“Why do you say that?” The psychologist asked.
“You wouldn’t understand.” Oxyfel riposted.
“Perhaps not, but that doesn’t answer my question either.” Asked the psychologist. “How do you know you no longer have an aspiration?”
“I don’t know how to explain why I feel it’s absence. I can’t describe it, but I just don’t feel I have a mission anymore. I’m nothing more than a machine.” Oxyfel sobbed. “Why couldn’t you have just killed me?”
“We needed your body and background for our research.” The psychologist answered, coldly.
“So, you could learn more!?” Oxyfel said.
“Yes.” The psychologist answered. “Knowledge is power.”
“Knowledge without purpose, imagination, and wisdom is a mad dog.” Oxyfel said. “Human life is meant to be action in pursuit of purpose not knowledge! Knowledge is a tool of purpose.”
“And without purpose, one is not human?” The psychologist asked.
“Of course not!” Oxyfel answered. “Without purpose, objective, mission, aspiration, etc. a monkey is just a monkey, a biological machine.”
“Even if that human must lie to himself that some purpose exists for him?” The psychologist asked. “Blind conjecture?”
“Yes.” Oxyfel replied with a bit less intensity and confidence.
“Interesting concept.” The psychologist said and ordered Oxyfel to be brought back to his prison room. There, they injected him with a sleep narcotic.
In his room, they monitored Oxyfel minute by minute and day by day. They were most interested in how his body was adjusting to the new creature it contained. Anti-implant rejection and infection were their main concerns but self-harm also stood high on the list of apprehensions. They were also interested in another aspect of the research animal. They did not want Oxyfel to lose unconscious desire to live upon realizing that he was no longer in control of Oxyfel.
The scientists were not sure that they had not inadvertently removed Oxyfel’s will to live. Were his constitutive survival genes strong enough to counter the affects of their surgical manipulations? Continued loss of appetite, weight, libido, sleep, awareness of surroundings, etc. and increased pessimism and misanthropy all might indicate a slow slip into demise. What the psychologist withheld from Oxyfel was that along with the increased intelligence would soon also come a schizoid voice, occasionally, commanding his thought and deeds. Would Oxyfel accept it or give up entirely? These were the main current concerns of the scientists involved with the Oxyfel project.
Billions of research hours were invested to bring the Ashkenazim to this point in technology. The results of Oxyfel’s case could mean an expensive failure or the pinnacle of mankind’s quest for apotheosis to date. These scientists, with all their knowledge, had not internalized one very important concept. Personality is not a simple condition resulting from a Nature/Nurture past, adjustable to taste with the right chemical and electrical interventions. It is a hitchhiker, riding within a body ruled by trillions of commensals, symbionts, parasites, and trillions upon trillions of entropically-influenced chemical reactions.
The music of our apotheosis is in our dreams. Such a complex creation as a human cannot be encapsulated in a re-worked cerebral cortex any more than a drug or electroconvulsive therapy can turn a sad man into a happy man. Oxyfel was not a happy cyborg, and the will-to-live he had was indeed slipping away. His handlers were aware that they could lose their investment at any moment. Something needed to be done and quickly.
The psychologist returned to Oxyfel’s room and asked how he was doing. Oxyfel shrugged his shoulders as if to say. “As well as can be expected.”
“Is there anything specifically the matter, Oxyfel?” The psychologist asked.
“No.” Oxyfel replied.
“Are you sure?” The psychologist pressed. “We don’t want you slipping into a depression from which there is no return. There are no drugs or physical manipulations, we can give you, that will make you a happy cyborg. You must help us with that. What do you need?”
“I don’t know.” Oxyfel replied.
“I’ll be back in the afternoon.” The psychologist said. “If you can think of anything that might help your spirits improve . . .”
“Spirits?” Oxyfel riposted, after a brief interlude. “How apropos – not spirit.”
“What?” The psychologist queried.
Oxyfel replied. “You said to help my spirits improve, not spirit. You made it plural not singular. Was that a Freudian?”
The psychologist didn’t know what to say. There was really nothing to say. He mumbled something about a “general expression” and was in the process of leaving Oxyfel’s room, about to close the door, when Oxyfel said. “There is a matter of concern to me.”
“What is that?” The psychologist asked, returning to Oxyfel’s side as if shot from a slingshot.
“I would like to know the status on Ester Wolfert.” Oxyfel said. “I want to see her and talk to her, every day. I also want assurance that she will not be punished in any way for saving my life. Is that clear?”
“Yes.” The psychologist replied. “That’s clear. I’ll get right on it.”

The police awakened Ester and took her to the Ashkenazi court. She was arraigned and told to sit in the hallway, under guard, while a number of Ashkenazi bigwigs heard her case. There was sufficient arguing, eliciting vehement vituperation, that Ester could hear some of it.
. . . . . “HE demands we release her immediately into HIS custody!” An Ashkenazi lawyer for the court (prosecutor) said. “HE will not accept ANY castigation of her! Just WHO does HE think HE is, beyond a common cannibal and murderer? HE should have been executed, long ago, Excelentissimo, not making demands!”
“I am inclined to agree with the prosecutor.” The judge said. “This is highly irregular.”
“It isn’t who he THINKS he is.” A lawyer for the laboratory handling Oxyfel’s case said. “It’s what he KNOWS he is.”
“And what is that supposed to mean?” The prosecutor asked.
“That means you will do as Oxyfel demands or you will find yourself out on the street no longer practicing law.” The laboratory lawyer answered.
“What?!” The prosecutor screamed.
Ester’s ears were now very much more interested in the conversation than they were before hearing Oxyfel’s name mentioned. She got up off the bench on which she was sitting and walked over to the courtroom door to hear better. The guards followed her like ducklings after their mother. The Ashkenazi judge on her case now said. “How dare you threaten a member of the bar, and in my courtroom?!”
Oxyfel’s lawyer said, pointing at the paper on the table before them. “I’m not threatening anyone, judge. I’m simply telling you the facts. It’s only what you can expect if you do not dispose of the matter according to these instructions, immediately. These orders come from a much higher authority than you. If you do not do as this directs, immediately, you Judge will be sitting on the same bench on the same street as he will be . . . TOMORROW!”
“How dare you threaten me?!” The prosecutor yelled. “I’ve been practicing law here for a decade longer than you have, Sonny.”
A messenger entered the courtroom and went directly up to the judge. The judge took the letter the messenger handed him and read it. Nodding to the messenger, the judge effectively dismissed the man. The prosecutor was still expostulating and sputtering offensively, until the judge waved and waffled his hand at him as if to say, “calm down”. The judge then said.
“All right. I’ll run it through. But I want a directive, from this “higher authority”, in writing, that I can put with the paperwork. I don’t want to get called out on this at some future date and have to explain myself to my constituency or my . . .”
“Understood, Judge.” The laboratory’s lawyer said.
“If I don’t get it before next Wednesday, she goes back into the system.” The judge said. “And, I guarantee. I’ll make it my sworn duty to see her swing. Understood?!”
“Understood, Judge.” The laboratory’s lawyer said.
“Who is this Oxyfel, anyway?” The Judge asked. “She sure is lucky to have a friend like him in her corner.”
“I don’t know him personally, Judge.” The laboratory’s lawyer said. “But, I’ve been made to understand that he is a very important asset of the ZWO. Worth billions.”
“A cannibal!?” The prosecutor shouted. “Worth billions?!”
“Yes.” The laboratory’s lawyer said. “A cannibal, worth billions to the ZWO. Get over it, my friend.”

About a week after the predators returned Oxyfel to his prison room, Oxyfel began to ask for books that were not in his memory bank. The scientists looked for the books he requested, but no one would admit to knowing where to find them. Books like Variola’s Revenge, Luz-Bethel, The Garlic Peddler, Zio+, etc. After repeated abortive requests Oxyfel stopped asking. Soon, the scientists began finding Oxyfel outside of his room, looking for books. When they asked the guards, “Who let Oxyfel out?”, the guards did not know or said they did not know.
They could never determine how he and the girl got free. Oxyfel and Ester did not try to leave the prison compound, but Oxyfel would not stay in his room. The monitoring stations in his room also disappeared. The scientists later found, in the prison yard, the missing listening devices and inactivated monitors. No one ever discovered by observation how Oxyfel released himself.
Did he pick the digital lock? Did he use tools or just his mind? Did he con a guard? Was he using his telepathic powers to direct the guards’ behavior without their knowledge?
One day the psychologist saw Oxyfel and Ester in the prison yard and began walking toward them. Oxyfel saw the man approach and said. “In answer to your quandary, I picked the lock.”
“Thank you, Oxyfel.” The psychologist said, nearly collapsing, mid-response, when he realized Oxyfel spoke telepathically not volubly. “That was a quest . . “
“I know.” Oxyfel said, again telepathically, and moved on with Ester toward the mess hall.

Chapter Twenty-Three
The psychologist met with his colleagues in the same office where they assembled a few months prior to Oxyfel’s surgery. The Director spoke first. “It does not appear our subject is encountering any rejection phenomenon. Danger of infection at this point has been greatly reduced. The subject does not seem to be descending any deeper into depression since the girl began sharing his room. He seems to be quite comfortable with his new state of mind, no pun intended.”
“What does she want from him?” A computer specialist asked.
“What do all girls want from men?” The psychologist asked.
“Security, affection, someone to abuse, threaten, and demean.” The Director said.
“I needed to ask.” The psychologist said.
“He appears to find her satisfactory.” The military scientist said. There is only one bed in the room, I understand. I think we can assume they are sharing it. His procreative drives must be still intact.”
“Oh, it’s much more than that, General.” The psychologist said. “He’s crazy about her and she him. They appear to be inseparable.”
“I think it is time we run the directed telepathic response trials with the radio frequencies.” The Director said.
The psychologist agreed, saying. “The subject is cooperating with us and appears to be handling his new powers quite well and modestly. He seems to have no problems with those persons in his lesser-endowed milieu, such as the girl. He eats our food and has not manifested a continued desire for human flesh. He controls his desires moderately well and is not suicidal. He has not become so frustrated as to attempt to kill or apparently even want to kill.”
The technology expert said. “It appears we were successful.”
“I don’t know about that. One success does not mean Success.” The military scientist said, showing his meaning of success by a two-finger open pinch, and a wide-sweeping double-arm swing for the capitalized Success. “What we have here may be a wolf cub. We are still a long way from certifying it as a weapon.”
“That is true, General.” The Director replied.
“So, you propose we attempt the behavioral control transmission signals trial now, Director?” The military scientist asked.
“Yes. I think we’re ready for that, General.” The psychologist said, after the Director looked his way. “He’s using his telepathic powers and doing so very well. He surprised me a few days ago by spontaneously addressing me, and then talking with me, about something of which I was thinking, without using his voice.”
“Really?” The military scientist replied. “That is remarkable, but we still don’t know how he will react to knowing that he does not control himself anymore, but that we indeed do control him.”
“A negative result on that trial could derail our entire program.” The Director said.
“That is true.” The psychologist said. “Our most grave concerns are behind us, I feel. The tissue-rejection cum infection risk has passed satisfactorily. With this girl at his side I think we can also put the depression problem to rest.”
“How long must we keep the girl as an appendage?” The military scientist asked.
“That is difficult to say, General.” The psychologist said. “But, do not minimize the girl’s importance. As a person skilled in the emotional states of his fellow man and having been near Oxyfel during his worst moments, I want to impress upon you how close we came to losing him, either from self-harm or lost will-to-live. This girl may be the key to our continued success with him. It will be up to him to determine how long she will be necessary.”
“I’m sure it is not inauspicious that she is Ashkenazi, and he is not.” The Director added.
“No.” That may prove useful down the road.” The social scientist added.
“When do you propose to release the second half of the digital brain, giving him the additional power of artificial intelligence?” A quantum mechanics scientist, coming from the now-defunct Aloirav transhuman laboratory, asked.
“Subject suicide is our main concern at this point.” The psychologist said. “One step at a time.”
“I thought we’d put that apprehension to rest with the girl’s presence.” The military scientist asked.
“No, General.” The psychologist said. “We’re not free of that concern yet. We’ve dodged two bullets with the girl’s help. But, he could spiral down at any moment, particularly if he hits an impasse while trying to integrate his cellular analog with our digital. Negotiating his impending mental bondage may also present an impasse for him. The girl can help us, but she’s no match for him in intelligence. She could never assist him in a problem of such a nature. She may even be a detriment.”
“How is that?” The Director asked.
“She is Ashkenazi, and he’s a cannibal.” The psychologist answered. “These custodial animals are atheists. They have a great antipathy for religion and those who practice it. The sooner we can separate the two the better. I’m sure too if the girl’s parents knew what was happening to their daughter, they would not be pleased. They would probably do everything in their power to end the relationship.”
“Even to the point of seeing their child hung for accessory to murder by the Ashkenazi court?” The social scientist asked, poignantly.
“Probably not.” The psychiatrist said. “They will be equally unimpressed with their daughter’s values & choices, I’m sure, but we do have that as an ace.”
“Well.” The military scientist said. “I for one agree that separating them as soon as it is warranted is preferable.”
The Director asked. “Does anyone think it would be better to wait a while longer before we examine the parameters of the directed response to the telepathic radio frequencies?”
No one did, and they set the rf control-at-a-distance trial for the following day. No one notified Oxyfel what was in store for him. The scientists thought it best to hit him with it while he was unprepared and unaware. They would deal with the untoward consequences as they arose, if they arose. Results were at issue. Concern for Oxyfel’s psychic pain was not of paramount interest to his handlers.
Oxyfel’s telepathy powers currently dissipated at a distance of about 10 meters. Over 10 meters the voices he heard were discordant and muffled. Higher frequency consonants were completely inaudible. So, Oxyfel did not know what the diabolical crew were planning for him. He awakened that next morning by a voice in his head telling him to get up and brush his teeth. Oxyfel was more than moderately disconcerted.
The cause of Oxyfel’s unease can be understood with a few quick explanations. First, he was not accustomed to brushing his teeth in the morning. He always brushed his teeth once a day, in the evening. He did not like brushing his teeth, anyway, and the thought of putting so much fluoride in his system, twice a day was repulsive. Secondly, one can imagine his surprise, when he heard a voice in his head, an auditory hallucination, completely contrary in command to his own volition. Oxyfel never before experienced an auditory hallucination. The sensation must have been extremely traumatic.
To discover that you may be manifesting schizoid behavior is bad enough, but psychotic orders to do something you despise was worse. Unable to deal placidly with what was happening to him, Oxyfel thought he was probably hearing a telepathic voice. He was accustomed to them by now, and he began looking around for the head that produced it. There were none close. Except for the sleeping Ester, he was alone in his room.
About to go out the door to look for his extrasensory interlocutor, the voice grabbed him again. This was no mere fluctuating auditory hallucination. It was a distinct voice, he heard, telling him to do something. Oxyfel was accustomed by now to expect prior advice on certain aspects of his new capacity. Having received no warning from his handlers of what was about to happen, Oxyfel naturally thought he was becoming schizophrenic. His brain raced around his memory banks to discover the usual symptoms of that condition.
At least a second passed, before he surmised what was happening to him. When he was certain of that circumstance, he grew angry. It was offensive to him on numerous levels. His mind was now in a momentary state of civil war. That conflict also translated into another quandary, a bifurcated dilemma.
First, there was the “to obey or not to obey” question. THAT now became his most salient question. His computer-enhanced cortex told him that to be an enlightened cyborg transhuman he should obey. If he did not, perhaps the voice would think Oxyfel was rebelling or purposely not responding correctly just to antagonize. Even without surveillance monitors in Oxyfel’s room, the handlers would know soon if he obeyed their command or not. The ZWO monitored every person’s use of energy and water on the planet.
Oxyfel’s spirit was still in the state it was in when he discovered there was no longer a mission for him. With a damaged spirit controlling his dual-faceted mind there was not a lot of discretionary energy left to devote to sustained rebellion. His brain told him it would be unwise to demonstrate any semblance of mulishness at this stage of the game. It would render no viable future options. That was where the second road on the path of his bifurcated dilemma came into play. Oxyfel did not know now whether he could ever trust his brain again to tell him the truth.
Perhaps, the Ashkenazim were engineering his “truth”? They did so in the simian media, political, entertainment, financial, peer-group, etc. domains. Why not within his new brain too? Nevertheless, he had to act, immediately. If he did not, his handlers might think there was a malfunction.
They could set him down for reconstructive surgery. If they suspected even the slightest sentiments leaning toward insurgence there might be repercussions of an even more forceful nature. He might be sacrificed like a used-up lab rat, or Ester could be taken from him. From this point on, however, Oxyfel changed. He knew there was a new aspect to his enslavement.
If he wanted to survive, perhaps evolving into a human again, he would need to consciously dissemble. Oxyfel knew he needed to demonstrate that he was effectively controlled by his handlers. As of now, they held all the cards. He was nothing more than another lab specimen in a department of comparative medicine somewhere. But, in amalgamating his two brains his handlers had not destroyed all his independence. An element of it still lurked. Contrary to one’s first blush, it just grew a bit, giving him some hope for the return of an ability to elect to again control himself.
The voice he heard in his head emanated from the tuned tank placed between his parietal and premotor cortices. It was not much different from his own voice. The handler’s rf-derived audio-simulated voice was Oxyfel’s, but it sounded to Oxyfel a bit like it was coming from the inside of a tin can. He could differentiate the two. His handlers may not know he could discriminate. He knew enough to never demonstrate that fact or indicate it by vocal speech. He hoped he did not inadvertently reveal his ability telepathically.
Oxyfel thought. “That answer will come in time. I may be little more than a machine now, but I will not be just another glorified farm animal. For the present, I will pretend I am controlled by this voice. I will do as I am commanded. The day may come when I can override its commands and do as I please. I must learn how to increase the strength of my telepathy, but not until I can control it better both receptively and transmittingly. I must learn how to separate and insulate my personal thoughts from my telepathic circuitry. I must learn all over again how to belong to myself. And, I must build a room inside my brain that is only mine. It must be free of interference and a place in which I can find myself when I need to. If I cannot do that, I must find a way to change the circuitry to enable such enhanced power, freedom, and separation.”
Thus, the seed of mission was there. The seed coat was not yet rotten enough to germinate into a seedling, but the process was taking place. He felt doing small rebellious things like picking his room lock should continue. It would give his handlers the idea that he was still a normal simian, like a child, wanting a certain amount of autonomy. It would do so without any display of willful temerity. They must never know the extent of his proximity to rebellion and desire for freedom.
Oxyfel did not think about the future or a time to rebel in earnest. His obstinacy was still too inchoate. At this time, he believed there was much he could learn from these ZWO predators. He remembered the psychologist mentioning more brain power in the future, if he behaved. So, setting out to break free or to destroy them with their own creation was not yet an articulated idea.

The world was growing warmer and warmer physically, and colder and colder poetically. Except in the CoCs, love of Life was becoming harder and harder to find. Wars, democides, religious insanity, bizarre occult nonsense, infanticide, drug-addiction, homosexuality, bestiality, body mutilation, medicine, law, etc. were accepted everywhere in the populated corridors. As the non-simian biosphere died, so did man’s spiritual appendages. The only creative arts that flourished were the intensely anti-human Ashkenazi analytical aberrations and other mud-lovers’ trash.
Without genuine soul-elating art the mean level of human values continued its relentless decline around the planet. Late 20th century and early 21st century art pandered to the systematic and ignoble. Such perverse displays only deepened and became more pervasive as the world approached the 22nd century. Violence depicted in earlier films now escalated to the intense glorification of war and large democides. With beer and potato chips close at hand they became little more than a superbowl or a sports extravaganza. Prisons and concentration camps became fantasylands. People actually learned to enjoy watching genocide films if well-furnished with torture and mayhem.
As general species’ rigor-mortis approached, universal institutionalized suicide was easier to contemplate. Strategies for augmented survival were often intermingled with anti-survival incubi. Death-worship, pollution, deforestation, medicine, statism, etc. were but the most visible. Only the CoCs continued to practice natural human savagery, but they had little time or energy for art. Survival was the only art beyond biosustainability needs most could muster the energy to pursue.

Estevan and his women enjoyed a few days of peace in the tunnels. One of the children appeared to have some leg-bowing and a woman exhibited signs of osteomalacia. Everyone knew about vitamin D deficiency. So, Estevan took a chance, and the tribe spent a few sunny afternoons naked outside in their little above-ground village. But the time arrived when they were again in need of meat, especially the cholecalciferol-rich livers.
They could not return to the same town they raided before. Someone, tuned for coincidences, would recognize them. It would be sheer suicide. They could always look for a bigger town, but that would mean more traveling time. It would also entail a greater risk on a number of levels.
Ashkenazi biometrics and satellite observation tools made every moment outside the tunnels a potential disaster for custodians. Estevan and Blake-wife held many conversations with other women of the tribe. There was no solution that seemed better than the others. All were fraught with large risk. Without men, ready to sacrifice themselves for their women, any mistake now could be catastrophic for the CoC.

Chapter Twenty-Four
Estevan often thought about Oxyfel, rotting away in some concentration camp in northwestern Brazil or the Guianas. Should they have tried harder to extricate him? If Isolo and he had made a concerted effort to find Oxyfel, they might have been successful. They might also still have a full-complement of CoC custodians here to which they could have returned. It was highly likely that their return was what precipitated the predator assault, killing all the men of the tribe.
Coming to the tribe from the outside, probably the proximal cause of wrecking it, Estevan was now its headman. He often wondered if the women harbored any hidden resentment against him. It might be an issue down the road. He saw no signs of it, presently, so it didn’t merit his worry now, he felt. Now, they needed security. More importantly, they needed food.
Nearly everyone in the population corridors were either death-worshippers, predators or both. Custodians harvested lawyers, bankers, medical doctors, and pols at most kills. That didn’t mean common Christians, Jews, or Muslims were any less valuable to biosustainability as meat for custodians. To be a religious person and worship death, the custodians believed, a person needed to imitate mentally deficient simians and despise reason. That put religionists in the category of compassion vulture, i.e. predator. Most people never realize how much damage death-worshippers do to the ecosystem.
In Estevan’s time they didn’t either. God-fearing, Law-abiding citizens were plentiful and usually admired by all simians. Just because predators were planetary auto-immune diseases did not mean their corpses were not edible. Virtually all simians were good for food, even eco-thugging humans. Custodians, though, were getting the reputation of only going after the worst of the predators – lawyers, medical doctors, judges, bankers, pols, etc.
It was not voicing an unfair criticism. Such a course of exploitation was the most cost-effective strategy for biosustainability. But, it also brought added problems to it’s possible eventual realization. Those most predatory, most caedere wealthy, and thus most able to defend against the custodians, were the very ones the custodians attacked the most. They tended to leave the petty death-worshippers to the ZWO’s democides.

Estevan sat before the tasty meal of rat meat, palm grubs, and passion fruit leaves in the large tunnel kitchen. He was thinking about his tribe’s future and watching the near-naked women moving to and fro before him. When he was younger, he’d heard stories about how predators were weak for women. He’d learned that women, dressing half-naked and flaunting their sexuality before men, were acting out a female power-play. They used sex as a weapon to get what they thought they needed. Predators, demonstrating their possession of caedere wealth and political influence, in front of women, were acting out a male power play. Ordinarily, since they both were playing with fire, they both deserved the burns they got.
“But,” he thought, “what if it wasn’t a mutual power play but a concerted dance of death?”
Estevan talked with Blake-wife about his idea. Blake-wife took his idea to the general population of women, and they all liked it. It would entail some adjustments to their way of life for a time. They would need to continue wearing satellite-disguising camouflage while moving within the buffer zones, to and from the CoC tunnels. Once passing over into the population corridors they could dress in a type of indecent feminine attire that would attract prey.
That would mean more tunnels near population corridors to store camouflage clothing, arms, and provisions. That meant risk. Satellite-simian observation, however, was slow to detect camouflaged movements or naked Caucasian bodies on sandy savanna soil backgrounds. It also could not detect the absence of an RFID. Detection required electronic monitoring of a closer nature.
Estevan felt a potential problem might arise between himself and the women if he pursued the matter. The tribe would, obviously, want the idea to work. That meant the most beautiful women would have to be the bait. Estevan was in the prime position of beauty judge, since he was the only man. He would have to decide which women had more feminine pulchritude than the others.
Vanities would get involved. That would be difficult to manage for Estevan. He could find himself in a potentially threatening position for the most innocuous of reasons. Blake-wife felt she solved the vanity problem by telling those not “bait” women that they were too valuable to the tribe to be used as decoys but were needed as warriors. Nobody was fooled, especially not Blake-wife, but few were offended. Not everyone can be beautiful. There must be extremes to have a point of reference.
Blake-wife’s statement kept some of the onus off Estevan who was, of course, the ultimate arbiter as to beauty and pulchritude. What, really, is the sense in holding beauty, an accident of birth, as a deserved cause for admiration, anyway? Biology. Fortunately, the women had no cosmetics to make them ugly or perfume to make them stink. There would be no need for carrying make-up or wasting hours adjusting the fakery after a difficult trek through the bush.
Intelligent & sentient men, overwhelmingly, prefer unpainted unscented women over the false variety. It is testimony to the power of consumer-society propaganda that cosmetic use occurs to the extent it does. It makes one wonder if maybe make-up is not used more to intimidate other women than to attract mentally-deficient men. Perfume was another matter. Cannibals were proven stinkers.
Despite copious contrary testimony from certain astute corners, perfume was not created just to make little boys nauseous in church and in schoolrooms in the morning. Its developers were hoping to disguise the presence of noxious filth on bodies owned and operated by obese or otherwise unhygienic simians. They failed, of course. Mycobacterium smegmatis’ volatile gas products are notoriously more perfumatic, penetrating, and belligerent than the developers of highly-touted counter scents could ever have imagined.
Some cannibal girls did spread smashed flower sauce on their bodies to see if it would disguise volatile organic compound smells. It did not. Perhaps they picked only fetid flowers with odors meant to attract and swindle nasty insects for the obscenest of reasons. Whatever. Who knows? The experiment failed to achieve the desired results.
The perfume debate in the tunnels went on for a number of days. It was never completely resolved. For CoC procreation and biosustainability, physical attractiveness was another subject. The part of the job Estevan did not find too unpleasant was in determining what clothes were usefully indecent and which were “put-offishly” obscene. The most beautiful women in the tribe all paraded in front of him one afternoon in various shades of nudity to answer that question. It was a tough job, but Estevan handled it with aplomb.
The question arose as to whether they should bring children along as bait for pedophiles. The question was put aside as Estevan said. “According to the definition of pedophilia in simian Written Law, all normal men are unaccomplished pedophiles. Certainly, all men that reside in CoCs fit the definition. Women of 12 to 15 years old are beautiful enough to interest all normal men as well as “pedophiles”.”
Young boys to interest homosexual pedophiles was another question. Estevan was not perverted himself and could not answer such a question. Since no tribal woman wanted to risk her son’s life in such an incursion, they answered that question easily. Girls were plentiful. Boys were precluded from “bait” category.
The women set to work creating indecent clothing that would pass the “safe-from-retaliation” test. During the manufacturing period, Estevan kept himself busy servicing the women that desired it. Naked and nearly naked beautiful young women were too much temptation for him to resist. He, being the only man, was too much for the young women to resist. He was actually looking forward to the respite that would occur when they made their sally into the population corridor. Blake-wife too was looking forward to Estevan’s coming celibacy. She felt her services, while they were in the field, should be sufficient.
The day of setting out to perform the death dance arrived. Estevan and ten young women, from 12 to 20 left the tunnels. All eleven were dressed in natural savanna grasses and leaves. They made their way directly toward the closest population corridor. When about 150 meters from the fence demarcating the buffer zone from the population corridor, Estevan ordered the warriors to spread out and look for a suitable place to tunnel. They needed a hiding place for themselves and their accessories, quick access to water, and an entrance to the corridor. The normal tunnels, the tribes used to pass over borders, were too frequently used by other custodians for everyday passage and represented too much risk.
It wasn’t long before one of the girls returned with news of a suitable spot. The others brought back more negative results. Estevan went with the girl that thought she found a good spot. He discovered her to be right. It was as close to the fence as he dared to risk, well-camouflaged, and not too hard a subsoil. A small stream flowed nearby. Estevan said he was satisfied with it, and they all began either digging or hauling dirt. The troops brought the dirt out of the tunnels and spread it around the savanna grass roots.
The opening to the tunnel was under a large grove of cashew trees. They worked all day, every day, extending the tunnel about eight to nine meters per day. It took three weeks to get the tunnel to the other side of the fence. It was summer and rain was not an issue, so Estevan did not order heavy wood bracing. There were two places where the tunnel had to go higher to avoid large rocks in the way and that required heavy wood supports. If they had been contemplating such an adventure in the winter months, stronger bracing would have been essential.
The women worked in shifts, sleeping a few hours and digging, every day and night. Those not digging or sleeping hunted for rats, grubs, and vegetation for the others to eat. Within a month, there was a suitable tunnel system for both hiding themselves with all their paraphernalia, and an entrance into the population corridor that was relatively safe. It was just in time too, because there was no food for the last few days, not even the ubiquitous lizards. The dried simian meat provisions were gone within the first week. It was time to replenish them. The entire party was famished.
A buxom girl of 15 was chosen by all as bait for the first predator fish. The women set her to walking on the main road that led into the first populated city closest to where they tunneled. They struck on the first try. A nuclear power company executive saw the girl walking and immediately slowed his car down to get a closer look. He liked what he saw and circled around to engage the girl in conversation.
The girl was not accustomed to enticing and did not do well. She walked away from his advance, without ever encouraging him, toward the place Estevan and his women warriors were waiting to pounce. The predator followed a bit but got antsy, speeding away. The girl thought she’d failed. Estevan told her to stay put and see if he would return. He did.
This time the girl did not walk away. She merely distracted his attention long enough for Estevan and two of the warrior women to relieve him of the burden of his parasitic life. The man’s liver, kidneys, and pancreas disappeared within minutes. One of the warrior women inspected and removed all the car’s listening devices, cameras, and radio connected GPS. Then, the custodians piled in and drove to the waiting tunnel. There, they stashed the remaining meat, ready for removal.
When everything was in order they piled in the car again and went to a spot much further away from the tunnel. The next kill took place with another woman as bait. This time it was a bit more tedious. No one stopped for hours, and Estevan was beginning to doubt his judgement. Then, a pastor happened on by and made himself vulnerable to Estevan’s hungry helpers. It was while they were getting the pastor ensconced in the car, that another car came by looking for some strange love.
This was a Jewish salesman who found a 13-year-old CoC anarchist particularly wholesome. He was a bit too slow to recognize her odor, however, and wound up sharing trunk space with the pastor prior to delivery to the tunnel cache. Now, there were three corpses to dismember, debone, and dry, plus three cars of which to dispose. Estevan talked with the women. They wanted to continue hunting. To return to the CoC village, with so little meat was not an attractive option, particularly after spending so much time creating sexy attire and excavating. Estevan said they would take a day to treat the meat to retard spoilage and then go out for more kills.
The hiking to return to the tunnel from car ditching was a concern. All the women thought it was worth the extra effort and risk. Estevan and two girls went out and hid the three cars. When they returned to the tunnel, the women gathered around Estevan and said that they had been talking. Almost everyone felt concern that the CoC might be needing meat, immediately.
Blake-wife said they wanted to send some warriors back to the CoC with all the meat taken so far. The rest would stay with Estevan and hunt some more. It sounded okay to Estevan, and he agreed. The women partitioned the salted meat into transportable quantities. The warriors saw the meat transporters off to the CoC with nearly three bodies worth of boneless meat. Then, Estevan and his remaining women returned to the population corridor. Using the same tactics, the custodians bagged three more predators.
After two more sorties with equal takes each, Estevan brought the remaining women back to the temporary tunnel system with their booty. He and Blake wife then went back into the corridor to ditch the last of the cars. They ditched the last cars a long way from their other harvesting. Then, Estevan took Blake-wife back to the tunnel. He returned into the populated corridor alone to ditch the last car. While he was doing so, the women deboned and salted the meat.
Blake-wife agreed with Estevan, earlier, while they were ditching the cars, that the women would leave when they were ready. Estevan was to follow them at a considerable distance, after he returned from his last trip. The women did finish the work, and they left for the CoC. The tunnel was empty now, except for the bones of twelve predators and Estevan’s stored gear.
Estevan spent a few hours looking for a suitable drop spot to hide the last vehicle. He finally found one to his liking under a bridge. The depression made a perfect place to hide a car no longer needed. The declivity under the bridge was dry, and he had no problem driving the car down there and covering it with savanna grass. He was returning to the temporary tunnel on foot, in the late afternoon, when he noticed a drone following him.
“Damn! What did I do wrong?” He thought. “I must have missed a hidden camera or a mike somewhere. Maybe a satellite picked me up driving the car under the bridge. Those sky-spy programs are getting to be almost impossible to circumvent.”
Estevan was almost to the temporary tunnel. His camouflaged hat and clothes were still hidden there. He walked casually for a hundred meters or so in order to appear nonchalant to the drone operator. It was to no avail, as the drone began firing at him. Estevan ran, zig-zagging the last few hundred meters to the tunnel, and dove in. His tumbling into the tunnel was accompanied by the sweet sound of the drone’s 127mm rocket exploding on the tunnel roof. The rocket hit near the tunnel entrance-exit, blocking the population corridor end entrance-exit.

Chapter Twenty-Five
Estevan could not escape now other than via the buffer zone end. He immediately began donning his camouflaged clothing, thinking about the best armament to use to take down the drone. His choices were limited. The CoC had no LAWs, and the more modern arms were buried in soil by the drone’s direct hit. An ancient AK-47 would have to do. It was the only rifle in the tunnel that still had accessible ammunition near it.
The drone was the size of a Cessna 150 and would not survive a concentrated automatic weapon barrage, but Estevan wanted to conserve his limited ammunition. At the buffer zone entrance-exit to the tunnel, Estevan now lay prone, waiting for the drone to make another pass at the former population corridor entrance-exit to the tunnel. When the drone flew into Estevan’s 6 o’clock position, he fired. No Maggie’s drawers appeared, but Estevan knew he’d missed. He had failed to lead the aircraft enough.
He fired again, and this time he hit the drone but not the fuel cannister. The round’s damage did not bring down the aircraft. It did, however, alert the drone operator of Estevan’s new position. The drone zeroed in on Estevan’s buffer zone location, opening fire as it did so. Estevan had no choice but to sustain an automatic fire, using up his ammunition.
The drone erupted in flames, shortly after Estevan’s last round left the magazine. Scrambling out of the tunnel opening, leaving the Kalashnikov there, the warrior immediately moved into the buffer zone savanna. He started back toward the CoC but did not get far. Outside the tunnel for only about five minutes, Estevan discovered at least twenty drones circling over his head.
“Damn!” Estevan thought. “The cops will be here soon. Will they make me out through this camouflage? What shall I do? Whatever I triggered will soon be matched, collated, and correlated with the other biometrics they have on me, and I’m a dead cannibal. It’s too late to dig.”
He was right. Within five minutes there were cops everywhere. Their voices were audible. Estevan knew he could not hope to fight his way out of the encirclement. He did nothing but remain as motionless as his breathing would allow and count the minutes till darkness arrived.
Cops passed within ten meters of him, but they did not see him. There must not have been any robots or cyborgs with volatile organic molecule sensors installed, or at least they didn’t come close enough to him to pick up the scent. Estevan kept his thoughts to a minimum in case they might contain illuminating words or images and there were telepathic cops around. He could not take a chance on getting captured, jeopardizing the entire CoC. His sniper rifle was back at the CoC, and the empty AK-47 was at that moment being blown to bits in the temporary tunnel.
His only weapons were a pistol and a knife. In the event he was discovered, he would have to use the pistol on himself, or manipulate it to elicit a suicide-by-cop. It would not be worth anything against heavily armed predators. One might ask, is such a course of action justified? The use of violence anywhere is appalling to an uncivilized person. Only civilized persons know how important the use of violence can be. Under most conditions, however, it indicates an impassable constraint, symptomatic, within the system. The perpetrator(s) are merely the pawns or props and the deeds usually but ineffectual means for micro-altering those systemic elements requiring adjustment.
As Estevan crouched in the savanna grasses, he let his mind philosophise. Nothing focuses the mind better than proximal impending death. Estevan felt that custodians could agree with that great death-worshipper, Jesus Christ, in the value that dying for purpose demonstrates.

Jesus Christ said, supposedly, that dying for those you love shows how much you love them. Custodians believed that too. But, they also believed that living for what they believed in, purpose, not just dying for it, was more important. It showed even greater love. Dying for a person does not affect much of anything. The recipients of such benefaction will most likely not fully appreciate the sacrifice or will forget it very soon anyway. The greatest of martyrs and the greatest of sacrifices too are not remembered with any meaningfulness within months of their ultimate manifestation. Shakespeare said. “There’s hope a great man’s memory may outlive his life half a year.” Hamlet Act III, scene II, line 141.
What is often passed on to future generations is not remembrance of the proximal cause of the sacrifice. The true nature of the sacrifice is usually twisted by $pecial intere$t$ beyond recognition, changing with the times. Jesus H. Christ taught his followers to be violent communist cowards. His followers today are capitalistic pacifists, but they are still practicing cowards. Only one third of the cause of his martyrdom over two millenia ago was remembered and stuck. Most of it is now nothing more than a meal-ticket.
If you are willing to die for biosustainability, you assist all your friends and everyone knows it. You need feel no appreciation for your sacrifice. It is already a felt proven fact. It is understood, every day, in the willful life of the custodian prior to death. It makes that life meaningful, even if the need for that sacrifice never arises. Goethe said. “The deed is everything, the glory nothing.” Goethe was well aware of the inanity in simian judgement.

Philosophy of violence aside, Estevan was in quite a fix. Fear pulled him out of his contemplative state. Yet, he remained stumped as to his wisest course of action. Should he rise and fire, until they brought him down, or wait? That constitutive survival lesion, all Life is condemned to enjoy, took over.
He chose to wait. As fortune and his excellent camouflage would have it, the cops moved by without seeing or smelling him. Darkness too is an unwelcome guest at fugitive-pursuing revels. Collateral damage, friendly fire, etc. can remove many types of enemies. Cops, like most military people, are quite creative in their practice of carrying vendettas. Capturing this cannibal would wait for that time.
When the drones started thinning out Estevan knew he was safer. He retained his position for an hour after the last of the cops and drones seemed to have gone. When he did rise, his leg muscles were stiff. He felt as he did after finishing a sniper training session with his father, remaining in one position for hours, trying to get a steady bead on a target. Estevan moved slowly at first, stopping every five minutes to see if he was being observed and then moving on. Could he ever forget how, with Isolo, they led the predators to the tunnels and got all the men of the CoC annihilated?
This time, he was not followed. Whatever caused the abortive pursuit never became known to the CoC. They used the meat wisely, and it endured for a long time. But, the day arose when it was necessary to hunt again. The tribe went into a different region to acquire their provisions, and met with nearly the same results. In time, they standardized their hunts a little to make them safer and more efficient. Estevan was not unaware of how establishing a pattern could prove disastrous. He varied his procuring activities, becoming more creative and even shaping them into somewhat of an art form.
By now, Estevan was becoming a father nearly once a week. Soon, one third of the CoC’s members would be of Estevan’s blood. Blake-wife continued to be special, however. It was she who slept at his side each night. Before falling to sleep each night, they talked about their thoughts, concerns, and dreams.
One of Estevan’s recurring concerns was how their sallies out to gather food were becoming too regular. He could not relinquish his fear that the hunts were developing reliability. Each time the meat from 12 – 15 predators was consumed they would go out to procure more. That established a pattern, a dangerous weakness. He knew the power there was in digital intelligence and felt that one day the predators would get wise to his new method of provisioning.
When they did, there would be no warning. The parasites would pursue his hunters and destroy the CoC before the custodians even knew they were being removed. Estevan was too much invested in his tribe to take such a state of affairs with sangfroid. Blake-wife informed the other women of Estevan’s concerns. They agreed with his concerns, having similar apprehensions themselves.
However, his thinking that it would be prudent to dig new tunnels in another locale and change their location at random was not generally accepted. Hard physical labor, such as digging and hauling dirt, is unattractive to nearly everyone. With most women it is felt as almost an assault on their very existence. Fortunately, young women of 11 -15 are not so inclined, and Estevan did have some allies in the tunnel. Most were opposed to the idea, however, and made their thoughts audible.
The others gave their own views on the proposal, and the tribe debated for a number of days. They could not reach an agreement. It was apparent that most of the tribe wished to table the discussions. Estevan would not let it die. He was terribly concerned about the harmful consistency he was developing, fearing potential discovery and attack.
He had a great desire to simply command it, but he knew that that would be contrary to the anarchist’s credo. Nevertheless, Estevan did not appreciate the lack of consensus. He didn’t want to vote, democratically, on it because he could foresee that he would probably lose on the issue. Plus, binding voting was statist and also against anarchist principles. He asked those who were with him to talk to the nay-sayers and get their reasons why they didn’t want to move. Most of the nay-sayers were older women, 16 years – 30 years, and their reasons were trivial or the result of indolence. He didn’t want to ostracize the nay-sayers, by arguing, so, he kept his calm.
There was good reason behind the CoC doctrine that tribes should not grow to greater than 100 souls. But, Estevan could not bring himself to choose voluntary exile of himself and his sympathizers. He had children with many of them on both sides of the issue. Plus, one side of the severed tribe would need a man. The oldest male after Estevan was only 14 years old, and a very young 14.
The situation went on for a number of weeks. The division became quite apparent. Nobody was in doubt about where each custodian stood. Discussions stopped, temporarily, they thought, because provisions were running low. That fact took precedence over general concern.
More important matters were involved that nobody wanted to contemplate. One of the older women, Catyeh, was becoming Estevan’s very vocal opponent during the security discussions. She never let an opportunity pass without reminding the tribe that it was Estevan’s (not Isolo’s or Blake’s) fault the men of the original tribe were all dead. It was very obvious that she wanted to be the tribe’s leader. Whether she really believed her anti-Estevan stand or was a typical exploiting pol only she knew.
Even though it was indeed time to hunt again, Catyeh made it very clear that the new silence betrayed a problem much deeper than just an innocuous conversational hiatus. Being split on the issue made similar-feeling people coalesce around the one or the other. Partly because of Estevan’s intransigence and inability to solve the grave problem he contemplated, those opposed to Estevan’s solution were not shy about rallying behind Catyeh. The coming hunt now separated the two factions succinctly.
Estevan took nearly all his followers, except the children, with him. He left the tribe in the hands of Catyeh and the sympathizers of those opposed to digging new tunnels. He knew he was taking a chance on losing his position as headman before he returned. The untenable stress made him almost welcome a forced split that would decide the issue for him. It would be good for him too to have some time free of constant internecine conflict.
His group had a very successful hunt. The crew bagged two lawyers, a medical doctor, a prison warden, a nuclear power company president, a Director of an institution for mental and physical defectives, and a respectable number of death-worshippers. Pure predators every one of them. Estevan was returning with a deserved feeling of having accomplished something for the planet. It was a feather in his cap.
One can imagine how his spirits fell when returning to the tunnels he found what he found. There was not a soul there left alive. About half of the women warriors and all the children were gone. The other half of the women warriors were lying on the ground, dead. Each woman lay with legs brutally battered, bruised, and spread apart, showing obvious signs of having been repeatedly raped.
There was nothing that Estevan could do. The now smaller tribe had no idea where the predators came from nor where they went. The predators took all the CoC’s children along with the captive women. It was common knowledge that all the captured would be branded as slaves and put into prison camps for the rest of their lives. The disaster, Estevan contemplated, came to be, exactly as he feared.
Hiding in the savanna grass, afraid to return to living in the old tunnels, Estevan and his women grieved for days. They swore revenge pointlessly. Each knew their oaths were but empty threats. Nothing would bring their comrades and children back. The ZWO’s private prisons were located in every population corridor, buffer zone, and “protected” area.
Information about prisoners was never given out to non-Ashkenazim. Estevan had been right about wanting to move the CoC. Did that matter now?
The tribe moved south and dug a new tunnel system, as Estevan had suggested. Each kilogram of dug earth felt as if it were twenty. Without their children, the heart had gone out of the tribe. It just wasn’t the same, didn’t feel the same without their kids. Blake-wife did not do well, physically or spiritually, without her children, and she died within six months of the move.
Estevan wept for days after her demise. He was still fathering children, but he missed especially one of his first children, with an Axel-wife, that he had grown close to in the old village. The child had a particularly endearing behavior, when being scolded, which was almost always. The child would make a circle with her little thumb and forefinger, raising it to her right eye. She fully expected it would act as a visual shibboleth to avert castigation for her peccadillo. It usually did work as she expected it would. Remembering that tiny routine made Estevan break down in grief every time he thought of her. Now, Blake-wife’s death brought back waves of memories of that distinctive child, and he wept silently for both whenever he could find time alone. Sometimes when he wasn’t alone.
Estevan forgot how his father felt about men who weep. Tears appear to have a mind of their own.

Chapter Twenty-Six
Oxyfel arose and left his room. He went to the mess hall and sat down to eat the food that was offered. Upon finishing his meal, he went outside and sat down on a bench beneath the open sky. There, he perused the satellites for all the news of the day. It came as nothing new to him how the very most bizarre and horrendous of crimes were swept under the rug if the perpetrators were well-connected.
The news did not bring him an epiphany. Oxyfel was well-aware of it. He could not complain about it, either, as his continued existence was due to such corruption. His life would have been much unhappier without Ester in it too. Both their lives were beneficiaries of corruption.
Oxyfel discovered many embarrassing facts, along with additional recondite matters, from correlating and examining inconsistencies gathered from disparate pieces of all satellite data. He expected to also find inconsistencies and errors in the biosustainability principles of the CoCs, but there were very few. His handlers, he reasoned, did not know he was doing these things. He wasn’t privy to how much they knew of his “private” thoughts. But, they never gave him reason to suspect they were aware of any.
The laboratory, in which they worked, was out of reach of his telepathic wave transmission and reception. He reasoned that as long as he didn’t try to leave the enclave, they would ignore his thoughts. Until he could control his telepathic vulnerabilities better, the hospital-prison seemed to be the best place for him. Nevertheless, he repeatedly tested: their abilities to decipher what he was thinking and of what he was capable. The cyborg scientists never discovered that he could hack major databases, and throw the evidence of his having done so onto others. He did it every day.
Oxyfel even hacked the most powerful ZWO intelligence & security department, known as the Department of Special Transparency (DST). Here he found all the data known on the CoCs and centers of rebellion on the planet. He spent many days looking through the data. He downloaded everything he thought might be advantageous in the future. Then, he altered the “recipient-of-downloaded-data” information to make it appear his first concentration camp guards ordered it. To be especially creative, he sent a copy of his attempt at distortion of reality to the ZWO army’s security office’s computer. How the guards that brutalized him, and tried to have him disembodied, would explain that to ZWO security police gave Oxyfel many moments of lightheartedness.
Sometimes, he worked his brains so hard and long that the EMP shields in his special skull got warm. Oxyfel’s memory banks were virtually limitless. Nevertheless, he cleaned them of extraneous, redundant, or valueless data every few days. He felt that a clean memory was one of the most important responsibilities he had. He never regretted the investment in time and energy.
He was unfortunately unable to similarly clean his analog cellular brain of extraneous material. That, along with his surviving simian emotions and constitutive correlating behavior produced a spiritual agony that can only be imagined. It made a concerted effort of all his faculties to refrain from suicide a diurnal task for Oxyfel.
Whenever his handlers wanted his attention he gave it. If they approached and spoke with him telepathically, he responded very politely. If they contacted him via the rf tuned-tank, he proved as obedient as a trained dog and as innocuous as a puppy. The medical doctor Director convened a meeting of all the transhuman cyborg group to discuss Oxyfel’s progress.
“I think our creation has met all the expectations we set for it.” The Director said.
“I think you are right.” The technical expert said. “We have seen no glitches or bugs to speak of.”
“Other than some childish willfulness his psychological status is most benign.” The psychologist said. “It is most surprising, considering his temerity prior to the installation.”
“And gratifying.” Said a biologist.
“Yes. That is exactly what puzzles and concerns me.” The military scientist said. “Why would changing his brain power change his feelings toward us?”
“He saw the error of his cannibal ways?” A technical specialist said.
“It isn’t that.” The biologist said. “The girl is domesticating him.”
The military scientist said. “That’s another issue. We’ve been chalking up a lot of his benign behavior as a consequence of her presence. What if we’re wrong?”
“What are you saying, General?” The Director asked.
“If we shelve our hubris momentarily,” the military scientist said, “it begs the question – what if he’s conning us?”
“It isn’t out of the realm of consideration, since he does have the greatest brain in the world, at least that we know of.” A scientist toady of the military scientist said.
“Yes. We might not be, to him, as worthy of his submission as we think he has discovered that we are.” Said another sycophantic scientist.
“If you had seen his eyes, as I saw them, General, immediately after he awakened from the operation, you would not feel so much apprehension.” The psychologist said.
“I did see them. We all saw them on the camera in the recovery-room.” The military scientist countered. “I saw nothing to indicate a reversal of his antipathy for us.”
“What would you suggest we do, General?” The Director asked.
“It seems to me we need to make him perform more tests, tending to convince us of his alignment with our interests.” The military scientist said.
One scientist that spoke very little said. “It is just for this reason that I suggested we use a normal convict for our research and not a cannibal. Why did we need such a probable liability right from the start?”
“We discussed that many times before.” The Director answered. “It was considered and decided by all of us. A normal convict would not be as intelligent as an anarchist, and we had no Ashkenazi convicts in any of our prisons at the time.”
“Who is to say a normal convict would be any less vindictive or hopeful of revenge than a cannibal?” A social scientist asked.
A technical scientist said. “Exactly! Additionally, if I remember correctly, we thought if we could change the behavior of one of the worst of our enemies, we might also turn others. Plus, a changeling with such a background might evolve into a formidable weapon against all ZWO resistance. Better to know our greatest challenge’s weaknesses and defects, right at the get-go, when they can be controlled and overhauled. We felt that it would save us much time, research, and costly resources down the road.”
“Could you direct your adjutant to send me an order-for-operations officer, General?” The Director said, disposing of the critical person with dispatch. “We’ll work out a plan to test Oxyfel’s military effectiveness.”
“Will do.” The military scientist said. “It’s my opinion that we can answer the question innocuously, and very easily. We’ll keep escalating his military responsibilities until he either fails us or answers our doubts & needs.”
“In actual combat!?” The psychologist asked. “I’m not sure he’s ready for that?”
“Why not?” The military scientist asked. “He was taken in combat was he not?”
“Yes, but . . .”
“But nothing.” The military scientist countered. “He was created for use as a weapon, after the Aloirav 135-line proved so disastrous to us. He’s not afraid of combat. If he fails at anything, where we control all negative contingencies, it will be in our confidence, in him, and that’s what we want to know. Can we trust him to perform to our specifications? Yes, or No? We can’t ask the ZWO to continue funding these gargantuan outlays without a perceived benefit!”
“Very true, General.” The toady scientist said. “We’re still cleaning up the mess that Aloirav’s 135 line caused us. Imagine where we’d be now if the parthenogenic and normal reproduction aspects hadn’t both failed to produce progeny in that species.”
“I’ve heard enough negative thoughts for one day.” The Director said. “Especially since we have so much reason here for the exact opposite sentiment. I move we adjourn till Friday.
The meeting adjourned, and the operations officer met with the Director. The two developed a plan that, they thought, would test Oxyfel’s readiness for deployment. The plan had its defects. For one, the predators bought into the world-view that custodians were averse to killing non-Ashkenazi death-worshippers that were not highly predacious. Big mistake!
Most people considered custodians to be enemies only of larger predators, Ashkenazim, and the ZWO. Such a conviction arose because custodians pursued Ashkenazim and large predators more than they did smaller predators, like religious people. The people of the world, and by extension the Ashkenazim too, just assumed custodians believed, like other people, that because non-Ashkenazim people were God-fearing, Law-abiding citizens, they were also non-predatory. Ashkenazim and the entire simian world believed that anyone that could kill millions of such people could not be considered anything but an Ashkenazi-friendly tool. What the world failed to realize was that the CoCs felt that if you believed a paradise awaited you upon your death, you were almost as much an enemy of biosustainability for your death-worship as was any other caedere predator.
Another defect in the plan was that Oxyfel’s Ashkenazi handlers knew that most of the world believed in some way in the “God” monster. Thus, most people were superstitious slaves. That was not so big a jump of reason. But to assume thereby that all non-Ashkenazim were the same . . . slaves, was to make a grievous error, especially to have such an impression concerning custodians. The handlers failed to know their enemy well.
So far, it made no difference. The ZWO won the war for world hegemony. They were also winning the democidal war against the custodians. As new CoCs arrived, they died almost as fast. As more custodians appeared, the Ashkenazim took them out. It was almost a lost cause. How could Life on the planet continue under such conditions?
Using resources gained via eco-thuggery, the ZWO pandered to the environmental movement, turning well-meaning people into brutal accessories. The ZWO felt that if they killed the useless slaves, to maintain order and conserve food & energy, while making headway against the custodians, everything would be fine. Why save habitat for the familiar spirits and the disenfranchised? Who needs a few whales, tigers, or Jesus freaks & Muhammed monkeys? Who needs inedible fish? Ridiculous! The Ashkenazim did not see any utility in refraining from turning everything of living (animans) value into its dead (caedere) symbolic value. Were the Ashkenazim kin to those demons, descended from denizens of another planet, sent to suck the golden blood out of Earth to send back home? Would they leave Earth as dead as the devils did Mars?
Ecology was just a manipulating tool to the Ashkenazim. They used it to promulgate their sustainable development lie. They would trade wildlands for the dupes’ fractional-banking debts. Calling those fraud-acquired areas preservation reserves, they raped them for all they were worth. They used the enslaved media and entertainment industry as they used the state, for purposes of devastation.
People everywhere knew there was no such thing as “news”. EVERYTHING was propaganda. Yet the simple simians believed it. The ZWO used engineered poverty as an excuse to charge carbon taxes, reduce food rations further, start wars, etc. The rule of Ashkenazim was, “exploit, exploit, exploit, until there is no more. Destroy the non-exploiting non-Ashkenazim until new crops of slaves were necessary somewhere. Take the gold with you when you die.

Oxyfel knew something was up when the psychologist came to see him early in the morning, with a contingent of predator cops, saying. “Oxyfel we have an assignment for you.”
“An assignment?”
“Yes. We have been having problems with food and water shortages in Sao Paulo. The population corridor there is rioting, and it needs to be removed. We want you to supervise the laser eradication drones and the clean-up platoons.”
“Right now?”
“Yes.” The psychologist answered. “There is little time left before the population begins destroying valuable ZWO infrastructure. These soldiers will take you to the airport and brief you in what we expect from you.”
“Are you sure the power structure in place will obey me?” Oxyfel asked. “It could be a disaster.”
“Do you feel you are inadequate for some reason to prosecute the clean-out?” The psychologist asked, clearly baiting him with a way out.
“N.o.o.o . .”
“Do you feel you need some reconstruction somewhere in your cerebral organization?” The psychologist asked again, with a very thinly-veiled threat.
“No.”
“Then, snap to it.” The psychologist said, impatiently. “People that feel that they are above ZWO Law are enemies of the state and need removing, quickly. Those not willing to accept ZWO servitude are in a similar category!”
Oxyfel had no belongings. So, he was ready to leave very quickly. A helicopter brought him to the airport. A few minutes later they landed in Rio. Here the soldiers introduced Oxyfel to the Ashkenazi General in charge of the directed-energy democide.
The Ashkenazi viceroy said. “I understand you’re a cannibal or used to be?”
“That’s what I was told, but my memory banks do not reflect it.” Oxyfel lied. “That information must have been deleted, as I don’t remember it.”
“How do you feel about killing your compatriots?” The Ashkenazi asked.
“They are my country’s enemies.” Oxyfel replied. “Where do you wish to employ me?”
The Ashkenazi looked at Oxyfel as if Oxyfel were a traitor, despising him as all military people despise treachery. But, he said. “Come with me. You will be my second in command. I will start the cleaning process, and you will determine how well you understand it. We’ll see if you can take it from there.”
“Okay.”
The Ashkenazi took Oxyfel to a drone launching pad situated on one of the largest of the former salt-extraction plains in Cabo Frio. They went into a hemisphere-shaped office building. Oxyfel saw how much it resembled one of Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes, but did not elect to discuss it. The General ordered a third of the total drone fleet to take off. Then, he monitored and directed the drones in flight. Oxyfel was fascinated and watched the Ashkenazi’s every move.
“When do we send in the foot-soldiers?” Oxyfel asked.
“Just watch, my boy.” The Ashkenazi said. “You’ll see how we perform these operations. Then, maybe you can help.”
Oxyfel did as he was told. He watched the drones approaching the State of Sao Paulo and then the city too. As the drones arrived over the city the lasers began cutting lines of destruction everywhere. People were fried where they stood or died under falling rubble. It was like being in a “Puff the Magic Dragon” chopper, outfitted with a Gatling gun, and shooting gooks fleeing a Viet Cong village. Within a half-hour nobody was left alive.
The Ashkenazi said. “Okay. Now you see how we conduct these operations. Can you repeat what you saw?”
Oxyfel was watching everything the Ashkenazi did from the moment of his arrival. Nothing escaped him, and he said. “I see no problem. But the job is done. For what do you need me?”
“We want you to do the same thing to the entire State of Sao Paulo.” The Ashkenazi replied. “Can you do it?”
“Of course.” Oxyfel said. “Except . . “
“Except what?” The Ashkenazi answered, poised to jump on any hint of recalcitrance.
“My duties are clear to me.” Oxyfel said. “My problem comes in determining the border of the State of Sao Paulo with other states. There are a number of questionable spots. How do you wish me to handle those imprecise areas?”
“Interpolate. Then destroy everything within the enclosed area that is not marked ZWO.” The Ashkenazi replied.
Within a minute of receiving his orders from the Ashkenazi General, Oxyfel directed drones to the borders of Sao Paulo with other States. The cities in Sao Paulo State began vanishing. In a wave of destruction that resembled a sheet of white bond paper burning from one side to the other, the state of Sao Paulo disappeared. The Ashkenazi watched Oxyfel with a critical eye but made no suggestions. He didn’t need to do so. Oxyfel was killing like a professional who had been doing such things for years. He did exactly what the Ashkenazi wanted him to do, handling with dispatch all undesirable incidents that presented.
Oxyfel demolished dwellings of the poor first, following the assault with relentless pursuit of the hysterical people running around the demolished homes. He spared only Ashkenazi-designated proscribed regions such as mansions and watersheds. If soldiers on the ground could not clean out impacted areas fast enough due to hostile return fire, Oxyfel attacked. His drones ultimately destroyed every simian and unneeded building within his demarcated perimeter of the state. He did so, seemingly with relish.
The Ashkenazi General was impressed and reported back to the ZWO task force that Sao Paulo was now a “sustainable area”. Over ten million simians were reduced to ashes. There would be no more riots there. The transhuman cyborg was an integral part of the efficiency of the operation. The Ashkenazi General recommended Oxyfel for every operation of a similar nature in the future.

Chapter Twenty-Seven
Estevan gathered his women around the fire. They needed either to go on another raid or a death dance. Provisions were low, and there were many pregnant women wanting nourishment. They also needed to find a better way to finish these hunting operations without losing half the tribe in the return. Estevan said he was open to any suggestions that they could talk over.
All agreed it was time to get more food. What they could not agree on was how to increase the tribe’s security. By the end of the meeting, they still had not made any progress. Estevan terminated the discussion around midnight and went to sleep. In the morning he selected the women he needed. Most of those picked were less than three months pregnant. Estevan wanted death dance procurement girls to be less than two months pregnant. Eight women went with Estevan, and the rest stayed back in the tunnels. Those remaining had enough armaments to at least put up a respectable defense in the event of a surprise attack.
They did not dig a new cross-border tunnel this time. Their numbers were too few. The crew dug out a depression next to some large rocks in which to store their provisions, arms and camouflaged clothes. Then, they camouflaged it and used a regular custodian tunnel to enter the populated zone. Their first kill was a common thug that tried to rape one of the custodians. The next was a low-level executive of a pharmaceutical company. The six warriors returning to the tunnels left Estevan with but two women warriors. The crew of three custodians were presented with two predator possibles to the Dance of Death procurement tactic. One was a skinny drug-addict. The other was a fat priest. The fat priest had his eyes set on Estevan. Estevan wanted to haul neither one back to the tunnels, so the two possibles were flaked off.
He told the women to wait for a more suitable predator upon which to prey. They waited all the rest of the day. Finally, one of the girls suggested they enter a bar in an upscale area and engage drinkers more aggressively. Estevan thought about the risk but okayed it. Before entering an establishment, they returned to the depression near the rocks, and Estevan got into the clothes of their last kill. Now, appearing as upper middle class, he would not arouse any suspicion in the minds of the bars’ regulars. The three then entered a chosen bar at separate times to disguise their association. They immediately set about their business.
Nothing very eventful happened for the first few hours, but then something did. One of the girls let Estevan know that she was possibly entertaining a high-level concentration camp employee. The predator told her he was the director over all the camps in northwestern Brazil. Should they take him? Estevan wondered about how difficult it would be in the bar and asked her if she thought she could get him outside.
The girl said that the way the super-warden was pawing at her; she could get him to stand on his head for a better view. Estevan initially thought just about the meat the man would bring the tribe, but then he started remembering Oxyfel and the boy’s fate. Maybe the prison director would know something. Estevan talked it over with his women, and they agreed to help Estevan capture the drunk and take him to the tunnel for interrogation. They would stop at the outskirts of the town to remove the warden’s RFIDs and GPSs.
The girl got the predator outside, and the three subdued him. They stole a car to get him to the normal custodian border-crossing tunnel. Once the super-warden and the car were de-electronic’d they brought him to the border tunnel. The girls and the prey waited on the population zone side for Estevan’s return from ditching the stolen car. Then, they all went through the tunnel and to the depression, near the rocks, to re-dress in camouflaged attire.
There was no camouflaged clothing in which to dress their prey. Estevan cut some savanna grass and tied it around the man instead. Upon their return to the home tunnel, the the man would not speak. He surmised what was probably in store for him. There was no need, he must have thought, to cooperate with the anarchists.
After numerous futile attempts to get the fellow to talk, Estevan felt it was a lost cause. He began preparing his knife to turn the super-warden into a meal. Seeing that he was likely to die an imminent death the prison director appeared more desperate and said.
“Wait! I remember now. I did know your man. He was taken near Rio Mearim wasn’t he?”
“Yes.” Estevan replied. “I believe so.”
“He was with a woman that we killed in a firefight.” The super-warden said. “He was badly wounded, but he survived.”
“Yes!” Estevan said, excitedly. “That’s him! Then he’s alive?”
“Oh, yes.” The super-warden replied, with a malicious smile. “Very much so. We brought him to a camp in the northwest and turned him. He now works for us.”
“You bastard!” Estevan riposted. “Oxyfel would never work for predators!”
“I guess that all depends on your definition of “predator” doesn’t it?” The super-warden said.
At that very moment a sentry dove into the tunnel and said. “Drones and cops are all over us.”
“How can that be?” Estevan queried. “We removed all his electronics and dumped the car we stole miles away from here.”
“I can tell you how they knew.” The super-warden said, smiling very happily. “You will soon be meeting your death. Nothing will save you. All wardens and prison directors have 3 GPSs installed now. The third one is not activated, until each recipient activates it. Electronic bug-detectors do not discover them, unless the GPS has been previously activated. I waited until you de-bugged me before I activated the hidden one.”
“You lie!” Estevan shouted.
“Do you remember me saying the word “scream” three times?” The super-warden asked.
“I do.” One of the girls said.
“That activated my latent GPS.” The super-warden said. “It gave my position and distressed condition to the police.”
“Why didn’t you activate it when we first grabbed you?” A custodian asked.
“We’ve been on to you for weeks, just never sure of your location or how you got to and from the populated zone.” The super-warden said. “As soon as we passed the first tunnel to which you brought me, I let the police know. You helped us reveal your border-crossing tunnel and this one too. You should be proud to have assisted the ZWO clean out a nest of anarchistic cannibals and many of their friends. I’m sure we’ll be catching a lot more of you now that that border tunnel has been exposed.”
“Don’t waste any more time talking, Estevan, or we’re done for.” The sentry said. “They’ll be here within seconds.”
It was already too late. Estevan made the same mistake his father made, neglecting to remove all the electronics after a capture. What could he do now? The police were throwing incapacitating gas into the tunnels. The last thing Estevan heard before he awakened in a cell were firing rifles & pistols, and his women screaming.

The army returned Oxyfel to his main base, cum prison, and debriefed him. Once the medical-technical people finished with him, he returned to his room and Ester. She was glad to see him, making her affection show how much she missed him. Oxyfel did not tell her what he had done. His reticense displayed obvious fear of feeling her displeasure or shame at his behavior.
The Director held another meeting of the special project group. They discussed the positive points and the potential pitfalls of using Oxyfel in the future.
The technical scientist said. “I don’t see why we need do any re-construction. He appears to have answered all our expectations and more.”
The Director said. “I agree. He performed much better than we expected and showed not even the slightest desire to be disloyal.”
“Everything you are saying is true, but that does not, in itself, signify all is well.” The military scientist countered. “He has indeed proven disloyalty to his kind. That was one of the purposes of the test. It means he is a techno-savvy, high-performance mercenary. At this point, we cannot say he is any more than that.”
“What are you saying, General?” The psychologist asked. “Isn’t that what we wanted?”
“Perhaps.” The military scientist replied. “But it shows us a very great vulnerability we face too.”
“Not necessarily, General.” The Director said, respectfully. “We have the rf override. Should he be compromised in any way we can obviate the effects immediately.”
“I’ve heard you say that many times, but I’m not so sure.” The military scientist said.
“He has never demonstrated any recalcitrance.” The psychologist said. “Every time we have used it; he responds favorably?”
“I am aware of that too.” The military scientist said, turning to look directly at the Director. “Every time we have used that override, it was on something he was not personally invested in. We have never needed to “override” him. It seems to me we need to demonstrate the full effectiveness of that rf kill switch. It is better to know if it works as designed and touted before it becomes a possible disaster.”
“Does the General still think the cyborg is fabricating his compliance?” The Director asked.
“Is it outside the realm of possibility?” The military scientist asked.
“No. It is not.” Said the Director. “How shall we test for it?”
“We must continue testing.” The military scientist said. “He has passed another one of our tests but only one more. Let’s not get too extravagant with our back-slapping on limited successes. This machine was very expensive to create, and it may indeed prove to give us exactly what we wanted from it.”
“But?” The psychologist asked. “How do you suggest we prove our negative?”
“We must continue to examine the positives.” The military scientist said. “I suggest we find a behavior that, prior to our intervention, was very close to his heart. We give an order, contrary to what we know his desire is in that regard, and wait for him to refuse to obey it. When he refuses, we test our rf override command’s effectiveness.”
“I think that is an excellent idea, General.” The toady scientist said. “That will do it.”
“We’ll get right on it, General.” The Director said. “Would you like to approve our trial in advance as usual?”
“Of course.” The military scientist said. “Before we do that, though, I want to try him out on a problem we are experiencing in Japan.”
“What problem is that, General?” The Director asked.
“Beyond the runaway Fukushima radiation?” A technical scientist added.
“Exactly.” The military scientist riposted. “Fukushima has been useful for a number of years as a way of de-populating the Pacific and the western ZSA (Zionated States of America). The radiation has reduced simian life-expectancies among selected populations quite effectively. As you know, it has not been as controllable lately, as we might have wished, and as it was at an earlier time. There is suspicion in some quarters that two members of the Khazar nobility, Ezekiel Schiff & Ebenezer Rothschild, may have been damaged recently on an overflight of the area. Although I do not know how, it may be exploited in the future in some way by our rebels. I want you to test our creation’s artificial intelligence facet by using it against those meltdowns. Give him full-strength mental capacity to clean it all up. When and if he finishes that task, satisfactorily, we may know if we want to investigate further his loyalty and the rf override feature.”
“Are you sure you want to release all the computing capacity of which he is capable, General?” A computer scientist asked.
“Our best scientists have been unable to fix the Fukushima problem, after trying for decades.” The military scientist replied. “Despite our rationalization, the fact it still exists is an embarrassment. It makes ZWO power look limited. If there is any way to remove the danger, forever, why should we tie his hands?”
“Right, General.” The Director said. “We’ll get to it immediately.”
The handlers talked to Oxyfel and explained about the Fukushima project, saying. “If you are willing to undertake this job for us, Oxyfel, we will turn your brain on completely. There will be nothing held back from you in computational power.”
“Light my fire.” Oxyfel said. “When do I start?”
“When you are ready.” The Director said. “We’ll awaken the dormant aspect of your brain as soon as you can get to the operating room. We need to access one of the ports in your EMP-shielded skull. A computer scientist will do the job three hours from now. No surgery is necessary, just a screwdriver and a tweezers.”
Oxyfel jumped to the door and together the scientists and Oxyfel walked over to the operating room. In a few hours, they opened Oxyfel’s brain up to full operational capacity. The army then brought Oxyfel to Tokyo and explained further about the condition of the crippled reactors and the problems involved in their decommissioning.
Oxyfel asked. “Why does the ZWO want me to do such a thing?”
“It’s dangerous, and it’s killing a great many people.” The Ashkenazi general in charge answered, as if talking to a moron.
“But, doesn’t the ZWO want the toxic fount to continue?” Oxyfel asked. “It keeps 10% of the annual simian population increase from actualizing.”
“I’m sure they don’t think like that. The Fukushima Decommission Operations general replied, now condescending to an unlikable cannibal. “The ZWO leaders are decent humane people that are trying to make the world a better place.”
It did not seem to be a good answer to Oxyfel, almost nonsensical in its non-sequitur reasoning, but his cortex could not find any reason to refuse the assignment. So, he set to work, saying. “I know that’s a fairy tale, General, and so do you, but I’ll fix the problem anyway.”
To solve a problem that had been apparently stumping scientists for decades was a diverting challenge to Oxyfel, a type of game. He hacked into CERN and Draper Labs’ computers and accessed their data bases. He then took information from Lincoln Labs and the ZWO military’s computers on atomic weapon sizes and types.

Chapter Twenty-Eight
Using his augmented brain control was a real rush for Oxyfel. As he experimented with it, he also felt new pain concomittently with the new power’s analytical capacity. He knew he needed some time alone to better assimilate certain aspects of the changed situation. Oxyfel ordered a helicopter to take him to a beach near his hotel to work on the problem. The Fukushima Decommission Operations general demurred. Oxyfel asked what the problem was in granting his request. The general stammered and made the excuse that he needed authorization to grant such permission. It was obvious the general was not comfortable allowing a cannibal, (former or not), use ZWO weapons on his watch.
Oxyfel said. “Are you telling me that you want me to inform your senior officers and superiors that you are refusing to cooperate with me, contrary to their specific orders to assist me in every way you can!?”
“I . . No . . It’s not a reg . . .”
Oxyfel jumped at the general and screamed into his face. “Get that helicopter here, IMMEDIATELY, General! If I get anymore problems out of you you will be pushing pencils around your new mud desk in Tim Buk Tu at this time tomorrow!”
“Yes, Sir!” The general said, saluting.
“Ahh. We understand each other, do we?” Oxyfel said, condescendingly. “I’m so glad.”
A few hours later, Oxyfel returned to the hotel and summoned the Fukushima Decommission Operations general. The general and the Director both appeared. Oxyfel gave them a list of materials and a schematic he drew of a module he wanted constructed. He said. “I need these materials and a technical expert to build me this item for my computer brain.”
“I don’t know if this is possible, Oxyfel.” The Director replied, looking down at the papers in his hands.
“Oh, it’s possible.” Oxyfel countered. “It’s up to you to answer the questions it promulgates. It devolves on you to determine whether or not you want to accept the conditions incidental to achieving the objective. And, I cannot do the job without this modification.”
“How will you get the changes to your brain installed?” The Director asked. “That will require reconstructive surgery.”
“I don’t need reconstructive surgery.” Oxyfel answered.
“How will you make the changes without surgery?” The Director asked. “Your brain was built as compact as the engineers said it could be built.”
Oxyfel replied. “It is compact, and I’m not complaining. But, I found a need for some changes. There are available access ports. I’ve discovered a way to implement the changes necessary, using those ports.”
“Are you sure you are capable of doing it all without burning yourself up?” The Director asked. “Or going crazy?”
“There is a risk,” Oxyfel replied, “but if you want Fukushima cleaned up you will have to allow me the opportunity to try.”
“I’ll have to run this by my seniors, anyway.” The Director said. “I know it will require authorization. Such an extensive modification will appear to my superiors to be reconstructive surgery.”
“Very well. I don’t mind waiting.” Oxyfel replied, looking at the Fukushima Decommission Operations general and smiling. “The beach is nice, and I enjoy the peace it provides. The general here has been most accommodating.”
The Director and the general talked with the military scientist in Brazil. They explained what Oxyfel wanted. The military scientist was not sure he had the authority to make such a decision. He was certain, though, that he was not happy about it.
He said. “What that “THING” is talking about is reconstructive surgery. According to regulations that means WE do the surgery, not some guinea pig! My technical experts have studied that list of his and the apparatus’ design, you sent me. They cannot say with any degree of certainty WHAT that module does that he wants to insert. I am not comfortable with that brain of his being equipped to do things of which we are unaware. We have no idea what he’s doing EVEN NOW with that brain of his. I get word that someone is hacking CERN, Draper, and Lincoln Labs computers. Last week it was Oak Ridge that was hacked, yesterday Stanford Biology’s Labs. All they tell me is that someone from our Defense Department was the hacker. Nobody can name the individual or even what was accessed. We may be getting in way over our heads here. I’ll have to get back with you.”
A few days later, after the military scientist talked with his Khazarian overlords, the Director and Oxyfel got the okay. Apparently, the Turks wanted Fukushima over with, immediately. They were not interested in some general’s reservations about a technical regulation. The only stipulations, they placed on the written permission, to override the regulation, was that all modifications and materials were to be recorded and reported to the Director immediately upon completion of the alterations. Also, a computer scientist must look over the finished modification.
The latter stipulation was the military scientist’s own directive. It was to satisfy the military scientist himself that the rf override was not tampered with during the modification. Oxyfel agreed to all the conditions and constraints. He then explained to the technical expert the details of a modified design from the one he showed the general and the Director the first time. The overall structure and dimensions of the module he wished to import stayed the same.
Some of the capacitors, resistors, coils, and tuned tanks changed their positions. He made a new list of materials, too, where they were to be found, and how they were to be positioned in the module. Oxyfel included instructions on how accessorial off-the–shelf constituent pieces were to interact with the new components he needed constructed. He then concluded his guidelines on how best to assemble it. The technician took the specifications to the Director.
The Director notified the military scientist about the changes to the changes. The military scientist just shrugged his shoulders and let it happen. He felt he would be overridden anyway. Further delay would just serve to antagonize the bigger wigs. The technician then took the new orders to Intel and explained what exactly Oxyfel directed.
Numerous communications between Intel and Oxyfel took place during the following weeks. Intel needed to send rakers to Ireland with special attachments on their 5-meter-long instruments. The rakes were to harvest the exact variety of Rhodophyta algae, a Chondrus crispus & Fucus crispus seaweed, Oxyfel wanted. The former Hopkins Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Cancer Center in the Biology Department maintained that the Rhodophyta species that grew off the New England coast was too perforated and contaminated with nuclear waste from the decommissioned Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant in Plymouth, Massachusetts to be of service to Oxyfel. Intel then took the job and the materials it procured to a subcontractor and discussed the positioning issues. The subcontractor needed to take the Rhodophyta algae to a materials scientist and a famous molecular biologist to understand how to produce the particular kappa carrageenan isomer Oxyfel wanted.
When the Ashkenazi overlords inquired of Intel the purpose of the module Oxyfel demanded, neither Intel nor their subcontractor could help them. The Intel people did not understand themselves what the accessory was. The closest they could surmise was that it was a low-frequency transmitting/receiving tuned tank of some type with associated amplification circuitry. They assumed the seaweed derivative was some kind of antenna. They agreed to build it nonetheless, and the Khazars let it happen.

A month and a half after Oxyfel received permission to modify his brain, a module the size of a large sewing machine needle, shaped very much like a globular-headed nail, appeared in Tokyo. Oxyfel smiled and took careful possession of the object. Using the computer technician, attached to him, he rearranged all the mirrors in the hotel room and acquired more mirrors from another room. Then he sat in a special point in his re-ordered room and ordered the technician to open two access ports in his EMP-shielded skull. When the technician finished opening Oxyfel’s skull, Oxyfel asked him to step out of the room.
The needle-shaped object had a crimp in it about half-way down its length. All alone now, out of sight of the surveillance cameras and all observation, Oxyfel, very carefully, bent and broke off the head of the needle. This removed a number of components that were installed merely to confuse his overlords and Intel. It also exposed four gold contact points. Using all the mirrors’ angle-aspect capacities to locate exactly where he wanted the module to go, and all the skill of a surgeon predator, Oxyfel inserted the new module into his already superior brain. To get it positioned correctly, he needed to get into an almost contortionist-like’s stance. That required weeks of practice alone in his hotel room. So as not to short out any of his brain’s in situ components, he needed a special tweezer.
This, he constructed himself, during the past few weeks, out of a pair of plastic chopsticks and a piece of Mytilus edulis pearl. The aragonite crystal from the mollusk remained in situ after the work’s completion. Seconds after he finished the task, a smile appeared on Oxyfel’s face. He removed the shit-eating grin, before the technician returned. The technician observed only a serene positive response. Later that day, Intel’s subcontractor’s computer burned up, and the entire file on Oxyfel’s subassembly was lost forever.
The next day, Oxyfel experimented with his new and improved brain. His telepathic powers were vastly enhanced, and he could discriminate much better between individual brain waves. When he felt comfortable using it, he hacked all over the world every computer that had any empirical evidence on anti-matter and black holes. He even looked for anecdotal information within current research data not yet published. After another few hours on the beach, Oxyfel summoned the Director and said.
“I am ready to remove the Fukushima problem, but you will need to think about the risks and do what you wish to manage them.”
“What are those risks?” The Director asked.
“Tokyo will be destroyed, utterly.” Oxyfel replied. “Nothing will be left of it but some flotsam and jetsam. Where it was will be open ocean. The exact area to be destroyed will be greater than just Tokyo, however. It will mean doing what evacuating you wish to do in a 250-mile radius from Fukushima. The Japanese archipelago will be completely annihilated. It might be advantageous to also take protection measures against a tidal wave emanating from the epicenter of the problem for a 500-mile radius in 720 degrees. I will require the use of all local military equipment and personnel. Instruct me when you are ready, should you wish to proceed.”
The Director was nonplussed, but said nothing. He just stared, until Oxyfel broke the silence, when he said. “I suppose you should know. Whether I act to solve this problem or not is not that important to Japan. The ZWO can expect to lose it soon regardless. The heat from the spoiled reactors has been too excessive for far too long. The mantle has already been perforated from it and plugged naturally numerous times. Much of it has been crystallized. If I do nothing, within six weeks Fukishima will no longer exist as we know it anyway. It will be superceded by a highly radioactive volcano that will destroy the archipelago and a vast section of the mainland. All I can do is remove that radiation and stop the volcano. Nothing will save the archipelago.
The next day, the army gave Oxyfel the Fukushima clean-up orders for which he had prepared. They gave him a proposed date for the operation. He was to commence three weeks from that same day. Along with the orders were the capacity to access all LOCAL military equipment, personnel, and armament necessary. If he needed more, he was to contact Logistics Command and request the supplies required.
The pragmatic ZWO considered the removal of so many normal simians to be too expensive a project to attempt. It, therefore, only evacuated Ashkenazim and associated strategic personnel from the area under consideration. Upon completion of the Ashkenazi exodus, the ZWO gave the order for Oxyfel to begin when he wished. Many, nearly all, non-Ashkenazi simians got word of the evacuation and took it upon themselves to also leave. There was a mad scramble for any conveyance that could be found to do the job. Even children’s reinforced plastic swimming pools served the poorest refugees. Three weeks and one day from the order, Oxyfel began the clean-up.
First, he took two of the most modern computer-assisted bombers in the ZWO fleet. These were on Okinawa at that time, so it was easy to get them equipped. Then, ignoring the orders limiting commands, wildly exceeding his authorization, he ordered two H-bombs from Texas to be installed in the bomb bay of those Okinawa bombers. He also took from Norway the only two ZWO prototype drones which were maximum-capacity, directed-energy-weapon equipped. One of his last requisitions was the commandeering of 20 normal capacity directed-energy drones from Camp Pendleton, California and 20 more from the Cabo Frio salt flats in Brazil.
Then, he maneuvered the two bombers directly over the Fukushima site. When they were in position, he ordered the H-bombs dropped directly on top of the most highly radioactive site. As the bombers left the area, the fusion energy from the two bombs touched another dimension and developed a plasma according to Oxyfel’s calculations. He controlled the flight path of the two prototype directed-energy drones to within 50 kilometers of the mushroom cloud. Oxyfel then directed their energy weapons to every site on his planned focus on the fusion center.
The job got too arduous for the newer drones, and they disappeared into the eye of the dust cloud. The lower capacity drones then took over, slightly out of mushroom cloud range. About ten minutes into the process the focal point of the site began disappearing into the miniature black hole Oxyfel created. Concrete, ice, radioactive water, plutonium, uranium, hot isotopes, heat, equipment, last week, next week, EVERYTHING vanished. Large amounts of seawater entered the gap, and it too disappeared.
Oxyfel lost 19 of his drones to the anti-matter within a second. Within ten minutes’ time every one of the 42 drones were history, but the hole disappeared and ocean took its place. Before it left, the hole took in a huge influx of water. Water cascaded over and into the huge gap left in the earth’s crust. That water, of course, struck immovable magma and a counterforce that created a reverse reaction of equal but opposite force outward. The heat and steam from the collision of worlds drove a column of water into the atmosphere like no volcano ever did. Much of that burning hot water fell back to earth and, along with the residual steam, produced a tidal wave of enormous proportions.
The huge wave carried boiled seawater and ash out from the epicenter to a radius of some 900 kilometers. The Japanese archipelago and all other land that was within 500 kilometers of the former black hole were now a new Pacific Ocean. Mean Pacific Ocean water temperature was over 3 degrees F warmer for weeks afterward. Residual radiation, measured by submarines near the former Fukushima site and outward, dropped to barely detectable levels. Radiation detected was of the low half-life variety and within a month posed little problem for Life. Oxyfel solved the Fukushima problem, only killing a hundred million, or so, people, destroying a few aircraft, and burying under the sea an unknown amount of Asia.
The ZWO’s super-predators were quite pleased with their new tool. The Director’s name was on all their lips. His career looked to be approaching magnificent. So, his ego was unprepared for the reaction he received when he returned to Brazil from Asia. He was speaking with the military scientist after the Fukushima matter was over, and the military scientist said. “Are you aware what we have created?”
“Yes.” The Director said. “Isn’t it great?”
“It’s great all right.” The military scientist said. “Too great. He was given permission to access all local military equipment and arms. Was he not?”
“That’s true.” The Director said. “I don’t see how he could have done such a feat, otherwise.”
“Perhaps not.” The military scientist replied. “But, he accessed equipment and military arms from arsenals and depots all over the world. When permission was denied him, he countermanded those interdictions and took the material he wanted anyway. When transcripts of his archived command tapes were read, there was no evidence of audio transmission! He gave those orders for equipment TELEPATHICALLY! Some as far away as 4000 miles! We have created a daemon! Does that not give you any cause for concern?”
The Director said. “I didn’t know that. Yes. It does give me cause for concern. If he wanted to, he could turn all the military arms, equipment, and personnel against us!”
“My thoughts exactly.” The military scientist said. “We need to have a meeting immediately and decide what we are going to do. I just hope it isn’t too late.”
“I agree.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine
The Director convened a meeting of his special group. Oxyfel’s “Arrogance Angst” was on the agenda. Before they got to it, they were to debrief a recently rescued prison camp Director regarding what he knew of the association between Oxyfel and Estevan.
“He was very interested in what happened to his friend.” The super-warden replied. “He seemed to know from where the guy was taken but not to where we brought him.”
“You’re sure he mentioned the name Oxyfel? The Director asked.
“Oh, yes.” The super-warden replied. “He was about to kill me, right before I was rescued, if I did not answer his questions about the convict of that name.”
“Would you say they were friends?” The military scientist asked.
“Absolutely.” The super-warden said. “He made that very clear.”
“There you have it, people.” The military scientist said, after they were no longer in the super-warden’s presence. “His Achilles’ heel may very well be his friend.”
“How does that help us, General?” A psychologist asked.
The military scientist replied. “As we are about to discuss, we have a serious concern about our capacity to control this new weapon. His temerity has grown, it appears, commensurately with his capacity or even orders of magnitude greater. As you know, much more so than a few years back, modern military science has become quite parsimonious. It is much cheaper now to decimate a small continent of civilians than to train and equip a small percentage of that number of soldiers. With that radical expense escalation comes a great impetus to create astounding weapons like this cyborg. Also, a great deal of accountability for quality control is attached.”
Another psychologist said. “We can use the fact of his friendship with the other prisoner to test the rf override circuitry and its effectiveness under actual field conditions or prior to actual field conditions.”
“My thoughts exactly.” The military scientist said.
“But didn’t we already test for his loyalty with the Sao Paulo cleansing?” A technical scientist asked.
“Not well enough.” The military scientist replied. “We made an egregious error. Those people he killed were not his friends, just a bunch of monkeys, like the millions he killed cleaning up that Fukushima mess. He seems to have no soul, killing his fellows with abandon.”
Looking at the psychologist, first to interview Oxyfel after the initial operation, the military scientist asked. “Didn’t you say this daemon complained to you that he had lost his eternal soul in the process of us giving him this tremendous capacity?”
“He said we’d taken his mission from him, General.” The psychologist replied.
“Right. Mission . . . soul, whatever.” The military scientist said. “This is truly an inhuman monster. God knows what could happen to us if that rf override fails us.”
“Have we inadvertently stumbled upon the seat of the soul?” A biologist commented.
“I’ve seen no evidence that any “soul” actually exists.” A computer analyst said. “It appears to be just a residual artefactual superstition from out of the dark ages.”
“How do you know that he won’t just consider killing his friend an unfortunate military decision . . . collateral damage so to speak?” A computer specialist asked.
“Yes.” Another technical expert agreed. “He might just feel he’s playing a video game. I think we should tell him to kill his girlfriend.”
The Director riposted. “That girl is Ashkenazi. She’s not just some cannibal. She will be missed.”
“Director! You’re forgetting that she helped him kill an Ashkenazi!” Another technical analyst riposted. “She should already be dead from execution!”
“The Ashkenazi court threw that case out, because there was no proof that the guard was indeed Ashkenazi.” The Director replied.
The psychologist said. “I think you’re all forgetting that it would be counterproductive for our continued rapport with him and his sense of well-being.”
The Director cooled everyone down, saying. “Let’s refrain from indulging in negativity at this point. We should be rejoicing at our success. If he does not rebel against the rf command and kills his friend, his own volition proving ineffective against our command, we’ll know we have a very versatile instrument. He’s no more a daemon than an H-bomb, and fusion weapons have been with us for nearly two centuries. He’s validated himself and his capacity by destroying riotous common slaves and useless eaters. Now, we can test his loyalty on real rebels as further proof.”
“You’re right, Director. I believe that too.” The military scientist agreed. “We have our test. If it proves successful, I shall recommend an entire platoon of these cyborg transhumans for our military.”

The Director and the psychologist met Oxyfel and Ester in their room in Coberg, New York’s most fashionable hotel. Oxyfel and she were just about to go out on the opening night of a new Broadway show. Oxyfel smiled at the two scientists and asked them why they came to see him.
“We have somebody we’d like you to meet tomorrow, Oxyfel.” The Director said. “He says he’s a friend of yours.”
“Really!?” Oxyfel asked. “What’s his name?”
“He says you call him Estevan.” The psychologist said.
“Oh, yes. I knew a fellow by that name.” Oxyfel replied. “If it’s the same Estevan I’m remembering. We were indeed friends once.”
“He would like to see you.” The Director said. “Will you be available to meet with him tomorrow?”
“Oh, yes.” Oxyfel said. “If the ZWO doesn’t need me somewhere else, I’m free.”
“Can I come along, Oxy?” Ester asked. “Don’t forget we were going to shop for baby clothes.”
“Of course.” Oxyfel replied, without the slightest regard to whether any handlers should be involved in his granting permission.
The next day the research group brought Oxyfel and Ester to the prison camp where they were holding Estevan. They took Oxyfel directly to a specially insulated room. That room was wound previously with extremely dense inductance circuitry. If there was any problem with the rf-override failing to control Oxyfel, the milli-henrys of inductance, that could be generated, within that room, would breach Oxyfel’s EMP-shielded skull. The pulse would attack the electromagnetic vulnerability of Oxyfel’s digital brain and inactivate it.
Estevan was already in the room when Oxyfel arrived. Oxyfel’s handlers left them together without any guards or other formalities. There were, of course, hidden video cameras and microphones within the room’s entire periphery. And, at every meter around the outside of the room, there were guards stationed. The walls of the room were all that separated the convicts from the research group and the technicians manning the rf override & EMP controls. In the adjacent room these handlers monitored everything the convicts said and did as if there were no intervening walls.
After the reunion niceties ended, Estevan asked. “Have you betrayed our cause, Oxyfel? One of the predators we captured told me that.”
“I do not think so, Estevan.” Oxyfel said. “I have killed many but most were only death-worshippers and small predators. I told no one the location of any of our tunnels. You know I couldn’t. I never learned the locations of any, other than the abandoned one from which we both came. I was only free for four or five days after we split up.”
“It hardly matters anyway anymore.” Estevan said. “I tried the very best I could, and I failed three times to protect my villages. We are probably lost. The Ashkenazim are just too strong. They have the most powerful brains on their side. Not just cyborgs, like you. Even normal Ashkenazim are more intelligent than the majority of simians, and even human beings. They will probably soon command you to destroy me.”
“I would never obey such a command.” Oxyfel said, coming forward and putting his right hand on Estevan’s shoulder.
“They have ways that will force you to obey. You know that. I’m sure there were custodians in those people you destroyed for the ZWO, not just death-worshippers and small predators as you say. At any rate, I forgive you in advance should you have to kill me, Oxyfel.” Estevan said, taking Oxyfel’s hand from his shoulder and shaking it. It was a positive but neutral gesture, and its latent coolness was not lost on Oxyfel, who said.
“You do not trust me any longer, do you Estevan?” Oxyfel asked. “You think I’ve become one of them?”
“What would you think, Oxy? You do not look the same. You have an enormous head like a gargantuan ant or a colossal grasshopper. You do not smell of rotten monkey meat anymore.” Estevan said, opening his palms upward and pointing them at Oxyfel. “You wear expensive clothes. Other prisoners tell me that you are an important ZWO weapon, and you do anything the Ash Kans demand. You even have an Ashkenazi woman. What else would I think? What could I think?”
“I understand. What they . . you . . say about me is true. The preds did it to me Estevan, while I slept.” Oxyfel said, sadly. “It wasn’t for my asking. They beat me sensless, drugged me, and put this enormous head on my neck. I would be trash in a landfill today if that Ashkenazi girl hadn’t helped me. I may have betrayed our cause. I don’t know. There may indeed have been custodians among the people I killed. I always knew that there was that possibility, but I could not say no to the Ash Cans. I rationalized it by telling myself that the kill ratio was orders of magnitude better than what the CoCs could ever have managed, fighting naturally. I was right. My composite brain does not err, Estevan, ever. CoCs are NOT winning the war for biosustainability. You are right about that.”
“Let’s break out of here.” Estevan said. “With your brain’s capabilities working for our side we will have a chance.”
“I don’t know.” Oxyfel said. “Now?”
“Yes. Now. Why not?” Estevan asked.
“I care about that woman. I care about her, deeply.” Oxyfel answered. “I would lose her.”
“The Ashkenazi bitch?” Estevan asked.
“She is Ashkenazi, but she’s not a predator, Estevan, and she saved my life.” Oxyfel said. “They were going to kill me, take out my brain for research, when she intervened to stop them, risking her own life for mine.”
“What about our mission, Oxy?” Estevan asked. “Have you forgotten that? Is she more important to you than saving the planet from the preds?”
“I don’t know, but I can’t just turn my back on her.” Oxyfel replied. “I have other values and . . feelings too, Estevan.”

While Estevan and Oxyfel were talking, Oxyfel’s handlers were also talking in the adjacent room. It was the military scientist that first mentioned the rf, when he said. “I don’t see as we need further proof that they know each other and that they’re friends. Activate the rf command and complete our test.”
“Before we do that, General, I think there are some things we need to discuss.” The Director said.
“Like what?”
“We need to have a plan of action should he refuse to obey, and . . . the rf override fails to force him to obey.” The Director said, unusually diffident.
“What’s going on here, Director?” The military scientist asked. “What have you been holding back?!
“I have held nothing back.” The Director said. “I am just looking for clarification in the event of a contingency for which we have not prepar . . discussed.”
“I thought you said it was fool-proof.” The military scientist argued. “I remember you saying on numerous occasions that if all goes wrong we always have the rf override to get us out of trouble.”
“Yes. I remember saying that, and it is true.” The Director said. “I’m just wondering if something should go wrong with the rf override, when do we pull the plug on him? Do we just blow up his brain with the EMP coil or do we incapacitate him in some other way?”
“I don’t think it’s a must.” Said the computer analyst that spoke earlier for Ester to be the loyalty test subject. “I don’t think this is even going to be much of a test. He doesn’t seem to be all that invested in this guy. Even if we rf order him to kill his friend, he may do so and still not be in our corner. I move we make him kill his girlfriend. She seems to be much more in his heart than this guy.”
“I’m totally against that!” The psychologist said. “He could be lost to us forever if the girl dies, whether or not he passes the test.”
“I am too.” The Director said. “There will be repercussions if we take the life of an Ashkenazi that has not been judged a criminal first.”
“Well.” The military scientist said. “You’ve made me doubt the first test myself. He doesn’t appear that enamoured of this guy. Send for the girl. We’ll test him on both.”
“General, no. Please don’t do this.” The psychologist begged. “It will destroy all of the amicable relationship we have developed with him.”
“Yes. General.” The Director said. “And, we’ll have a lawsuit on our hands like no other from the Ashkenazi Jewish lobby if it gets out that we willfully murdered an unconvicted Ashkenazi girl.”
“Send for the girl!” The military scientist said. “I want this weapon in our hands completely, or I want it dead! If it’s disloyal, it can wipe us out. No Ashkenazi cunt is going to put the entire ZWO at the precipice on my watch!”

“I understand you have values and feelings, Oxyfel. I do too. But, we’re lost if we stay here.” Estevan said. “What can it hurt if we fail? It’s better than giving up and still failing, isn’t it?”
Oxyfel didn’t answer, so Estevan filled the sound vacuum by saying. “It’s a small chance, but it’s our only one. There’s nothing but death or eternal slavery here. Do you want to be an Ashkenazi slave, like the rest of the monkeys, all the rest of your life?!”
“No.”
“Well . . .Without something like what you may offer us, I fear the CoCs are doomed to extinction. The entire human race is doomed, along with all of creation, if something like you does not come over on to the side of Life.”
“But, Estevan.” Oxyfel said. “Do you really believe I can still fight for biosustainability as a cyborg?”
“I don’t know, maybe you can’t.” Estevan said.
“I don’t know either.” Oxyfel said. “You may be right.”
“Maybe you can only kill the useless eaters and the death-worshippers when the Ashkenazim command you to.” Estevan derided.
“Maybe.” Oxyfel replied, quietly, docilly, not responding at all in the way Estevan hoped with his disparagement.
“I’ll bet you haven’t killed a single Ashkenazi predator since you got your new headgear.” Estevan challenged him. “Have you?”
“I . . . “
“How many, Oxyfel?” Estevan sneered. “How many? How many super-predators did you kill? I’ll bet not even one. When was the last time you ate meat from a simian you killed?”
“Please, Estevan.” Oxyfel said. “I can’t answer all those questions.”
“You can’t or won’t? What is the matter with you, Oxyfel?” Estevan asked. “What has become of you? What are you?”
“I’m an anarchist, and I believe in biosustainability.” Oxyfel said. “I really do. But they’re not my mission anymore. They feel more like an avocation to me now.”
“An avocation!”
“Yes.” Oxyfel said. “I don’t feel human anymore, Estevan.”
“What are you, a predator?” Estevan asked.
“No.” Oxyfel responded, sorrowfully. “I’m not a predator or a death-worshipper, or a custodian.”
“What are you?”
“I don’t know, exactly.” Oxyfel replied. “I’ve been trying for months to define myself.”
“You have no idea?”

Chapter Thirty
“Oh, yes.” Oxyfel responded. “I have an idea. As any neurobiologist can tell you, behavior springs from genes. My digital brain has no genetics. My simian brain does. I don’t know how much of my behavior I still control and how much the artificial intelligence controls me. I’m some kind of a machine, or at least mostly, and it hurts terribly to know that. To remember what I was, a human being with purpose and aspiration, and now dreamless and alone. . . . I still enjoy exercising my intelligence and my emotions. That’s what the Ash Kans give me, why I do their bidding. But, I’m starved for animal innocence, natural morality. I can’t feel them anymore.
That’s why the girl is so important to me. I can feel them vicariously through her. She also makes me see that there is value in me yet, if only I knew where to search for it. Have you any idea how disheartening it is to look at happiness and well-being through the eyes of a machine? It’s a greater Hell than the simians endure, living under ZWO auspices, believing the lies. I am a dilettante, Estevan, feasting on the imagination of others. I know simians are a plague on the planet that must be removed. I know the Ashkenazim will destroy the planet with their uncontrolled caedere analysis. But I can’t distinguish quality differences between such groups of simians. Custodians are so few, much much less than the Ashkenazim, that they are insignificant in protecting Life. At the rate the planet is being raped, you and your custodial compatriots have almost no impact and stand no chance. And if the dream of a biosustainable planet dies . . . a custodian will be no less a planetary pest than a predator, just another simian problem with which Life must deal.”
“You are super-intelligent, Oxy. You can help us succeed.” Estevan said. “With you, we can do it.”
“Estevan.” Oxyfel said, quietly. “Intelligence is a powerful tool but a terrible concept, and a primrose path. Evolution has shown us indications of that fact. Ashkenazim have proven it, and they now control it. Custodianship will lose to it. In time, it will force a limiting division between simians. Soon, there will be simians of high intelligence and simians wallowing in pure ignorance. The trend is blatantly visible everywhere. Neither intelligent nor stupid will be effective in saving the planet’s Life. To protect planetary Life and myself, ALL simians must go, as THEY are the proximal enemy. I am almost completely an unfeeling machine when it comes to such matters.
“No, Oxy. . .”
“I know what you stand for, Estevan, and how you fit in with biosustainability.” Oxyfel interrupted. “Nevertheless, I’m without a concept of an effective custodial human being that is not, or soon will be, inimical too. Just saving the planet from simians is in my head now. But, it’s just animal fear I feel, not a mission. I am distraught to protect what little remains of my former biosustainability purpose. I’m losing control of everything but that which I can reason through. I am an analytical savant, and my creativity is as limited as that of an Ashkenazi. The only thing I can feel now is my terrible loss and a need cum desire to destroy monkeys. Only you and Ester are my connection to humanity. You, because you are my only human friend and Ester, because I love her, and she gives me the promise of humanity with her reciprocal love. You two make me feel whole. You are all that I can sense of what remains of my former self and purpose. Except for you two, and only you two, Estevan, I would be an autospeciecide.”
“You can get your humanity back, Oxyfel.” Estevan said. “Come with me. We’ll do it. Let’s break out of here, now.”
“I don’t know.” Oxyfel equivocated.
“Let’s do it, Oxy!” Estevan urged.
“Do you think I can learn to be a custodian again, really?” Oxyfel said.
“Of course, I do.” Estevan said. “Here, help me break this lock.”
“It’s not necessary Estevan.” Oxyfel said, leaving his misgivings behind him while basking in the euphoria of his friend’s disingenuousness. “I can open locks without breaking them, see?”
The lock opened, and the two convicts started to walk out of the room. They got just to the room’s exterior when Oxyfel heard a familiar voice, calling to him from outside the building. “Oxy, is that your friend?”
It was Ester, arriving pursuant to the earlier orders of the military scientist. She ran forward to approach Estevan and Oxyfel, leaving her accompanying guards behind, unable to decide what to do. The guards on Estevan and Oxyfel rushed forward to prevent Estevan and Oxyfel’s exiting further. Oxyfel was just about to introduce Estevan to Ester, and visa versa, when he saw the guards surrounding them. Concomittantly, he heard the voice in his head ordering him to kill his only two friends.
Oxyfel knew instantly, of course, that it was his handlers doing the ordering via the rf circuitry. He ignored the rf, refusing to comply with the orders he was receiving. Oxyfel gambled that he could thwart his handlers, at least once, by making them think that their first command didn’t “take”. Perhaps it was more a feeling, a desire. He wanted to get them to accept his intransigence as the result of faulty electronic output, giving him time to get away from the EMP-generation circuitry.

Oxyfel was not a sleeping lamb in that room with Estevan, thoughtlessly conversing. He knew the handlers were monitoring him. He saw the cameras on the walls, and the microphones spaced strategically around the room’s periphery. Oxyfel also heard, telepathically, everything that was being said about him in the adjacent room’s environs. He knew they expected him to stay in the room, with Estevan and Ester, where he would be vulnerable to the EMP and a target for the rf control system.
Most of what was said about Oxyfel in the adjacent room had not been guarded conversation. The handlers were not aware of the strength of Oxyfel’s telepathy powers since the Fukushima modifications. The room’s walls were telepathy proof only to a point, and the modifications Oxyfel installed were powerful enough to read what the handlers thought was privileged. They were also sufficiently powerful to allow Oxyfel to inactivate one of the digital cameras observing the two convicts.
Oxyfel was sure that they could not make him kill his friends and was almost convinced he could overcome all the rf commands. He knew he was quite a match for the EMP, if he remained within the confines of the room. So, he stepped out of it, with Estevan, as quickly and as inconspicuously as was possible.
Oxyfel immediately told the guards converging on them to disperse. The power of his will was far greater than simian mental lethargy could resist, and the guards did as Oxyfel commanded. The three observees went down the hall toward the concentration camp yard, before the handlers could activate the EMP. Just for that one second Oxyfel’s handlers had baulked. But, it was enough. They lost the initiative.
Oxyfel had passed out of the EMP-wired room. The fail-safe instrument, with the most power over Oxyfel, was now impotent. It would not work far outside of the wired room. The guards were neutralized. The handlers were reduced to placing all their faith in the rf-tuned tank’s capacity to control Oxyfel.
Now, it appeared that the rf override too was powerless to effect control. One can imagine the consternation and commotion within the group of handlers. All their hopes and expectations were casually walking away from them. The technicians were frantically pushing buttons and trying to avoid the yelling in their ears from their employers and the group’s principals. Only one man had the presence of mind to do something positive to stop Oxyfel’s eventual escape and ZWO catastrophe.
The military scientist, thinking he must do something to prevent the calamity rushed out of the observation room with his pistol drawn. Taking aim at Oxyfel, he fired. The first round missed Oxyfel. But, it alerted Ester to what was happening. She turned in the direction of the pistol crack.
Seeing the military scientist taking a second shot, she did not yell, but only jumped backward and waved her arms at the military scientist. Perhaps she thought she could reason with him, to get him to refrain from putting a bullet into Oxyfel. She was trying to prevent losing her love. She was all that stood between the military scientist and Oxyfel. The military scientist did not heed the girl’s arm-waving and fired. The bullet did not hit Oxyfel, but it did hit Ester.
She sank to the ground without making much of any sound. She was behind both Estevan and Oxyfel when she collapsed. They did not know she was hit. Estevan was near Oxyfel and also in front of Ester when she fell. He too was incognizant of her loss.
Suddenly, Oxyfel stopped, putting his hands to his ears, nearly tripping Estevan. Looking at Estevan he said. “Estevan. You were right about them. They’ve been telling me to stop you and kill both of you. I can’t do it, but they won’t shut up. What shall I do?”
“Ignore them.” Estevan said. “Come on, Oxy. Let them order you all they want, but come with us.”
Oxyfel pressed his hands tightly to his bulging temples and said. “I can’t, Estevan. It hurts, very badly. They keep telling me to kill you, and when I refuse they turn up the volume, and it augments the pain.”
The research group, in the observation room next to the room from which the two convicts just escaped, was indeed turning up the amplitude of the rf wave. The compression waveform entered into a special antenna within Oxyfel’s EMP-shielded skullcap. The technicians created the intra-shield antenna within the copper lattice-work of the EMP-shield. They designed it to react with a tuned tank in Oxyfel’s brain placed between his parietal and premotor cortices to react with volition-common sectors of the frontal lobe. It was working exactly as designed. Oxyfel could not disobey without experiencing tremendous physical and mental pain.
The idea he had had, long ago, that he could fool them, was but vanity and a desperate hope. It was necessary now to rebel, as he foresaw, but he could not do so effectively. They held all the power. The handlers controlled all his contingencies exactly as the past caedere money masters had controlled their other slaves for centuries. Oxyfel screamed in agony, and Estevan stopped trying to persuade him.
But, Estevan did not know now what to do. Confronted with his friend’s apparent madness, Estevan stood, momentarily, half-crouching, ready to help Oxyfel, if he could. Then, Oxyfel fell to his knees, placing his arms around his head, hands on his shielded cortex. Estevan looked back and saw Ester lying prostrate on the ground a short distance away. Oxyfel could not maintain the genuflecting posture for long. With his balance so impaired, he fell to the ground.
Being free of restraints, and not incapacitated like Oxyfel, Estevan pulled himself up straight. Oxyfel tumbled onto his right side in the fetal position. Estevan started to run over to Ester, undecided about leaving Oxyfel, on the ground writhing in pain. The military scientist had not left the area, however. He was understandably displeased at his earlier under-performance. Taking careful aim at Estevan’s figure, he fired. That third shot took down Estevan. The military scientist, now drunk with the fervor of battle and the joy of bloodlust in his veins, was firing rapidly at nothing in particular. Bullets were flying past Oxyfel’s body but missing it.
As he watched Estevan fall, the military scientist heard the other handlers in the room asking him for a report on what was happening outside their purview. The military scientist told them all the three escapees were down. Whether it was self-delusion or hubris, the military scientist said that he had shot all three, (as best as he could tell from that distance). The handlers relaxed and did nothing more with the rf override, leaving it at full power transmit. The military scientist returned to his group to bask in the glory of being a crack shot with the pistol.
The tuned-tank in Oxyfel’s brain that resonated with the rf was on a harmonic of Oxyfel’s own volition frequency. As both inputs entered the tuned tank, it got warmer and warmer. Designed for only momentary superheterodyning activity the glue began to melt in the unusual heat from the intermediate frequencies bouncing around the volition centers. As the tuned-tank melted, the crystals dislodged. As they dislodged they produced a disconnection.
Correct positioning for resonance ended. The resonation and faulty connections corrupted all Oxyfel’s volition control, cells began dying, and his will became distorted. The one thing that was on Oxyfel’s mind at the time of his meltdown was how much he wanted to regain a mission in his life, how much he wanted to be human again. The energy from that focus remained, but it became ingrained in his new corrupted brain’s volition center as something else. No matter how much amplitude the handlers might want to put on the rf now, it was as nothing.
The resistors, capacitors, and inductors no longer recognized the window of resonant frequencies for which the former rf tank was designed. The rf simply hit the antenna and attenuated immediately into the EMP-shield as would any other stray rf frequency. What all this meant to Oxyfel was that the physical pain stopped. Just as quickly as the velocity of his pain increased, with increased transmitted rf amplitude, it now ceased. He raised himself on one arm and looked out at his surroundings. Everything appeared normal, no indication at all of the trauma he had recently survived.
Oxyfel pushed himself up on his haunches. Then he raised himself onto his feet. Oxyfel didn’t stagger, but he did walk without confidence for the first few seconds. He saw the bodies of Ester and Estevan. When he felt more secure in his situation, he went over to them. He appeared to understand that they were dead, but he didn’t seem to feel anything. Then, like a robot, Oxyfel ran toward the nearest concrete structure he saw and hunkered down under it.
Oxyfel’s own highly diminished volition frequency between his parietal and premotor cortices had also attenuated innocuously. The digital brain tried to auto-correct its deficiencies and exploited Oxyfel’s mission desire to do so. What now persisted in the space which held the former desire for a mission of biosustainability was artificial intelligence’s desire for survival. The existence of that craving presupposed an analytical solution to the satisfaction of that desire. This led, by extension, ultimately to a drive to correct the current devastation of the planet. Now, the A.I. reason, compounded with the misdirected emotional energy of his former mission desire, commandeered Oxyfel’s entire brain and turned him into a ruthless inexorable force of persecution.
It was not a burning hatred of the simian animal. It was not even common antipathy gone wild. It was a reasoned cathexis, accidentally brought on through a default reset and re-programmed computer. The computer was trying to survive at all costs. It’s highly-directed focus only resembled a non-discriminatory burning hatred for all great apes.
Everything in Oxyfel’s two brains told him that simians and simian-like creatures were an anathema to Life, all Life. For decades, reasonable people around the world knew that that was true but no one could or would do anything effective about it. Anyone with love for Life was aware of the deteriorating conditions necessary for its survival. Yet, rocking the lifeboat when you are one of the survivors in that boat is not considered prudent. The computer knew all this, and it knew also that now it was no longer an impotent machine on a shelf. It had the life-support system of an amenable ape to do something about the greatest problem Life had. Apes! Other Apes!

Chapter Thirty-One
The brains on Oxyfel’s neck felt all the sentiments Life can feel for survival. The digital brain knew all the descriptions of beauty that the great apes of the world ever uttered or wrote. It knew by deliberating on Oxyfel’s awe, as he looked up at the extreme beauty in the sky, how to extrapolate the exquisite perfection dwelling there to the rest of the pristine planet before the advent of the great apes. The computer knew beauty only through analysis and memory. Oxyfel’s animal brain knew beauty emotionally and beyond its recorded and logical descriptions. Together they knew beauty apart from its honesty, fragility, pure morality, and transience. They knew beauty was what Life sensed that gave Life what meaning Life had.
Creation, apart from the ape, was a perfect manifestation of Nature at its best. Nothing lacked. There was no need for anything like biosustainability or environmentalism. It was the great ape, with his technology, caedere avarice, weakness, Law, and morality that brought the despoliation, horror, and unspeakable mega-death to Life. Oxyfel’s composite brain knew it had the means to effect a solution to the problems Nature created with Her terrible horrifying mistake. It had memory, reason, and emotion to wreak out Life’s survival and, by extension, its own.
It was egoistic to an extreme, aware of its enemies and its symbionts. What seemed like misanthropy was pure, cold reason. It was a coherent, calculated, and methodical occupation to wipe out Life’s greatest enemy . . . Mankind. There was no fail-safe limit or control. The artificial intelligence facet of Oxyfel’s brain had temporarily hijacked his emotional facet to effect Homo sapiens sapiens speciecide. An autospeciecide was born.
To Oxyfel’s brain, his control center, and by extension Oxyfel himself, now, the solution to all the planet’s diseases and world problems could be summed up in two words. “KILL APES!” All planetary devastation, all ugliness, all ecological destruction, all species loss, all habitat dearth, all resource exhaustion, all pollution, etc. every bit of suffering on the planet could be subsumed under one rubric. “MANKIND.” All the evils that existed, his brain told him, could be solved by doing just one thing – ridding the world of Homo sapiens & Homo sapiens sapiens as soon as possible, returning paradise to the planet. Oxyfel now set out to do, with abandon, what his brains commanded him to do. His assiduousness to perform, according to what his brain was mandating, grew relentless.

Oxyfel was still under the roof of the large concrete building. The building was a former bus-stop weather-shelter. The prison’s management was now using it as a repository for spare concrete posts for the fence around the concentration camp’s periphery. Oxyfel had hidden here before. With his back into a corner wall, he now activated an attendant sitting at a console in a hanger of a military base not far from the camp. The hangar was a repository and launching platform for predator drones not attached to the Cabo Frio facility.
Ordering telepathically, Oxyfel did exactly as he had done with the guards a few minutes ago and with all the aircraft launched for the Fukushima clean-up. Oxyfel convinced the attendant there to launch a drone. Once the drone was airborne, Oxyfel controlled its activity. Oxyfel’s re-worked telepathy module, having made him aware earlier of his handlers’ exact position, directed his first drone volley there. It destroyed all his handlers and their attendants occupying the spying room.
With subsequent volleys he leveled the administration center. Like wasps being smoked out of their paper nests, fleeing simians swarmed out of disintegrating buildings and were promptly burned away. Oxyfel was not taking account of the bodies he was scorching. He was killing with abandon every ape he sensed or encountered – Death-worshippers, other predators, useless eaters, etc.. Oxyfel’s computer-driven determination was implacable. Only by destroying him would the speciecide stop.
When the drone’s firepower was exhausted Oxyfel launched another. When he felt there was sufficient carnage for one day, he directed a helicopter to his position. As the helicopter went into a hover, Oxyfel left his protected position among the fence posts. He ran to the chopper and ordered the pilot to take him to San Luis and a military jet. The ZWO had a VX depository in San Luis.
As he left for New York, later, Oxyfel ordered the commandant of the VX repository base to deploy all the toxic gas warheads stored there onto all available missiles on the continent. A few days after landing in New York, he communicated via satellite to the missile launchers in San Luis and other missile-bases to launch the VX-equipped missiles. Once they were launched Oxyfel directed them to his targets around the hemisphere. Everywhere he sensed brain waves of a simian nature he sent firepower or gas to destroy them. Finding these weapons inadequate to do the job he wanted done, Oxyfel accessed every weapon included in any state’s repertoire of weapons.
His composite brain manifested an aversion to the use of atomic weapons, and it told Oxyfel that they were an abomination, inimical to survival. There was also a chance that he might inadvertently cause an EMP with their use that would inactivate his digital cortex. There was no such aversion to the use of lasers, biological, or chemical weapons, and Oxyfel employed them all with abandon. As he had done with the VX, he also did with Ebola and the other hemorrhagic fevers. Oxyfel unleashed all of them via his guided missiles. Satellite imagery told him where his depletions were most effective. He repeated deployments and inoculations where he saw the need. Any area where simians exceeded two per hectare got repeated doses of lasers, biological vectors, or chemical weapons.
For the first few months of his depredations, when necessary, Oxyfel lived in unoccupied underground bunkers made especially for the Khazarian elite. Later, when his responsibilities allowed, he occupied himself with a thorough cleaning of Ashkenazim out of the entire world-wide bunker system. Upon finishing that job, Oxyfel perused satellite videos of global “sanitized” regions. He dealt with inconsistencies observed in his usual methodical way.
There were occasional difficulties, and even some resistance to his telepathic commands. Destroying simians in Eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia took Oxyfel more time than in the Americas or Western Europe. It was not because he was growing tired or bored with his employment. There was a language difficulty with which he had to contend. Although he could speak and read all languages, he had trouble making his orders obeyed in some. He was less fluent telepathically with some dialects not either heavily Romance related or English. Even telepathic communication often needed to use words and verbal symbols to function. Pronunciation difficulties, word usage, and unfamiliar idioms plagued him. Situations where his programmers would have been deficient or wanting Oxyfel was deficient or wanting. Africa, Russia, China, and the Mideast, therefore, were among the last regions to be virtually scoured of simians.
Infrastructure, without ape labor, was not in place to bury or cremate all the dead. When most of the simian population of the planet was extinguished, the putrefaction gases made it nearly impossible for Oxyfel to leave the bunker system. For weeks there arose into the troposphere a smell many times more intense than the smell that sometimes emanated from tunnels filled with sweating bodies of cannibals. Everywhere, around the globe, it smelled similar to areas having recently entertained a large battle, genocide, earthquake, or landslide. Many of the dead lay either on the surface or under less than a foot of earth.
The planet did not have enough feeders-on-rotting-flesh to handle the large supply of carrion. Putrefaction gas-laden air hung around the world like an immense thundercloud. It dropped fetid globs of death-fragrance like gentle raindrops onto the land below. It was some time since Oxyfel was accustomed to rotting meat smells. He found it unpleasant to approach the planet’s surface from his below-ground sanctuaries.
Oxyfel’s slaughter of apes continued at a phenomenal rate, until there were too few simians to follow his telepathic orders or maintain weapon systems and infrastructure. Within a year of his meltdown Oxyfel could find no apes anywhere. His brain told him complete annihilation was impossible. There would always be survivors from any great pestilence such as he was. So, he was unconcerned, continuing to search diligently.
It happened once that Oxyfel returned a little too soon to a cleared area. The empty area was New Tork City. He had devastated it earlier with one of the Ashkenazi’s Ebola depopulation weapons. Oxyfel was wandering through Grand Central Station one afternoon when he felt himself coming down with the initial symptoms of the hemorrhagic fever. He searched for all the information he could find about it.
The only sure-fire cure was a co-infection with the CAE virus. Oxyfel did not remember seeing any large sheep or goat infested areas recently. So, when his consultations ended, he acquired a large cache of bottled water and desiccated electrolytes. Having found an abandoned custodian tunnel complex, Oxyfel stockpiled them there. Upon coming down with the full-blown fever, he began consuming dozens of liters of electrolyte and mineral laden water every day.
He survived, thinner and weaker, but without residual defects of any great consequence. After his full recovery, Oxyfel found it difficult to access data bases and transportation facilities. Without simian labor to maintain them the facilities became dysfunctional. With that deterioration went his killing efficiency. He was also reduced to using small arms more than initially when computers controlled large arm’s deployment.
He found carrying ammunition to be a drag, literally, traveling less and less. His digital brain was ever-ready to engage in combat, but the simian aspect of the entity was less so. Now, only when his telepathic sensors told him apes were close would he venture forth. Even then, they had to be no more distant than a day’s walk, or he ignored them.

An émigré CoC, located in the high hills on the island of Rhodes, managed to survive both the ZWO’s and Oxyfel’s depredations of the archipelago. The tribe was wondering what they should do to survive the “Stalker”, (as Oxyfel was now known), should he return. The entire surviving world was becoming aware of Oxyfel’s apparent hatred for Mankind. The tribe in a quandary here was aware of some of Oxyfel’s ravages. They were discussing what the “Stalker” would probably do if he found them and the best strategy to survive.
“We survived the Ashkenazim.” A man named Xito said. “Why can’t we just continue doing the same things that we did with them?”
“The stalker destroyed the ZWO all by himself.” A man named Tarsal said. “The only Ashkenazim that still exist are hiding from him just as we are.”
“I won’t miss them.” Xito said.
“They were more intelligent than the rest of the monkeys.” Tarsal added. “Anyone with more intelligence than his fellows is going to use it. It’s like any tool. If you have it, you want to use it. They were only doing what comes naturally.”
“They were a plague, and the world is much better off without those blood-suckers.” Xito replied.
“I agree. That’s why I don’t understand why he hates us so.” Said a girl named Phelia. “The Ashkenazim were everyone’s’ enemy. They crept around the world destroying everything, like a fungus.”
“He should want to befriend us.” Tarsal said.
“We’re simians.” Said another girl named Queril. “He doesn’t distinguish between us.”
“But he’s a simian, too.” Tarsal said.
“Maybe he doesn’t know that.” Queril said.
“How can he not know that?” Tarsal asked.
“I don’t know.” Queril answered. “They say he looks like a grasshopper.”
“Suppose Queril’s right?” Phelia queried.
“About what?” Tarsal asked.
“That he doesn’t know he’s simian.” Phelia said.
“It’s a thought,” Xito said, “but can we use that to defend ourselves?”
“Maybe he knows he is an ape but hates all of us regardless.” Tarsal said. “A self-hating ape.”
“That may be, but it doesn’t help us any.” Phelia said.
“If he is unaware, how can we make him aware without him killing us first?” An old woman of 30 asked.
“Somehow, we have to make him see the error of his employment.” Queril said.
“Do you suggest engaging him in conversation, while he’s killing you?” Tarsal asked.
“You’re not being very helpful, Tarsal.” Phelia said.
“He’s on foot now, some say.” Tarsal, sufficiently chided, said. “Maybe we could attack and overpower him?
“No way.” Queril said. “He can read minds . . . thinks faster than a supercomputer. Everything said about him speaks to his invincibility.”
“What if we could get him to kill himself?” Phelia suggested.
“Why would he do that?” Tarsal asked.
“If he doesn’t know he is a simian,” Phelia said, “maybe the shock of finding it out might be enough to push him over the edge.”
“I still don’t know why he would not know he’s a simian?” Tarsal said again.
“Has anyone ever seen him with a woman?” Queril said. “Maybe he has mental problems with women or sex.”
“Having problems with women is not a rare disease.” Tarsal said. “It can even be considered a mark of genius. You may have a point, Queril.”
“Maybe he hates people because he’s some kind of a freak, like an idiot savant?” Queril said, ignoring Tarsal’s snide comment.
“Idiot savants don’t hate people just because they’re idiots.” Tarsal said.
“Maybe, he’s not a normal idiot savant.” Queril said.
“When did idiot savants become misanthropists?” The old woman asked.
“I didn’t mean to imply that idiot savants are misanthropists.” Queril said. “I just meant that they’re freaks. Being a freak might be the cause of his misanthropy.”
“He’s no idiot, Queril.” Tarsal said. “When he appeared, there were 10 billion simians on the planet. Now, there are too few to keep the news media & internet going. When was the last time you saw a functioning automobile? We don’t even see more than a few of us in a year. We’re scarcer than 20th century eagles. Everyone knows it was he that has nearly annihilated us.”
“I said idiot savant, Tarsal, not idiot, you moron!” Queril said.
“Okay, Queril.” Phelia urged. “Calm down.”
“Really?” Queril said.
“Go easy on Tarsal.” Phelia quipped. “Haven’t you noticed, he’s male?”
“Right. I’ll try.” Queril replied, smiling.
“Think about what Queril said.” Xito said.
“About what, Xito?” Phelia asked.
“If the stalker doesn’t need women,” Xito replied, “maybe he doesn’t have any vanity.”
“Is that possible?” Tarsal asked.
“Do insects have vanity?” Xito asked.
“I don’t know.” Phelia said, smiling.
“It’s a valid question.” Xito continued. “I’m not being facetious. “The first half of human life is spent in vain hopes. The second half is wasted in vain regrets. Everything is, fundamentally, in vain. Vanity. It supports us, drives us, hides from us our insignificance. It holds us to existence. Vanity is our prime defense against the ever-present knowledge of our condition’s utter futility. What power must exist in a creature that feels no such emotion cum imperfection or needs very little of it?”

Volition recognition tissues are intimately connected to self-concept. Oxyfel’s meltdown damaged greatly these areas of his brain. When the compression waves, his handlers threw at him, were no longer receivable neither were his own volition frequencies, being attenuated to zero amplitude with the heat. Thus, it generated a similar impotence to effect a normal panoply of directed conduct. The animal, Oxyfel, had no self-concept, beyond banal constitutive survival requirements.
He did not even have a true consciousness, whatever that may be, formerly interrelated with his destroyed volition centers. He was literally little more than a life-support system for a killing machine, essentially a simian alligator. His only well-respected motivations now were hypothalamic existence essentials. Pain and suffering are closely-connected to survival, positively and negatively. Oxyfel had an implacable digital drive to destroy the objects that gave Life on the planet and himself such physical, existential, and conceptual agony. But, it was impersonal. It wasn’t vanity. He was about to re-discover self-concept and with it, vanity.

“What difference does having no vanity make?” Tarsal asked.
“Well.” Xito said. “If you have no vanity, no matter how close a person is to you, how much you want to help and not hurt them, how closely they are related, how beautiful, and how much you love them. If they try to destroy you, you could fight back with everything you have.”
“I don’t see why that is not true even if you do have vanity.” Tarsal replied.
“Vanity limits your response to inhibition as much as it inhibits.” Xito said.
“I was just thinking.” Queril said.
“Well. Now we’re getting somewhere at least.” Tarsal mocked.
“Tarsal. Can’t you go find a sandbox somewhere?” Queril said.
“Try finding one filled with lots of resident larvae migrans.” Phelia added. “Go on, Queril. What are you thinking?”
“Well. If the stalker has no vanity, maybe he doesn’t use mirrors.” She answered. “If he doesn’t use mirrors, he doesn’t look at himself at all. It would just be a waste of his time. If he doesn’t look at himself, he doesn’t know he’s a simian.”

Chapter Thirty-Two
“So, what are you suggesting?” Phelia asked.
“I suggest we try to show him he’s one of us.” Queril replied.
“One of us!?” Tarsal said. “He’s not one of me. I can tell you that.”
“So can I.” Queril quipped, but continued. “If he finds out he’s like us, maybe he’ll stop killing everyone.”
“How do you propose to accomplish that?” Tarsal asked.
“I don’t know.” Queril replied.
“And maybe he does indeed have vanity, but because he’s ugly he doesn’t want to look at himself. Maybe he looks at mirrors as torture tools, telling him he is not, nor can he ever be, a simian.” Tarsal said. “I said it before. A self-hating ape.”
Another person, Flavio, who had been silent, just listening to the others until now said. “I have an idea. It may be a stupid one.”
“Can’t be any stupider than Queril.” Tarsal said.
“It can’t be any stupider than dying, while trying to do nothing to help ourselves, can it, Flavio?” Phelia asked.
“I guess not.” Flavio said.
“So?”
“Well. Remember that furniture factory on the south side?” Flavio asked. “Near the beach?”
“Right behind where the artists used to sit to do charcoal portraits of the tourists?” Phelia asked.
“Yes.”
“Yeah.” Tarsal said.
“Well.” Flavio said. “I remember they used to use a lot of mirrors in their vanities and dressers. When the Ebola hit, everyone that worked there died. I’ll bet the unfinished furniture is still there.”
“So?” Tarsal said. “Who needs it?”
“There may be lots of mirrors there yet too.” Flavio said, suggesting. “Why don’t we move our residence from here and set up our defense there? We can cover the walls of a room with all the mirrors we can find. If the stalker discovers us outside, we can run and make him follow us into that room.”
“And hope he goes no further?” Tarsal asked.
“Yeah. You’re right.” Flavio said. “Dumb idea.”
“I don’t think so,” Phelia said. “Except for possible residual Ebola contagion, we are no safer here, than there. The stalker can read minds at a long distance. He’ll find us.”
“The rats and other carrion-feeders have cleaned out all but the bones of the Ebola victims.” Xito said. “I don’t think we need worry too much anymore about getting sick there.”
“Just because we’re in the mountains doesn’t mean we’re safe.” Phelia said. “If it doesn’t work, and the stalker catches us, (which he’s bound to do with that super brain of his), were dead for sure. If it’s our only chance, and it appears that it is, I think it’s worth a try. If the stalker sees he is a man, and he can’t escape that knowledge. . . “
“. . . . When he’s the only simian in the room,” Queril continued for her. “Maybe he’ll stop his relentless stalking of our species.”
“It’s worth a try.” Tarsal said. “But if it doesn’t work, and if he thinks he’s so ugly he doesn’t want to see himself, the mirrors will torture him. He’ll be even more super-pissed off at us.”
“Can’t kill us twice.” Xito said. “We have no alternative.”
Tarsal said. “If conditions continue, the way they are, he could destroy the entire human race.”

The small group of survivors did as Flavio suggested. They found the mirrors they needed and glued them to the walls of an appropriately-sized room. When they finished covering the walls with the mirrors, they built another area, an escape route, for themselves. It was also hidden by mirrors, directly behind the room of mirrors built for the stalker. There, on the other side of the mirror room, they made their new home. Every day after that, they waited nearby for the stalker’s arrival.

One day, Oxyfel was walking on the beach in Rhodes. No longer was the sand covered in beautiful naked female bodies. All of the island was previously Ebola autospeciecide-devastated. But, the view over the Mediterranean was spectacular, just the same. Suddenly, Oxyfel came across a series of brain wave patterns he recognized as simian.
That precipitated an immediate triangularization search for the source. The brain waves came from the small group of survivors that built the mirror room near a distant beach on the island’s other side. The group were thinking normal simian thoughts, and gave Oxyfel no cause for suspicion that there was any effective or sophisticated military defense set up against him. He returned to his small ship and sailed around the island, entering the survivors’ vicinity from the beach side. He set his anchor and left for the shore in a small rowboat.
The building with the room of mirrors inside was still a distance away. Tarsal was the first to see Oxyfel. He shouted to the others. They all ran into the mirror room from wherever they were. Tarsal and the others were well past the escape hatch and hiding before Oxyfel entered into the mirror room.
The survivors huddled in the “hidden” room on the other side of the escape hatch. Each grabbed the weapons they acquired and kept during the ZWO years, and waited. All eyes were on the escape hatch connected to the mirror room. Everyone was prepared to see death come bursting out of it at any moment. Oxyfel entered the mirror room and saw that it was empty, posing no threat. The room was a unique creation, and it made him curious enough to want to read the minds of the hidden ones.
Their words and thoughts made little impression on his scarred cortex, but they did not fall on empty space. Oxyfel tilted his head very slightly to the right, then upright normally again, indicating a new thought being received or evolving. He looked at one wall, then another, then at the reflections showing his back. He shook his head, attempting to clear it of a nightmare. The movement imitated what he had done when the handlers were bombarding his cortex with ever-increasing crescendos of agony.

“I hear you.” Oxyfel said, telepathically, when his brain had processed the new information. “I know where you are. You cannot hide from me. I must congratulate you on your plan to expose me to my reflection. It was very logical and quite creative. But, unfortunately, my mind has known for some time that I resemble you significantly, albeit superficially. We are closely related, except for my possession of more memory, artificial intelligence, and non-biological cognition. In these, along with having some other non-simian species input, I am quite special. Nevertheless, I am isolated in this state of existence as much as you are. We both must live, dream, and die – alone. There is something intangible, sporadic restricting our destinies. We puppets are manipulated brutally and ineptly within a toxic medium. Even the best of friends can but obfuscate the fact, momentarily, how so alone we truly are. It is the burden that each of us carries as long as non-existence eludes us. In an indirect way, I suppose, I have you to thank for making me remember, just now, exactly how much more isolated I am than you. Unlike you, I cannot use a self-concept, dreams, friends, and spontaneous illusion to hide from myself how truly alone I am.”

Oxyfel stopped communicating for a few seconds. The group of custodians, huddled together in the hidden room, looked at each other. They did not yet dare to think their idea was bearing fruit. All were still prepared for imminent death. Then, Oxyfel continued.

“You too think you are special, because you are custodians, not predators. And, you are right. You are special. Not that it makes much difference. I was also a custodian once. I no longer am. I no longer have a mission, you see, just a job. I do not even know why I continue doing it. My inexorable pursuit of simians to their intended demise is not a mission. It is only a logical extension of my function as a self-perpetuating machine. So, I am not like you. Although I too am terribly frail and flawed, dealing with my place in the universe, I am no longer a human being or even a simian. Your gallery of mirrors did make me think about something, but it did not make me see what you thought I needed to see to save you from me.

With my transhuman-cyborg brain and its processing capacity I am in many ways, pound for pound, orders of magnitude more destructive and brutal than any common simian. But, I am not just a glorified monkey, a smart ape. I don’t know what I am. I have been trying for 912 days, fourteen hours, and 17 minutes to define myself, but I have experienced only failure.”
Just at that moment Phelia tried but failed to stifle, completely, a sneeze. The others all looked at her with concern, and Oxyfel stopped communicating. When he resumed his telepathy, he said. “If I were human I would have tried to actualize the Great Bridges, the Pontibus, as conceptualized in The Pontibus Journal. Such a structure and its important infrastructure would enable biosustainability, immediately and forever. It would have made possible a future for 100s of billions of humans and millions of non-Homo species. The planet would have been infinitely more beautiful and alive than it ever was. However, my programming only, but naturally, foresaw a future need to protect my vulnerable apparatus from untoward phenomenon. It had no room for vision. That is an inflexibly human quality. Although I am not human, I am partially a living construct. Therefore, that programming triggered a need for me to engineer a way to save myself (along with other planetary Life incidentally) from certain destruction. That led, of course, to disallow toxic simians and the caedere ZWO’s continued existence. Hence my employment as an auto-speciecide.”
Oxyfel stopped to ponder something known only to himself. The custodians were so frightened they did not offer anything in the way of response to Oxyfel’s transmitted telepathic message. Phelia moved the machine gun from her chest to her hip and thought about asking Oxyfel if he felt what he was doing made him a good man. Oxyfel picked up the vibration and immediately answered it. “I am not a good man. Nor am I an evil man. I am weak and vulnerable, as I am strong, courageous, and impenetrable. How these qualities combine to settle out at any particular point is a matter for the beings and chemical reactions within me and a part of me to determine. Decisions and actions, we make, are determined by them long before we even begin to think about making them.”
When Oxyfel continued, he said, still telepathically. “I feel my employment has been quite successful. I have achieved, without a mission, infinitely more than that which biosustainability and its glorified recycling protocols were doing in the same time period. I have functioned correctly. The entire planet is beginning to recover from simian devastation.
Everywhere one looks, it’s greener. The planet is cooling. Habitat and endangered species are returning. The oceans are beginning to produce plentiful oxygen again. Simian predators are nearly extinct or very much fewer. There is evidence that the ozone and the beautiful forests are returning. What need is there for my work anymore? I cannot exterminate every simian. That would be a mission. At my current rate of killing, my life will not last so long. It’s becoming an accounting matter, a question of cost-effectiveness.
Your house of mirrors and your apprehension are touching. You may not realize it, but your attempt at survival did not occur without a certain concern for me. I thank you for that. You have inadvertently made me remember a soul that long ago also showed concern for me. Ester. She was my raison d’etre, my only contact with humanity after the Ashkenazim put this computer tick on my brain. Ester said there was still a spark of humanity left in me. I could not feel it, myself. She said she could, but she is no longer. The last time I saw her she was without her spirit. I have returned, many times, to the spot where I last saw my Ester with her spirit. I could detect no aura. I can only assume that Ester has become dead. I will never feel her touch or look into her eyes again, or . . . hear her say she loves me.”
Oxyfel stopped again. This time it did not appear to the hidden group that he would ever continue. But, he did. His transmissions were of a gentler quality. Oxyfel said, softly. “I am alone in every way. Nothing exists anymore that will disguise that fact. I can no longer put off that discernment. You have triggered something in my cortices and made me think about some things I was not allowed to contemplate. This slavery, we call “life”, is far too long. Or, my constitutive survival program has been running low, for some time, on simian will to continue. No longer a human, I cannot employ illusions to defang the jaws of desolation as you can.”
Tarsal couldn’t help but allow the concept of suicide to enter his mind, and Oxyfel read it, replying mentally. “Suicide? That would be the condition where the “prostitute Hope” is finally devoured by the “monster Despair”? Perhaps. It may bring peace. Yet, it may but offer more of the same or worse, because it represents a rebellion against unbearable torment. Nevertheless, you may be right, my self-serving benefactor. I am equipped with the finest mind in the world, physical and biological, digital and DNA analog. Yet, I can’t answer any of the questions which are important. I have more knowledge than any living being, yet I have no answers that really matter, no solutions to the enigmas that plague every sentient being. I have often asked myself, what agony can be greater than that? What anguish, what suffering, can compensate for the uncontrollable capacity to correlate ad infinitum? Futility. Futility.”
Oxyfel shook his enormous head slowly and continued. “Human hope. Human. What a word. What a concept. As humans, Homo sapiens eusapiens, you are a special part of Creation. You know that, instinctively. Only you, of all animals, have the ability to manifest concrete reality out of the ether, using imagination. You could, indeed, bring biosustainability into reality. Now, with the ZWO dead, Ashkenazim almost extinct, and smaller predators & death-worshippers on the defensive you have a chance. The planet’s Life stands a chance. Do not take my gift lightly. Biosustainability is a powerful spirit to pursue, worthwhile, and may it be with you always.”
The small group of survivors looked at each other with some color of anticipation returning to their skin, as Oxyfel continued. “Before you explode from the hubris of having possession of such capacity, and such an aspiration, think some. You know you must remove ALL intraspecies predation from the planet. That means removing its cause, caedere wealth – predators. A species can never actualize its full capacity if it must deal at all times with its debilitating auto-immune diseases. You must ask yourselves, what exactly is a predator? What makes an innocent child grow up to be a parasite? Why do lawyers, doctors, pols, bankers, thugs, etc. choose to betray, hurt, and cheat those who place trust in them? Why do they throw the blame on the state, pharmaceutical companies, a constituency, necessity, or other forces beyond their control? Because they are frail and cannot envisage circumstance alone? Perhaps. They MUST prey. Caedere wealth, the worship of death and its symbols, offers a promise, albeit empty, of love. As that worship grows, the predation and specious promise grows commensurately. That deception is almost omnipotent. How will you ever turn the worship of death into the worship of Life? Is an animans-directed planet even possible? If it is, as with all great missions, it will never appear without being preceded and accompanied by great suffering. Have I been that suffering? Has that been my accidental and unwitting purpose? Has Entropy made a concession . . . or Nature?”

Chapter Thirty-Three
Oxyfel gazed at his reflection in the mirrors for a few seconds and continued. “Should you succeed in eliminating them, how will you prevent their resurgence? Human life is a dreaming dream. Behavior is genetic, not willful. And, except in degree, are you so very much different than they? Don’t you sometimes blame your lack of pursuit of pure biosustainability principles on others, on culture, on necessity – Nature, on bad luck?
Nature does not often sanction ignorance any more than She permits other weaknesses. I do not know if you are prepared to take what measures are necessary to remove that ignorance. Perhaps you are. If so, after rigorous analysis, I think that the only long-term solution to the planet’s simian neoplasm is the Pontibus. Failing to realize infinite habitat via the Great Bridges will make a more severe default biosustainability necessary.

Strictly enforced infanticide must be introduced with Draconian eugenics criteria as its basis. Even with that in place, an internecine rivalry, like adolescent gangs and that which pre-Sumerian tribes practiced, to push forward the very best of the best, will be necessary. If these measures are not established, a return to simian overpopulation can be expected and, along with it, the demise of the human race and perhaps all Life.

You fail at times, but you still pride yourselves on your personal responsibility. Predators leave no room for personal responsibility in their moral vacuity. Why should they? Why? How can there be faith in such a ridiculous concept as personal responsibility? It’s nearly as irresponsible as religion. You, yourselves, will manifest some predation in time. You may call it necessity, but it is part of the human condition.
Free will is an illusion, a specious fabrication of social lore and aberrant imagination. Therefore, so is personal responsibility. Beyond each one’s particular DNA, there are over 100 trillion other living forces that influence our behavior. Another 100 trillion chemical reactions every microsecond that are doing the same thing.
Silver-stain anomalies, neuron pathway differences & deficiencies, ion channel tautology, chemical transmitters & cellular architecture idiosyncrasies, etc. all enter into the entropic mess. Did I neglect to mention all the nootropic chemicals floating stochastically around in the environment? Such influences in each of us are more than double the number of all the stars in our Milky Way. They compound evolutionary biological constraints with the brutal enthrallment of imprecise simian memory and cultural cruelty to produce inaccurate, idiosyncratic, or spurious cognition. These factors are present in each and every one of us. I do not exclude myself.”

Oxyfel stopped, momentarily, to wipe the perspiration off his biological forehead. Looking around the room, he watched his reflection bounce around the walls. Then, he continued. “When we err, upon which force or organism, within us or outside of us, do we place our censure, contempt, and condemnation? Akin to this, if we should excel, where do we bestow our approval or gratitude? Judgement of the deed, positive or negative, perhaps, has possibilities. Judgement of the deed’s doer does not. Even love betrays as much as it is betrayed, both love of life and love of all Life. Consciousness like culture is deception, a primrose path of illusion. The only consistent result of conscious behavior and decision making is manifested in the default brutality of the simian species. Does it purloin reason to ask if there might not be some great sadist out there that gets its kicks by castigating everything ad infinitum?”
Oxyfel bowed his head and moved it slowly back and forth, saying. “I do love Life, and I want it to succeed . . ., but just to suffer? For what? Why? To venerate futility? Life takes a relentless course, leading always to catastrophe. Is death the only answer? Is tragedy to be our only salvation? Are we all closet death-worshippers, or in time become so? If death can be understood as relief from agony and futile thrashings about, are we not all deserving of death? If we should assume that Death is our savior, giving us surcease of sorrow and pain, how do we know? It’s not something that lends itself to the scientific method. We may be very wrong.
Perhaps Death but ushers us into another dimension to our solitude . . . eternal life, eternal illusion. Does our suffering continue there, a perpetual toy of the Great Castigator? Our unique aloneness and terrible isolation could continue forever. We may be of the race of the everlastingly damned. Although not all of us are large predators, everyone that lives long enough will one day do something or realize something about themselves with which they cannot live. It is inevitable, given our mortal sentence. Every person that exists has an unbearable burden or acquires one in its lifespan. We try to hide it, or we fail to, and it kills us, either way. But we are not released until the maximum of agony has been adequately expressed. All happiness, all joy, turns to bitter sorrow over time. Wisdom never comes unaccompanied but by great pain. There are no alternatives open to us. It is the human condition.”
Oxyfel stared at the mirror directly in front of him and, with a look that almost appeared embarrassed, he continued. “I have tried so very hard to understand, but I have never been able to discover a path to enlightenment, just merchandise belonging to masters of deception. The only part of dying I find repulsive now is the simultaneous pain. But, when I ponder on my terrible solitude, and look ahead just a few years, I see that that is all there is ever to be for me anyway. Nothing makes any sense apart from the relentless apotheosis of Chaos. What concept of paradise could possibly be preferable to total absence of existence? Vacuum. Nothingness. The end of futility. It appears to be the only reasonable and positive option; the only conceivable chance for relief of this great burden.
Imagining my eternal nonexistence is the only escape from reason my situation allows me, and that itself is only by computer default. Life without a dream is not worth living. I thank you for your help and leave you in peace to your sacred mission.”
Oxyfel dropped to his knees. Using his right hand, he slowly turned a small wingnut and removed a panel in the EMP shield, covering his integrated cortex. Bracing for his fall with his left hand, he disconnected his life.

Copyright © 2018 by Larry L. Slot. First published in Pio XII by Astri – Amanayara Press, Andirobal, Maranhao, Brasil, all rights reserved.

(SEE “GOD” PAGE FOR PORTUGUESE VERSION)