Greenwars: the End of Mankind

Prologue – The Blossom Ceremony

The baby seals frolicked as the sand castle they had so laboriously constructed dissolved in the encroaching foam. Slithers of sea water rushed into the coarse- grained sand corrugations carved by the patter of their dexterous flippers.

Ten chains offshore, Kris smiled inside so warm rippling and wide; his natural dolphin smile could hardly contain itself. He heaved out a sonorous greeting as he back-flipped in the air then took the long deep emerald dive twenty feet below the hissing waves.

He peered through the gusting sand and seaweed at the ragged rockface. In a boil of bubbles two friends torpedoed down from the surface. They looked together at the tell-tale signs then simultaneously flicked their sleek bodies forward and disappeared into the mouth of an underwater cave.

Kris and his friends exploded through the surface of the

water into a vast underground den bathed in a soft lambent glow. The light in the cave seemed to drip from the rocky walls. The top of the cave was invisible in the darkness. Twenty juvenile dolphins were gliding around the water base of the cave, some alone, some in groups. They spoke to each other in the clipped metallic Glish that had been their birthright for more than a hundred generations. These special neophytes were rehearsing, remembering, practising the special oaths they were soon to

utter. In unison they sang from the Relics.

Kris ran through in his mind, with his almost total recall, the word pictures that made up the Greenwars fragments then rumbled words across the choppy waters.

They descended from the Heaven, with the

Fury of a thousand storms, and watched,

invisible, the creature with Feelings; Its fear, Its joy,

Its anger.

Out of a column of light walked

the Maker, and placed a Crown upon It and Its mate.

And Truth poured into them, and Knowledge,

And gave them dominion over this World.

Kris floated alongside one of his best friends and whispered, I have been waiting so long for this. We are nearly there.

Kris, his friend suspended himself momentarily in the water, in a hovering motion. Kris, he said, what is your neo-name? Who are you naming yourself after?

Kris raised his head and clicked out his words, My new name is Jung. I have read the Relics. He comes from a long time before. He knew that all species have a limited thought repertoire. They share the same dreams, future and past and that is why history repeats itself. I have studied all the dreams, all of our dolphin dreams, and I have learnt the history. As we repeat the history I want to make it a beautiful and a positive thing. Not a negative backward step! I want us as a creative species to—!

A sudden volcanic vibration rocked the cave. A mass of water rumbled and parted as a huge, barnacle-encrusted humpback whale surfaced in their midst. It blew a streaming arc of water high into the black void above. It disappeared and re-

appeared as droplets rained, crackling on the ruffled water floors of the cave. He was the Ancient One who was to begin the ceremony.

A rolling, booming, clanging voice echoed around the cave. The gigantic mouth hardly moved, water rippling around its edges and into the gaping hole as the words filled the cavern.

The longer the time before the bloom blossoms, so the greater will be the bloom. And so too within a nation. Materialism comes quickly and the blossom is brief. Spiritualism comes slowly and its blossoming is great. So too you have waited my neophytes for many years for this moment. You will receive your new names and your quest. You will no more have to talk furtively, you have reached the Age of Voice . . .

Kris listened to the words intently; but he had heard them before. His father had shown him secret videos many times of the arcane rites of the species. His father had died a hero in the boiling waters of a volcano he had studied, trying selflessly to save the lives of his vulcanologist friends. But his father was close in his dreams and his spirit.

And on the whale toiled. The ceramic implant several feet behind his mouth was barely noticeable. His voice wavered every now and then.

And there was the Age of Cynicism. And we learnt how to overcome that with the ND injections. For those who did not cherish life for its richness, relishing both its brevity and infinity. For those, we took them near death until they saw the error of their ways, never to complain, never question celebration again.

Kris was tense with excitement waiting for the moment his quest would be revealed. It was almost impossible to listen to the wise, but well-known and well-worn words of his mentors.

"Genius lies in the eloquence used to justify primitive instincts, and we must beware for there is evil. Never before has there been so much creativity and synergy in a species. We reap the benefits of a vast global education system for all. We owe a debt to our forefathers.

And we are forever in debt through all the dreamtime, through all our history, through all our civilisation to our primate friends.

Kris looked at the narrow rocky shelf behind the mammoth Ancient One and remembered the hairy ones. There were only three at the rites, dressed in white tunics with blue and gold insignias. He remembered the white for purity of thought, the gold for wealth of experience and the blue for unlimited opportunity. He didn’t envy the fact that they were one of the few

species who actually could enjoy wearing clothing. He watched as they carefully lifted the ancient glass floats from the chariot moored next to the ledge. The floats contained sacred parchments on which the quests were written. One green float for each of the neophytes.

And our great foe destroyed itself as a species by imbibing so much of the self-gratification of evil. Was all that immediacy worthwhile? The road to excess was never the road to virtue for these scavengers who nearly destroyed the world. The Cat has now been reduced to an animal again . . . They are the anti-life, the devourers . . .

In his readings, Kris had become familiar with the term Gothic. Everything here looked, smelt and sounded that way.

Finally the Ancient One stopped. He moved his massive head and looked towards the primates. The primates then quietly pointed at one of Kris’s friends and beckoned him to approach the ledge. The glass float was thrown into the air. Kris’s friend thrust up in one mighty spring to meet the glass float head-on. As he did so the glass shattered and an oilskin parchment floated to the surface. Kris’s neophyte friend grasped the parchment in his mouth and headed off into the gloom where a primate held the parchment for him to read.

And on the ceremony went until finally it was Kris’s turn. The float, as it burst, hurt his head. But this was part of the ritual. He took his parchment and slipped away to a dark corner with his primate aide to study it. This he knew was his quest.

As only a dolphin can feel, a massive wave of euphoria swept his entire body and poured into the sea, a tangible energy he knew would radiate out until it touched others of his dolphin friends and they too would build up in a mutual excitement. His parchment quest was simple.

Find first the Facilitator and Creator of AARDVARK then begin to write the Chronicles of the Greenwars.

Chapter One – AARDVARK

And because the Creator was flawed,

so too His technology.

He gave the creatures the Voice, and the Truth

But perfection was always an illusion.

(From the Greenwars Relics)

From Dust to Life

Adam teforp put down his pen and rested his notebook on the narrow table that extended from the seat in front of him. He looked out of the small aircraft window at the massive red rock that punctured the flat expanse of desert, pushing itself towards the sky. It was hard to gauge its size. The only reference points were tourist buses strewn at the base of this massive monolith. But he knew it was immense, red and raw.

His sun-bleached friend in the next seat, with whom he had just spent two days in Darwin, leant towards him. Adam, what is it that you keep jotting into that tatty old notebook?

I’ve been building up a bit of an anthology of poems over the last few years. I spend so much time on planes, I’ve decided to call the collection The Plane Poems. A bit like the train poetry of the First World War.

Christopher, Adam’s friend, took a swig of his diet-cola then buckled his seatbelt, yawning and stretching as he straightened his legs out into the aisle.

You know, you’ve made a fortune out of the fast food industry and out of that space junket. I never believed the lottery would work, but you must’ve netted two or three hundred million out of it. Why on earth do you play around with the tedium of poetry?

Adam raised an eyebrow and revealed the full extent of the blueness of his eyes, magnified and intensified by the surrounding brilliant azure sky. I netted a little less than a hundred million altogether on the space lottery; and really the poetry is not so much a diversion, but a way of recording my thoughts and anticipations. Besides, it’s my only artistic outlet. I can’t paint, I can’t play a musical instrument, I can’t even sing for that matter. Everyone needs an artistic catharsis. This is mine.

The plane throttled back and began its descent to the small airport near the Yulara Resort, a speck of civilisation near the majestic Uluru, or what used to be known as Ayers Rock.

****

Adam settled back in the driver’s seat of the four-wheel drive that he had hired from the resort. He had driven to the great red rock early in the morning to try and appreciate its true magnificence in what had promised to be a perfectly clear morning and to watch the sun bathe the rock with a myriad of hues.

The morning had started badly. In his home town of Los Angeles one of the local gangs had gone on a rape rampage in a women’s dormitory at UCLA. In Sydney there had been the third mass murder for the year and it was only the end of May.

And to top it all off the weather was supposed to be perfect. He sat contemplating the insanity of his fellow species. How

ridiculously limited man’s horizon was. How predictably they acted when put into over-populated environments. Just like in Zimbardo’s controlled over-population experiments with rats. Rats and humans in those sorts of situations have a lot in common, he pondered. Rape, murder, casting out of the young.

The clear blue skies had vanished and a rolling storm was beginning to suffocate the clarity of the morning sun.

Adam peered through the windscreen and through the increasing haze. He jumped suddenly as a blinding flash and a crack of lightning rattled the car and shocked his nerves. For an instant the scene was almost phosphorescent. And then the rain began. It was as though Niagara had unleashed itself to cascade down the slippery precipices that made up the rock.

Adam gazed around. Suddenly some clouds parted and a shaft of sunlight bathed the glistening red mass in an aura of crimson and gold. It was as though the rock was bathed in blood. A momentary feeling of dread flooded his body. He glimpsed a movement near a rubbish container close to his vehicle. As the gloom cleared he saw two mature dingoes that were looking, almost plaintively, straight into his eyes. It was as though they were trying to talk to him. Would they warn him of an impending doom, or would they settle for food scraps?

Adam’s eyes scanned the rock, the surrounding desert and the scant foliage pockets here and there. He remembered his visit here some ten years before, in the aftermath of some tremendous rains. He remembered how, from a sandy void, life had burst forth, and desert blooms sprang up everywhere. He had realised that even in the death of desert there could be the rebirth of life.

It was then that Adam had his vision – a vision in which he became acutely aware that even from nothing comes life. And if that is so, then the leap from limited intelligence to high intelligence is much less of a leap than from nothing, from the void to the blue, from the desert to green.

His vision would follow him for that short period that would be the rest of his life.

In the Place of Angels

Arriving back in Los Angeles, Teforp wrote into his notebook, with all the thrill and danger of descending into an active volcano. But with no redemption, he thought to himself.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for travelling Qantas to LA. We would remind you that you need to pick up your baggage from terminal number 23, carousel number 4. We would also advise you to use extreme care when waiting for hotel shuttle buses and other pickups as there has been a spate of drive-by murders this week. Thirteen tourists have been killed. We hope you enjoy your stay in Los Angeles and look forward to you flying with us again.

The emotionless drawl was delivered with robotic efficiency by one of the female cabin crew. Adam thought her black lipstick, accentuating prematurely grey and short spiky hair, did nothing to soften the message.

More examples of mass over-population, he mused.

****

The drive to Beverly Hills was completely uneventful. The persistent scream of police and ambulance sirens was almost familiar now, after living in Los Angeles for ten years. Only the staccato of gun shots ever managed to unnerve him.

The clinic he had founded was his home away from home. His philanthropy had enabled this edifice to be created and bore his name, discreetly etched, even tastefully he thought, into a portico that gave the entrance a classic feel. The Teforp Institute of Trauma Rehabilitation, was all the inscription said. No dates. No hyperbole.

Adam had no medical qualifications but was aware that many people, worldwide, believed he had a remarkably fertile brain. Since the amassing of huge wealth through his various ventures he had dedicated himself to the reconstruction of intellectual ability in those who had been severely damaged in accidents. Adam was also reconstructing intelligence in those who, through no fault of their own, had been created congenitally devoid.

Even as he stepped from his Mercedes convertible, walking swiftly through the foyer and nodding back his appreciation to the staff who greeted him with obvious admiration, the doors behind were flung open and a convoy of barouches hurtled down the passageway past him. There was groaning and screaming; soft words and then the hysterical.

A young intern was snapping tersely, Three gun shot wounds, two to the chest, one to the forehead. In the vernacular, John, the young intern said to his assistant, part of his lungs and brain have been blown away. We can probably reconstitute him as a vegetable.

Adam kept walking and turned left into a short corridor that led immediately to his office. He opened the door and threw himself down, quite exhausted, on the leather settee. Here he could enjoy a quiet view of the valley below. A brief respite from the insanity around him.

For two years now his dedicated group of young medical students and researchers had worked furiously, combining their skills of biology, nanotechnology, computer science and all the related areas that would meld the natural with the unnatural. That was the essence of the biological mixed with the cybernetic.

His biggest breakthroughs, his biggest successes, his greatest achievements had been in the area of reconstructing thought processes and intellectual ability combined with the ability to verbalise. Through his team, he had demonstrated time and time again that those considered comatose only three or four years ago were now able at least to articulate their thoughts, albeit in a metallic way. No longer did they have to suffer the lingering half life of an active mind entombed inside a body that could not even communicate with the outside world. His most recent invention, brought about by the micro-miniaturisation of computer components, had been able to simulate speech activated by the very thought processes of those who only years ago would have lain ostensibly brain-dead for the rest of their lives. Now at least some could communicate their living nightmare to the outside world, so they could clearly instruct their loved ones to terminate their miserable existence. In other cases the very act of verbalisation, without bodily movement, was enough to inspire creative minds to continue productive thinking and articulation for the remainder of those lives [Chronicles of the Greenwars].

A knock on the door shattered Adam’s reverie.

Mr Teforp, an almost juvenile voice called out, Mr Teforp, I need to talk to you.

Adam opened the door and let in the exuberant twenty-three year old Natasha. She had worked relentlessly reconstructing a voice box and reconnecting severed parts of the brain of a

patient who had been mugged viciously with a baseball bat on the front lawn of his own home. This was her special project.

Mr Teforp we’ve done it! He’s begun speaking! Slowly, very slowly. But at least he is speaking and communicating. We’re using the latest model of the voice activator. There’s only one problem.

Adam repressed, for the sake of professionalism, his elation at the news of the voice transmission. What’s the downside? he asked neutrally.

He wants to terminate. He keeps repeating that there are too many people on the planet and he is just a liability.

"Little does he know that he is contributing so much to

science. Tell him the protocol before we can induce him." Adam delivered the instruction in a monotone that he had cultivated over the years.

Sometimes he wondered why he worried so much about the professional approach. Even in his mid-fifties he surely could experience elation and vocalise it. What did he have to prove?

It seems such a waste, Natasha. But nevertheless it is his right. Can we recycle the voice activator and synthesizers?

We can’t with the brain connectors, they’re one-offs and were made just for him.

Recycle anything you can. Document and replicate anything that works, immediately. I have to go down to Ward G to look at that hydrocephalic, his brain has just imploded. He’s never had a speech facility at all and I’m determined to get this one activated. His intelligence has been ravaged to that of the most severely handicapped. Such a shame, but it’s a real challenge. We’ll accelerate his intelligence and get verbalisation.

Natasha left and Adam headed off to Ward G. He already knew the experiment was a success. They had succeeded in three primary areas that could not yet be released to the world. They had created voiceability when none had existed before. They had accelerated intelligence, not just restored it, through some rather intricate rewiring. And through nanotechnology they had been able to do some fine-tuning of his motor movement that made him look now like an Olympian rather than the physically impaired catastrophe that he’d been several weeks ago.

The Cabal

The notion of Adam Teforp going to Las Vegas, ostensibly to gamble, would be ridiculous to anyone who really knew him. Adam wondered why on earth he was going through the

facade. Flying from Los Angeles to Las Vegas was more of an irritant than an experience. Generally it was more bothersome getting to the airport and onto the plane than it would be to get on the freeway and just drive there. However, the airport at the Vegas end was quite reasonable and it was very close, in fact almost in the city. The rest of the cadre had flown on separate planes and were all to meet at one of the larger suites at Caesar’s Palace.

Adam knew that he had a worldwide reputation for philanthropy, creative problem solving and, genuinely he believed, a real humanitarian touch.

But even a saint, he thought, has foibles. If this particular plot was ever unravelled and he was associated with it, he would lose everything apart from his wealth. Certainly his credibility would go; the philanthropy wouldn’t be believed and the humanitarian touch would be reperceived as something far darker.

But even a saint can sometimes have a secret, even unsaintly mission. And the goals of that mission might not always be transparent to the world at large.

He tapped gently on the ornate door of the casino’s presidential suite. Teforp, he muttered.

Come in, Adam, came the expansive bellow from within.

Adam walked into the palatial setting and noticed the dining room table for twelve had been set up as a board table and only one place remained vacant. He sat down and wondered how long the group had been in session. He had arrived at the appointed time.

At the head of the table sat Giorgio, the wealthiest patron by far and the one with the most tenuous of connections in both the legitimate and illegitimate world. His role was simple: to chair, cajole, top-up finance when necessary and distribute. Adam, he beamed. Giorgio’s white hair was slightly ruffled. His face was clean-shaven. He had emerald eyes, probably the result of a fabrication or accentuation through contact lenses. His deep tan reflected a life of poolside negotiation and his open-neck crisp white shirt reflected an insouciance that only the super-confident can afford.

Talking in terms of a world population of five to six billion is meaningless. There is probably twice that number of people on the planet, who in hell knows the real figure? All we know is that there are far too many people competing for far too few resources and no amount of lily-livered pontificating by the Republicans and the Democrats especially is going to do anything about it. No unilateral or multilateral decision making by any government will make it in time.

Giorgio continued. There are a lot of people out there who don’t particularly like me. But I like my planet. I like my family. And there are many environments I positively enjoy—Los Angeles, New York, Bangkok and others excepted. God knows what the real statistics are: a murder a minute, a murder a second, ten rapes a second. Fifty muggings a minute. Who the hell knows? All I know and all you know is it’s no way to exist. Adam.

Giorgio directed his attention along the entire length of the table and gazed at him. Adam, you know. You’ve read about the experiments. Like that cochamaimey psychologist who simulated over-population with rat colonies. Rape, murder, mayhem, what kind of existence is this?

He paused. William, an eminent biochemist who worked for one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, added his piece. Many of us believed that natural calamity would curb the population, but it just hasn’t happened. We have to precipitate it. And we now have the means.

Henry, the president of a vast organisation that turned over billions of dollars a year in a chain of pathology laboratories, chimed in. You know, we were actively working on a way of controlling AIDS, if not curing it and all the associated complications. But we decided to disband the research because we believed this scourge was nature’s way of telling us that enough is enough. Yet, like feral cats, we seem to be breeding an immunity to this as well.

Franko, a professor of genetic engineering, contributed with a finality in his voice that made the group freeze with excitement. "As an aftermath of all the biological weapons we’ve developed over fifty years we