Cold Monster

YEAR 2050

Nobody is interested in a perfect world. Not even in a decent one.

Not is anyone interested in the truth. And much less, justice. No one has ever been able to imagine a world in which Truth, Freedom and Justice dominate the scene. Not even the most conspicuous writers have been able to write such a utopia.

Maybe because human beings are genetically incapacitated for the truth. As was said about that distinguished president: “he never speak the truth if a lie could serve him”. And human beings are also emotionally incapacitated for justice. Just as the human body has been shaped for movement for thousands of years, human beings have been begotten for violence. Not even Paradise was alien to it. There are no human dreams foreign to violence, as there are no human dreams indifferent to Desire.

Great thinkers thought they could see a good side in mankind. And what’s happened when they tried to put such theories into practice? Tyranny and devastation.

I, too, was one of those stupid fools. One of those who swore to defend freedom and justice. And where am I today? I’ll tell you, if you would follow me… But I don’t think you’ll enjoy the ride. You can stop whenever you want, and go back to your routine of not seeing, not hearing, not thinking. To that servitude drive even more powerful than that of death. To that drive embedded in each and every single one of you. Freedom, Justice, in your mouths, are nothing more than a fantasy, an obscene perversion of language, a perversion that the reality creators instil in you so that they can move you like the puppets you are.

Life is war, but you chose to ignore it. You refuse to see it, but remember what the murderer said: human beings are born, people are created. You are a creation, just as wax figures. True, you do move, desire and have a supposed life of your own, but your conscience belong to us. And as soon as some of you rebel, we appeal to the fascist that live inside you and everything comes back to normal. Back to that common nature of servile men and women. We make you victims and then you come back to the fold as a sheep, entertained as Lyrians were by Ciro. My bosses will say at death, as Frederick the Great said: “I’m tired of reigning over slaves.”

We can only rule over you from evil. Good was invented so that Evil could rule. In the same way that victims were invented so that executioners could play with them. There have been many morons who wanted to destroy the world to create a perfect one. We feed them for entertainment, but the world will never change. In case of a new Saviour, he wouldn’t be killed, we’d free him and then we will make him disappear. And with him, his message. Fortunately, the most influential one sent you a message of servitude, according with your nature. But if history has shown anything is that God does not exit. What we can learn from history is that it is a chain of different types of slavery. My bosses are aware of that. That is why they know a good shepherd always finds cattle.

And I am his dog.

Chapter I

July 16, 2050

Paris

Two cars move silently down the narrow street. On one side, a bicycle parking. On the other, pivots that separate the narrow pavement from the paved road. A brasserie and a tavern. Lights off.

Dawn has not yet come, but some lightness already illuminates the few figures that stroll along the pavement.

I’m waiting by a squalid, artificial tree. The image of a late drunken or a bored worker who lets time pass by.

I’m wearing a hooded sweatshirt to prevent the cameras arranged throughout the city to identify me.

Cars stop behind a loading vehicle which pretends to work. Two men get off the lorry and approach the rear. They open the double steel door and unload parcels and put them on the pavement. They come back for more parcels and a weak, polite horn sound catches their attention to free the way. But those men do not change their attitude. They don’t even look towards the cars, two horribly silent Tesla.

I open the briefcase by my lap. I put on my special headphones. Press a button. The electric cars’ engines stop immediately. All devices unlocked. I walk towards the cars. I can already see the guards putting their hands to their heads, to their ears, crazy in desperation. They fall to the ground crushed by an invisible hand. I open the door of the last Tesla.

My target looks at me without seeing me, without understanding what’s going on. His hands protecting his head from the sharp waves that pierce his brain. Said Merad. Virtually, the new France president a few days prior to elections. The polls give him an overwhelming victory in the presidential elections. He is supported by the big mass of citizens from Maghreb, Muslims and progressive left that almost no longer exists as a political party but as an influential social group. My father’s image comes to my mind as I point my gun to his head. He would have vote for him.

Moderate Muslim leader, general secretary of New France, his integration message has got Europe’s blessing. Muslims in France do no longer accounts for twenty per cent of the citizens with right to vote, but their influence is much greater than their number given the aggressiveness with which they’ve conquered their power over the recent decades.

My boss told me when she handed me the dossier with my target: “we are not concerned by an extremist , but by the moderates. They are de dangerous ones. Europeans do not accept right wing parties, but they do accept Islam which is going to devour them all.”

I shoot Said Merad and his face, thick skin, white flesh, kind air face leans towards the luxurious seat. I use a very small bullet which explodes inside his head. Six holes are opened from the inside out spitting bone, blood and brain mass.

I walk fast towards the men in the lorry. I shoot them in the head too. I press again the button on my briefcase and take my headphones off. I take a look and walk away in search of a motorcycle that I left parked a hundred meters away.

A moment later, I’m a faceless biker who enter a garage.

I am a dog.

A sheepdog that kills wolves stalking the herd.

And hour later, I turn on the news after a shower in the room of my luxury hotel. The police have found a burned van containing the motorcycle the killer is supposed to have fled with, but not before executing the other members of the gang who had participated in the assassination too.

Political reactions arrive soon enough. The President of the French Republic, Jean Bonheuer, suspends the elections. Immediately Muslim groups accuse him of giving a coup d’etat and of wanting to manipulate the foreseeable outcome of the elections and call him racist and anti-Muslim.

Muslim neighbourhoods are then filled with crowds that shriek, howl and cry out for revenge. The police get ready to withstand them as during the terrible riots of the thirty-seven. Terror spreads everywhere. The president threatens to take the army to the streets. Two hours after the attack a police officer is stabbed in a corner in Saint Dennis. His partner barely escapes shooting for his life.

The President, frightened, appeals for calm and promises to convene a National Security Council and rethink his decision to suspend the elections. Merad’s assassination has shocked Europe as a whole. Its echoes multiply: in Padua, Urbino and Matera there have already been riots and the dead are counted by dozens. As in Cologne, Hamburg and Munich. An enraged crowd has taken non-Muslim neighbourhoods in Catalonia’s Barcelona and also in Alicante, Elche and Lorca, where the riots have burnt down the Church of Carmen. A revolt has erupted in the Stteting refugee camp, which the Polish police have harshly repressed. The corpses are still being counted. The army stationed at the Muslim refugee camps of Timisoara and Szeged has secured and besieged them.

Merad’s opponent in the elections, Edith Leduc, of the Republican Party, has asked President Bonheuer to stand firm in the defence of order and legality, whatever the cost, and suspend the elections, which cannot be held in a pre-civil war environment.

The President of the European Union, Heide Schell, makes an appeal for calm, ensures her heart is with France and begs President Bonheuer to reconsider his decision on election suspension.

As for the leader of the Party for European Peoples, PEP, Carlo Parisi also called Little Lenin, he has set his horizon in the European elections, to be held in the coming months. To that purpose, he’s promised the Muslim and progressive masses a policy of appeasement and integration denied by the reactionary right parties. His opponent, the leader of the European People’s Party, Chantal Lassarre, responds that such words only seek to further divide Europeans and asks all Member State Governments to maintain order and President Bonheuer to suspend elections, since they can not be celebrated in a warlike environment.

I feel a vivid emotion seeing the images of the riots.

Europe might wake up.

July 20

Havana

Sheraton Hotel. Seven stars. Beautiful view of Havana’s skyline from the suite’s private terrace.

Do you see that? Superb. Magnificent. Unimaginable only thirty years ago.

She says while pointing with her arm the beautiful night view of the bright coastline.

This is the fruit of freedom – she adds, thoughtful, satisfied.
Yes, Ma’am – I answer convinced, swelling my chest with saline air.

I breath-in with the complacency of a work well done. I remain convinced that our struggle is fair, that we are moving in the right direction and that any deviation, any weakness, will represent the end of a world that can still be more beautiful, more human than ever.

She invites me to sit down with a gesture. Table is set for two. Prior to our meeting, the room has been searched for possible interferences. Every precaution must be taken. No one is supposed to know of our existence, of our work, but our endless fight forces us to be vigilant and apply all security measures at our disposal.

Her faithful bodyguard/assistant discretely approaches and serves the lobster. She calls him Rick. I don’t know anything more about him, despite him having been sent to assist me in several occasions for particular difficult jobs.

Thank you, Rick – I say when he pours me a glass of a very chilled white wine.

The glass sweats when I lift it. We make a toast.

To a job well done – she proposes.
Thank you, Madam.

She looks me in the eye. There has always existed between us an erotic tension I refuse to think about. Despite those deep looks that seem to mean much more than the ever contained words, there is a line she’s never trespassed.

You’ve done a terrific job in Paris.

Her skin is of a chocolate colour that intoxicates me. Her body is sculpted in detail, just like a Greek statue. Her face compasses the perfect definition of ultimate beauty to which a world of mixed races, civilised and deeply human may aspire. Keira Magnusson is a clear example of a XXI century woman in free spheres: she has come to power on her own merit, far from pernicious European gender quotas, overcoming male competition. She is cultivated, firm, courageous, fighter, and uses all means of modern science and medicine to look like the ideal to which anyone should aim: perfection.

She recruited me to work for UBIK and has never allowed me to meet her bosses.

The consequences have been… are painful.
I know.
We have got the elections suspended. Merad’s followers victory was certain. French elections have been suspended until after the European elections, rendering the latter as key.

I remember with pain, but also with hope, the tumults throughout the continent, the corpses. Collateral damage. Inevitable consequences. I hope they don’t stop. I hope Europe will, finally, wake up and walk.

I cannot lose Europe.
We won’t, Ma’am.
Unfortunately your work is not enough – says pricking the lobster with her fork. Then she chews gently while watching my reaction.
I know I can’t deal with everything, but I’ll do my best.
You do know you are not alone.

She drinks wine from her glass and her eyes smile. I can’t figure out her age. She is older than me, no doubt. Of course I’ve read her biography. USA’s Secretary of State at forty two. Advocate of the internationally praised PEACE GROUP, based in New York, of which I am executive director for Spain and Southern Europe. But part of her biography may be as false as Peace Group itself. She holds meetings with heads of State. No other charity organisation has ever enjoyed such power, prestige or influence. Some of its humanitarian programmes count with a budget higher than most states’ GDP.

Think about what I pointed out before. Just thirty years ago this city was a pit of misery. From then, it has become the perfect example of how people can create something wonderful when enjoying property rights and freedom. The poor love property. The best support is assuring them their properties are safe. When one can, finally, be the owner even of small things, wonderful things happen. Once freedom was achieved, they turned their property and their talent into wealth. Once we defeated communism, in just thirty years, Cuba has risen to sixth place among the most prosperous countries in the world. Of course, the communist party has been outlawed.
Havana is today the richest city in America.
It was our main project. Our Crown jewel. Should we be able to turn it upside down successfully in so little time, we could show the world that freedom produces better results than rich tyrannies. That was our counterproposal to Emirates cities. And we did it.
It is a small, manageable country, Madam.
You are wrong – she replies severely -. It was a country thirsty for freedom. That’s why Cubans have built this country from the graveyard it was in such a short time.
They had some help.
Help came from freedom. It could not have been otherwise.
Europe is much bigger and challenging. And Europeans do not long for freedom. They are sedated by servitude.

She doesn’t answer, but her gesture closing her eyes in pain, is enough assent. She drinks from her glass. Looks at me.

If we lose Europe, it will be the end of the World.
I know.
We must do everything we ought to do.

I nod and a long silence opens between us. Only cutlery noises for a long while.

UBIK will do everything it ought to do in order not to lose Europe – she snaps, on a decided and hard tone of someone who admit no reluctance-. Even if we need to apply the Distopyc programme.

Her look is hard and tender at the same time. Piercing and direct, but also understanding of the pain talking about it causes me.

You should not regret exposing the truth in your report, as hard as it may be.
I do not regret it – I lie.

I immediately think of the consequences of what the beast said: kill one person, you are a murderer; kill millions, a liberator. If you kill one person, you go to jail. If you kill many, you get a medal.

You are a good man, John Smith – she smiles.
I am nobody, Ma’am.

Rick returns with such stealth that I’m surprised to see him by my side. He clears the table and comes back with coffee.

In a few days you’ll be Martín Da Ponte again, Spanish of Italian origin. Peace Group man in Europe.
Of course, Ma’am.
Stay close to Parisi.
At your service, Ma’am.