From: The Dark Lord of the Universe
To: His loyal Minion, the Most Venerable Nicholas.
Dear Old Nick,
I realise that this letter will
not find you in an altogether happy mood, and I don’t mean it as an official
reprimand; in fact I’d like this entire sorry episode to remain between us and
go no further. I don’t want to demoralise you in any way or reduce your
enthusiasm for future projects.
However, that doesn’t mean that we
shouldn’t discuss precisely what went wrong in Operation Lazarus, and why we’re
going to have to start all over again from scratch. You realise that only if we
discuss it step by step do we have a chance to identify the problem, and understand
how to avoid them the next time around.
Let’s just go over the planning
from the beginning, step by step, then, shall we?
I’ll admit right off that I have
no memory at the moment of whether Operation Lazarus was your idea or mine; I
don’t see that it matters. The fact is that we were agreed that something had to be done about that
disgusting bipedal race of hairless apes before it laid further waste to the
fair blue planet over which it had secured dominance. I remember both of us
discussing options like provoking a nuclear war or something similar, but we
both agreed that it ran the risk of destroying completely the utterly innocent
non-hairless simian part of the planet’s biosphere. And so we had to drop that
idea, though it would have been easy to carry out.
So we talked about other options,
like introducing some kind of disease which would destroy the apes. However,
and unfortunately, at least a few per cent of these creatures would have been
certain to be immune to any disease we might try, and before you know it they’d
be screwing their minds out in an effort to repopulate the planet; and going by their record, it’s tolerably
certain they’d succeed. Besides, the germs might mutate enough to wipe out
other, and innocent, primate life. So we junked that idea.
The same went for the other bright
ideas we had, including meteor strikes, tsunamis, and random induced
psychological aberrations. All were either not complete enough, or potentially
destructive to innocent life, or both. I’ll admit to you now that I’d begun to
despair of finding a way, and had almost gone back to the nuclear war option.
It was then that you, or I, had
what I’ll still call, despite what happened, a brilliant idea: Operation Lazarus.
After all, and it was apparent right off, the risen dead are a self-replicating
weapon, and have the terrific advantage of not being amenable to destruction.
In other words, they can be revived but not rekilled, and therefore they can destroy
the simian societies from the inside out. And I’m sure you were the one who
pointed out that since all simian societies have corpses, there would be none
immune to the effects. Even those who escaped, not being immortal, would
eventually die, and become one of Them.
How we chuckled and congratulated
each other, as we visualised the contagion devastating the hives of the naked
apes, wiping them out in ever greater numbers the more countermeasures they took!
Do you remember us discussing the fact that the more of the revived dead the
apes attempted to kill, the more collateral damage they’d inflict on
themselves, and the more dead they’d create? Unlike the crippled “zombies” the
apes described in their popular entertainment, which could be dispatched by
simply damaging their craniums, our subjects, once risen, would be utterly
indestructible. Nothing could stop them, and they’d spread across countries and
continents until the last living simian was gone from the earth.
Yes, it was a brilliant plan,
Nick. I fully and absolutely admit that. It was a plan that deserved to succeed.
Of course, it proved more
difficult in the execution than in the conception. I’m sure you remember how
disappointed we both were when we discovered that it would be utterly
impossible to begin the mass revival in multiple places that we’d planned. The
energy involved in reviving even one corpse, we found, would require the
annihilation of a couple of minor suns; and though we found a couple which
would serve and whose destruction wouldn’t harm any life forms, more than that
we could not manage, given the absolute imperative of maintaining the Prime
Directive.
So, Nick, we had to settle for
reviving just one dead ape, and
relying on it to infect enough others to set off the Operation. Even so, as our
calculations showed, if our Specimen Zero (as we called it) managed to infect
just three or four of its fellow apes, and they infected a similar number each,
the effects would spread so exponentially that in a month at the utmost, barring
a closed simian society or two, it would have covered the planet. And those
societies would succumb eventually, because nothing is ever completely sealed
off.
Yes, even there, we were
completely correct. I don’t see any problem with the planning even till that
point.
Of course, the next logical
problem was to pick a Specimen Zero. Perhaps, I suggested, we should choose a
juvenile or a child, since the simians would have a natural affinity for these
immature individuals and might allow one to get in close more easily. But you
pointed out that these juveniles would be weak and slow compared to adult
simians and therefore relatively easy to avoid. Similarly, we rejected the
aged; they were too slow and doddery for our purposes.
For a while we discussed the
merits of using an ordinary ape, like a housewife or a teacher. Being innocuous,
it would be relatively easy for them to get closer to their targets. At first,
the idea looked like a good one, and you remember that we almost decided on it.
But then we ran a few tests, and found that they had a signal flaw: the kind of
ape which would remain a housewife or a teacher would also have low aggression
levels and therefore anyone it affected would contract the same low-virulence
form of the infection. In other words, the housewife or teacher wouldn’t be
ideal for the job.
It was at that point that we had
the idea of reviving a warrior.
Even now, Nick, I’ll admit that it
was a good idea. No, I’ll go further: it was a great idea, comparable to the notion of Operation Lazarus itself.
Why, a warrior would be already trained and inclined to violence; it would have
no inhibitions against dealing out devastation. And if we only picked the right
kind of warrior, the sort which was so indoctrinated to aggression that it had
no regard for its own existence, we might have the ultimate weapon we needed.
Unleash such a Specimen Zero on the world, and nothing, but nothing, could come in the way of
success.
Oh yes, Nick, I thought it was in
the bag then. I was so confident that it was in the bag that it was without a
second thought that I signed the order delegating to you the authority to carry
out the Operation itself.
And, Nick, that was my mistake; I
shouldn’t have left it to you. I did it because you begged and pleaded for the
responsibility, and because I have so many other things on my plate, but still,
I admit my error: I should not have left it to you.
Oh yes, I don’t doubt that you did
all that you were supposed to. You did blow up those two little stars quite
efficiently, and you channelled the energy to your chosen Specimen Zero
extremely well. You handled the revival exactly as you should have. I’ve got no
quarrel with you at all on that point; I couldn’t have done better myself.
No, it’s with your choice of
Specimen Zero that I disagree. It’s the single reason that Operation Lazarus
failed, despite all our planning and effort. Even there, I agree with your
contention that you picked a Specimen Zero who was a warrior indoctrinated to
aggression and uncaring of self-preservation. And you certainly did revive him, and very successfully.
Nobody’s denying you credit for any of that.
But, Nick, tell me this:
Having concentrated all your undoubted
talent and resources, all your vast intellect, on the task, couldn’t you have
found a better subject for revival than a kamikaze pilot in a wrecked plane lying
at the bottom of the sea?
Copyright B Purkayastha 2012
HAHAHAHAHAHA OH NO! That was the LAST thing I expected! Damn, Nick fucked up BAD!
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