“I Am Your Creator, Dude!”: Chapter VIII

Robin Maxwell, a historian, screenwriter and bestselling novelist, is writing a novella for grahamhancock.com that we will be releasing as a serial publication — chapter by chapter — periodically.

With tongue firmly in cheek, her story peels back the veil of existence and looks behind the scenes of our current tumultuous times and the strange, precious multiverse we inhabit. At the center of it all, Ed and Helen are cosmic coders who discover that Ed’s Earth Simulation has gone completely out of control. But there is worse brewing. Much, much worse…

Below is Chapter 8 of I Am Your Creator Dude.

Enjoy, and stay tuned for more chapters to come. Read:

• “I Am Your Creator, Dude!”: Chapter I
• “I Am Your Creator, Dude!”: Chapter II
• “I Am Your Creator, Dude!”: Chapter III
• “I Am Your Creator, Dude!”: Chapter IV
• “I Am Your Creator, Dude!”: Chapter V
• “I Am Your Creator, Dude!”: Chapter VI
• “I Am Your Creator, Dude!”: Chapter VII
• “I Am Your Creator, Dude!”: Chapter VIII
• “I Am Your Creator, Dude!”: Chapter IX
• “I Am Your Creator, Dude!”: Chapter X
• “I Am Your Creator, Dude!”: CODA (the last chapter)

“I just read your brilliant ‘I Am Your Creator, Dude!’ Your story is great! Funny, clever, thought-provoking and entertaining.” – Graham Hancock

 

Chapter 8

Helen caught up to Ed inside the main hall of the 32^nd International Arms Fair. She was still bristling.

“Don’t act surprised,” he said. “You know all about wars. How do you think they, like, happen?” He knew he was being a douche when he added a pantomime of something going “poof” in front of his chest. He steered a course across the Supermarket of Death, a vast space crammed with things that went boom! The walkways were jammed with metal-bedecked First World generals, Black Ops CEOS, Afghanis, Ukrainians, Red Army and various terrorist and insurgent leaders perusing artillery shells and killer drones, Kalashnikovs, rockets, AbramsX camouflaged tanks twirling their turrets, and a Javelin anti-tank weapons system. Strains of Tom Lehrer’s “We Will All Go Together When We Go” were being piped through the cavernous ballroom.

No more ashes, no more sackcloth,
And an arm band made of black cloth
Will some day nevermore adorn a sleeve.
For if the bomb that drops on you
Gets your friends and neighbors too,
There’ll be nobody left behind to grieve.

The centrally located drone exhibition was jumping. A neon sign above it alternately flashed “Future Born” and “Mission Ready.” Buyers wearing their Apple Vision Pro headsets were twitching, certainly being virtually buffeted by what Ed knew were action demos of the large model MQ-9 Reaper Drones armed with Hellfire missiles, while a swarm of bee-sized camera-equipped Black Hornet Nanos buzzed around the crowd snapping pictures. Cal Tech’s little “Leonardo,” a hybrid of a bipedal robot and a flying drone, zoomed between onlookers on a skateboard.

Just next to them was a pulpit where Joel Osteen called out the not-so-Good-News to a spellbound audience of believers. “The LORD is a jealous and vengeful God, vengeful and strong in wrath,” he shouted to people, some with their arms raised in hallelujah. “The LORD is vengeful against his foes. He rages against his enemies. He can blast the sea and make it dry up. The mountains quake because of him. The hills melt away. The earth heaves before him — the world and all who dwell in it. His wrath pours out like fire. The rocks are shattered. Who can confront the heat of his fury? ‘Vengeance is mine!’ he tells us. ‘I will repay!’”

Helen stood watching the preacher with her arms crossed over her chest, disgusted.

“Don’t say it,” Ed warned.

“Of all the hairbrained ideas.…”

“Well, pardon me! Sapiens could just never wrap their brains around the fear of dying. Or the unknown. So they made shit up to explain it.” Ed smiled. “Very sweet, those Neanderthals burying their dead with wildflowers. I thought some of their gods were pretty damn clever. A bit later Ishtar, Goddess of Love and…” he swept his arm around the room as if making a point, “…War. You gotta admit, the Greeks really nailed religion. Their ‘Pantheon?’ Genius. This iteration, though…” Ed jutted his chin towards the pulpit where the evangelist was starting to foam at the mouth. “Not so much.”

Lehrer’s jaunty voice echoed out around the hall.

We will all go together when we go.
All suffused with an incandescent glow.
No one will have the endurance
To collect on his insurance,
Lloyd’s of London will be loaded when they go.

“I look around this room,” Helen said, shaking her head, “and realize how deeply disturbed you are.”

“Only a little part of me,” Ed demurred.

“Not so little. Your game has never been without a war in its entire history.”

“True,” he said, chagrinned. “From the time of towns. The hunter-gatherers before them had gotten by without too much bloodshed. I gave them equality of the sexes. And good drugs. But humans just couldn’t live in peace in groups of more than a hundred. So yeah, always some warring going on.”

The stink-eye again.

“Helen, this is a game. What fun is a game without conflict? Boring,” he said, answering his own question, as she certainly wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of agreeing. “Very boring. Peace is lovely. Of course it is, but naked women sitting around a fire making baskets? Fishing in the same spot on a river every day of your life?”

“Nothing wrong with that life,” she shot back. “But you couldn’t help yourself. You added conflict to that, too. Piranhas. Poison snakes. And don’t you dare bring up your mother’s brain.”

“How can I not? Greed, jealousy, lust, rage. They’re hardwired into the species that I, yes, I coded into the simulation. But what glorious civilizations! The cities. The languages. The weapons…”

“There it is! You have a perverse mind, Ed. Admit it.”

“Fine. I admit it. I love a little bloodshed.”

“Blood and copious guts,” she insisted.

“Yeah, okay. I’ve always had a soft spot for an elegant sword, a phosphorescent firebomb.”

“If you could have changed it before it came to…” she jutted her chin inside the ballroom “…this, you wouldn’t have changed it one bit, would you?”

“You gotta admit it makes for a pretty exhilarating game. Don’t look at me like that.”Ed felt himself shrinking under her gaze, but he wasn’t about to give up the fight just yet. “There’s more to it than conflict. Would you believe me if I said I wanted my sims to learn, to grow? To have some purpose?”

“Sure. Good job, Honey. They dove headfirst into every possible oblivion and chaos every single chance they got. Ever hear of ‘balance,’ Ed? Allowing these evolutionary brats unbridled freedom was…” She was lost for words.

“Irresponsible? Ill-judged?” he offered, then kept searching for another synonym. “Out to lunch?”

“Will you stop with your favorite words!!”

“Sorry.”

“Okay. So my boyfriend…”

“Your fiancé.”

“A self-styled ‘Creator…’”

“I am that. And I’m not ashamed.”

“…is one who created a monster that’s going to devour not only his little game but the entire fucking Multi-Verse. I don’t get to be even a teensy bit pissed off?”

“Well, if we stand here arguing, time will run out and the Big Suck….”

“Fine.” Without another word, Helen plunged into the hubbub of exhibitors at the oxymoronic Arms Fair.

Oh we will all fry together when we fry.
We’ll be French fried potatoes by and by.
There will be no more misery
When the world is our rotisserie,
Yes, we will all fry together when we fry.

Ed watched Helen with an odd sense of exhilaration and regret. If things weren’t threatening to bollox up so spectacularly, he would have enjoyed the scene a lot more. Military muzak blared, driving the timbre of Russian, Chinese, English, Hebrew, Arabic, and Hindi voices even higher. By the overwhelming scent of testosterone and the looks of barely disguised gun-lust, he imagined every man in the hall had a giant hard-on. Now was not the time to tell Helen that he’d programmed the males of the species that way.

The moment he caught up with her, a crescendo of electronic barking accompanied a pack of clattering robotic dogs racing towards them inside a track that enclosed a full quadrant of the ballroom. Each wore a big white number tied to its titanium back. None had heads – just a torso with articulated miracles of technology for legs. White-robed Saudis with their checkered head-dressed-heads leaning in to converse with each other were placing bets on the race. Boston Dynamic’s yellow model called “Spot” was in the lead, the heavier “Big Dog” and Ghost Robotics “Quadraped” – with a custom gun on its back – falling behind. A lightweight Xiaomi “Cyberdog” was knocked high in the air and landed with a crash at Ed and Helen’s feet, only to right itself and leap over the track railing back into the fray.

“Hang onto me,” Ed said, feeling suddenly protective.

He was surprised when she complied.

A couple of young guys in natty suits took selfies next to the Davy Crockett recoilless smoothbore launcher with its nuclear warhead loaded on a Jeep. Serious women in serious hajibs were singing the praises of mid-sized shells displayed on the wall bathed in sexy lighting.

Across the aisle, an ecstatic weapons executive in a suit demonstrated his latest model missile launcher, calling fervently to the crowd. “I’m tellin’ you right now this baby’ll take down a low-flying helicopter, punch through 7 feet of concrete or 35 inches of steel plate – booyah!”

Whoops of masculine pride rang out as Tom Cruise and his Top Gun students dominated a giant movie screen on the wall.

And we will all bake together when we bake.
There’ll be nobody present at the wake.
With complete participation
In that grand incineration,
Nearly three billion hunks of well-done steak.

On the next screen over the U.S. Space Force enlistment exhibit with its sign lauding missions and operations in “the rapidly evolving space domain” was promising new recruits as much as $1,917.60 a month for pay, a clothing allowance, and two-hundred and fifty whole dollars for his family if he deployed where they couldn’t follow. Into space, Ed thought. There were bonuses for “hazardous or arduous duty.” In space. The American government was being kind of chintzy, he realized. If he got out of this alive he was going to have to rewrite the payment code for these “Space Force Guardians.” Two hundred and fifty dollars…

Under the Raytheon Technology canopy, the company’s CEO – cosplaying a cowboy auctioneer in a blue shirt, blue leather boots and a white leather Stetson – shouted out to the salivating crowd waving their paddles to bid on the red-with-white-tipped whopper of a near 20-foot-long missile, with a live map behind, showing its reach. A sheen of sweat on the CEO’s upper lip and forehead gave his excitement away as he chanted into the mic at a hundred miles an hour, “Now for this good-lookin’ Full Patriot Battery I say I hear 800 million dollars yessir I now hear 800 million for this Patriot, this Patriot a sleek two thousand pounder and PRO-pelled by a solid-fueled rocket motor, do I hear 8 point 5? 8 point 5? I like it General Li, and so should you, you’ll decimate your enemy, do I hear 900 million, nine hundred I HEAR 900 million dollars! Yessiree, you get the launching station free, FREE but we have a ways to go to a billion cause that’s what this killer’s worth, come on folks don’t stop and think, we left common sense behind a long time ago… do I hear 900 million right here… don’t let the Wagner Group outbid you sir, gimme gimme a NINE hundred million dollar bid! Now you’re talkin, Yevgeny…”

Another crowd had gathered around a gigantic mock-up of an underground nuclear missile silo, complete with two uniformed officers – “missileers” sitting side-by-side clutching their fail-safe keys and launch code binders. The tension was palpable inside the tight quarters. Artificial lighting and shockingly loud noises made the audience – if not the officers – flinch. Then an ominous siren began to sound, and the soldiers play-acted a very convincing nuclear missile launch, complete with the anxious patter of two regular guys realizing they’d just started World War III.

A clatter and clash and the earsplitting sound of AK 47s whipped Ed and Helen’s attention across the ballroom to a raised stage along one wall that had been transformed into a desert landscape complete with giant boulders and live Joshua trees throwing their spiky “arms” up to Heaven. Behind the bulletproof glass enclosing the stage, a quartet of libidinous female soldiers in desert-tan-and-brown cam shirts unbuttoned to the waist hung over the sandbag foxhole with their weapons at the ready. Also behind the glass screen was a rowdy platoon of Boston Dynamics “Atlas” super-soldier robots, Disney’s “Spiderman” and “Stuntronics” human-looking bots outfitted in camouflage fatigues were having a shoot-out between themselves. Human employees in S.W.A.T. gear kept coming at them with long knives and iron poles, trying to knock them off balance or otherwise provoke the killing machines to prove they would never ever injure their handlers.

A.I. was under control, the action announced. Completely under control.

It was comical to see that a sharp enough kick from the techie could send the robot flying flat on its face. After all, who didn’t enjoy a spectacular pratfall? And no need to worry about the “soldiers” humiliating themselves. It only made the audience roar with laughter. No matter what was thrown at them, the robots would miraculously right themselves with a clumsy brilliance, aim at their attackers, then at the last moment pivot away to shoot at a can, a watermelon head, or each other.

The companies had no need to worry about their staff.

All at once, one of the Atlas soldiers slammed into the glass with such force that it buckled outwards. The audience screeched in unison before realizing they were safe. The wall held – probably a new Boston Dynamics polymer designed for protective shields. With embarrassed laughter at the scare, onlookers walked on to the next exhibit – all except Ed and Helen, who had stayed to watch the downed soldier bot right itself. The tech who had sent it flying stood above the machine, talking down at it as it scrambled. But each time it was close to upright, the tech gave it another vicious kick so that it fell over with a graceless crash.

“Hey, I thought you were better than that, Six,” the tech said. “Come on. Stand up!”

Six was seconds away from a full upright stance when the human did a roundhouse kick and sent the soldier sprawling.

Helen looked askance at Ed. “You’re not gonna say, ‘Don’t worry, Honey. It’s only a machine,’ are you?”

“No, I am not.”

“That was, that was…”

“Horrible. Upsetting,” Ed finished for her.

“Are all your humans that shiteous?”

“Of course not.”

You will all go directly to your respective Valhallas.
Go directly, do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollahs.

“Okay, you’ve made your point,” Helen said. “The profits of war and all that, but we’re no closer to…”

“I think I see it!” Ed took her elbow and steered her towards a row of giant doors that led outside to the resort’s white sand beach. “We’re stylin’” he said. “We are stylin’!”

Helen turned back for one last look at the Arms Fair and shook her head disbelievingly. “And you wonder how one of your avatars could imagine 86-ing the Multi-Verse.”

And we will all go together when we go.
Every Hottentot and every Eskimo.
When the air becomes uranious,
We will all go simultaneous.
Yes, we all will go together
When we all go together,
Yes we all will go together when we go!

by Luke Hancock

Please visit Robin’s website:
www.RobinMaxwell-GodsOfAtlantos.com