Silence

“I would say that I only want silence.  Is that so bad, Mark?”

“I can understand that, but you have destroyed most of the world just to get it."

“That’s because the world refuses to give it to me.  I feel completely justified,” the voice said.

“And I guess that makes it okay?  You do it because you feel justified, but all these other beings and planets have to suffer.”

“They don’t.  All they need to do is shut up.  Live in harmony and peace.   Make the sound of the universe be music instead of bombshells and hatred.  That’s their choice, isn’t it?”

“I’m not sure that it is.”

“Come on Mark.  Stop making excuses.  Are you telling me that they are not capable of living in peace and harmony?  Maybe they should be wiped out if they are incapable of doing that.  They're a danger to the universe.  That makes them an infestation.  Do you blame me for killing an infestation?”

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

“No.  You wouldn’t.  I guess I have to come there and show you what it means to be human.  I’m not even human, but I can do it better than you people.”

“Right now you’re just a voice in my head. It's easy for you to preach morality."

“I can say the same about you.”  I just frowned.  “I’ll see you soon,” the voice said, and then there was silence.  It was complete silence for the first time in 10 years.  I began to smile.  I couldn’t believe it.  Maybe I was sane again.  

***

Doo Ste Mahn Is Here

Chapter 1

Many years had passed since I had been checked out of the asylum.  I still had trouble believing they had locked me up for hearing a voice and thinking it was God.  It wasn’t telling me to kill anybody or anything, just to help people.  But I guess on a world like ours wanting to help people has been considered insane for centuries.

We had trains, fast moving planes, there were even people flying back and forth to the new space stations surrounding the planet, but that didn’t really mean anything when you thought about it because the people were cold. 

They were very unfriendly.  Most were afraid of each other.  They were afraid to look at each other in passing and were all worked so hard just to eke out a living that they didn’t even have time to raise their kids.  Robots and big screens were doing that. 

The latest thing was positive social media.  It gave everything a positive spin and often supplied the young with positive affirmations…more than their parents had time for.  It would take the harshest outbursts of ignoramuses on social media and change them to something positive before it was posted.  This meant that people could just give their kid a phone and then go to work.  One babysitter per 10 children in daycare could raise all the children as they were hooked on social media and personal pads.  That was the way of the new world.  And they thought I was crazy. 

I looked out of my truck window.  I was a truck driver.  Most of the time, actually, the truck drove itself.   I was just there to keep it from going off course, if it ever did.  Sometimes I could override it and drive myself, but the owners of the truck line didn’t want that.  It would make them liable if I hit something whereas the AI could go plowing through a crowd of pedestrians if I couldn’t override it and they wouldn’t be liable at all.  I was moving fast. 

Since AI was driving now we were going at horrendous speeds on superfast highways.  We were almost going as fast and the high speed trains, only for the rich, that went around 300 mph.  I say only for the rich because no one else could afford to ride the things whereas the corporate leaders, after putting up the cost at the front, could take a write off as a business expense and be reimbursed.  So I just sat back looking out the window of my truck and waiting for my scheduled rest check.  

The trucks were programmed to stop at designated rest stops to give the driver a chance to walk around a little and socialize so that the truck could be inspected at regular intervals.  The high rate of speed we were going at carrying such heavy loads caused a lot of wear and tear.  They didn’t want us plowing into someone or losing a drive magnet or something at that speed or we would be gone, and more importantly their cargo. People were easier to replace than their cargo.  The cargo carried by trucks was very high end, expensive, and for exclusive customers.  Everything else was transported by train and local trucking.  We didn’t even know what we were carrying most of the time and I was afraid to look in the back of the thing.  It was sealed, in any event.

One trucker said he found a way to get in there and found all of these brainless bodies packed in tubes full of fluid.  He thought it was new bodies for the elite.  He didn’t say that for too long.  He soon disappeared.  It was better to stay ignorant about some things and more importantly to keep one’s mouth shut.  The crazy house had taught me that.  Most of the people there weren’t really crazy.  They had seen too much and could see through the bullshit.  When they started to see the bull shit all over the place and only paid attention to it they lost it.  If they had been placed in a better environment to detox they would have been fine, but in 2090 there was no better environment unless you wanted to live in an abandoned coal mine or something.  That was the new thing.  They called it jumping.

The young people and some of the older ones, dissatisfied with the civilization and culture, would jump out.  At one time they did it by living in vans, or by living in cars.  The gate keepers wouldn’t allow that so they found ways to stop them from being able to live in vans.  The next step was renting property way out in the desert with very little zoning laws and starting their own communities.  They created their own energy and grew their own food.  All they needed was to be able to build a well and get some solar and wind energy equipment.  That took them off the grid and out of the market, which became a problem for the monetary system.  The gate keepers eventually began to zone almost every inch of the whole country in the United States and Canada, and global warming made living in the desert almost impossible.  People eventually began to buy old coal mines and other underground structures that were safe and already zoned correctly; they didn’t have to worry about the gate keepers.  They registered the mine as a business and all of the residents as employees thus getting around the long arm of the Imperialist class.  Of course the imperialists would eventually find ways to recapture everyone who jumped.  

I thought about it myself.  I thought about a van for a while, but I knew how harsh the imperialists could be.  With my past history there was not much that I could do.  Trucking was OK.  One’s past didn’t matter as long as one was sane.  My past was one of being in an asylum from the age of 13 to 23 so I didn’t have that many options.  So here I was at 26 sitting and watching a truck drive itself, which wasn’t so bad.  There was a whole network of us so we could meet at the rest centers or communicate 24/7 on our radios or vid screens, since we really weren’t driving, but that wasn’t for me.  I liked the silence after going for about 10 years hearing voices in my head.  My mind was peaceful and quiet and I liked it that way.  

A red light flashing signaled a rest stop.  We slowed down smoothly as we pulled over onto the exit ramp. Several trucks were parked at the gate waiting for their inspections.  About two trucks ahead of me I saw a woman getting out of the passenger side of a truck and forcefully saying something to the driver.  She slammed the door and headed in my direction. She wore a very tight dress made of some type of synthetic material that came just to her mid thighs with a pair of matching high heels.  She had a large multicolored shoulder bag hanging over her shoulder.  She stopped beside my truck, tapped the passenger door and it opened.  It wasn’t supposed to do that.  I just watched as she climbed in.

She was the tallest woman I had ever seen.  A real giant with very dark hair and the blackest eyes I had ever seen.  She looked very pleasant, for some reason.  I think it was more her facial expression than her looks that made her look pleasant.  I wondered about that and said, “Can I help you, Mam?”  She smiled.  

“I need a ride.  The rest stop is closed.  They’re only doing inspections here so I won’t be able to stop here.  I was  supposed to be meeting somebody here.  I’m wondering if you can take me to the next stop.”  I noticed them hurriedly pulling the truck she had just gotten out of out of the line and to the side.  Many people were rushing to it.  

“Weren’t you just in that truck?”  I asked.  

“Why yes.  I’m surprised you noticed.”

“You are a giant woman.  How could I not notice?”

“Well I’m surprised that you mentioned it.”  She reached into a large shoulder bag with one hand and gripped something inside of it without letting me see it.  “Are you going my way or his?”

“To the next stop, yes, but are you safe?”

“As safe as you want me to be.” Crooked smile.

“Are you a hooker or something who didn’t get paid?”

“You should be so lucky, Sir.  I’m just a damsel in distress.”  We moved up to the inspection gate.  All it took was an AI scan.  We were safe.  The truck headed back onto the speedway with no explanation of why they had closed down the rest area.  The bastards.  I looked at that giant woman again.  What was she up to?  Why did she look like that?

She settled back into the seat.  “I found the one I was looking for,” she simply said.  I arched my brows.  “I was looking for you, Dummy.  I told you that I would come and find you, Mark.”  What was she talking about?

“Four years ago I told you I’d come.  It took a long time to get here, but here I am.”

“You’re trying to lead me back to the crazy house.”

“You never left it.  You only graduated to a bigger crazy house.”

“How do you know me?”

“From the Asylum.”

“Did you work there?  I think I would have remembered someone like you.  You are kind of…you know, overwhelming.”

“I don’t know.”

“You have to know.  You can’t look like that and not know?”  She shook her head.  

“I’m the voice in your head.  Don’t you recognize that, Dummy?”  I frowned. She did have an attitude as bad as that voice.  This was really crazy though.  Was she saying she was God or something?

“Yes, it is really crazy,” She said as if she had heard me. “You just remember.  I am Doo-Ste Mahn.  Can you remember that?”  I nodded. She sounded like one of my comrades in the asylum, but it seemed like the crazy thing could just about read my mind.   The truck moved back to the speedway and slowly picked up speed.  Four more hours to the next stop.  I just wondered how crazy she was.  Would I make it? She looked kind of tough.  She might have been able to bust me up.  A light on the dash flashed.  The next stop was closed down due to an emergency with no explanation.  The next one would be almost 10 hours away. I looked at her.  How could I spend 10 hours with this woman?   She smiled.  “Just like the good old days,” she said, laughing to herself.  

***

We kept moving.  Luckily the truck could drive itself.  We had a large cab which had a sitting space, a small table, refrigerator, and microwave so we at least had food.  It was a comfortable space.  You could probably ride in it for a week with no worries if you wanted to.  But this strange woman, Doo-Ste Mahn, made me nervous.   The things she was saying were impossible, yet I felt as though I knew her well.

We made our way out of the urban sprawl and up into rural Canada on the way to Alaska.  It was said that Canada had previously been like the United States.  Now it was more rural.  We had finally discovered that the major problems in the world came not from lack of money, but from civilization itself.  It was a bastardization of life that took pain, suffering, and blight wherever it went.  We called it the Abomination of Desolation.  Little had previous generations who had started to see the problem known just how right they were. They tried to jump, but couldn't. 

Chapter 2

After about 4 hours I began to nod off.  I didn’t like to do that while moving, but the rest stops were all closed and the truck was so big that there were no places to really pull over.  Doo-Ste just sat looking out the window most of the time, or surprisingly, crocheting.  That was a surprise to me.  I tried to stay awake, but kept nodding.

The truck moved slowly along a four lane highway with a grassy berm in the middle and a thick forest running along the edge.  It was a beautiful sight because there were very few houses and mostly trees.  Canada had begun to plant more trees to help deal with the climate change that had been happening for years.  Most of the businesses had shrunk when they decided to do the unthinkable…use their natural resources and talents for themselves instead of exporting them out to the rest of the world for money.

Soon after they decided to do that the quality of life took a great leap.  Instead of being trade partners with and locked into the economies of the Neo Feudal Colonial nations, they had begun to work together with the ones who had a vision of creating one world.  There was a vision of a world where nations would work together to enhance the life of the whole planet instead of one country, or one group or race.  It took a long time for the idea to catch on, but it finally did as every philosophy, religion, and education system was examined for racial and class biases. History was examined.  The truth was published highlighting the atrocities of the dominant culture and most importantly how they were continuing in the name of doing something good.  In the name of fighting the type of evil that was being created by the dominator society, they were maintaining and creating the need for a violent dominator society.

It had all been a scam.  The same people creating the terror, pain and suffering, were selling the cures for the pain and suffering.  With the new technology that was developed this was coming to light.  Anyone with a computer or phone could tap into the internet and find the real history.  The experts who had been silenced finally had a free platform for making their voices heard.  The oppressors couldn’t stand it.  They tried to end it, but it was too late.  The box had been opened and the thing that they feared more than anything, the truth, had been let out.

As I faded in and out of sleep I began to let go and be inundated with a feeling of relief.  I was a truck driver, and the job, just sitting there, gave me the chance to separate myself from the larger world, if I wanted, and to be alone.  I could go from place to place, look at the beauty of the scenery, interact with people when I wanted, and be left alone.

It was as if I was in the world, but not part of the madness.  I think that was something everyone wanted.  The amazing thing for me was that I felt so relaxed driving with a crazy woman who  might do just about anything to me when I closed my eyes.  I looked at her.  How did she get so big?  Why did I feel so comfortable?  Could she actually be the embodiment of the voice that had been speaking to me all that time?  She looked up at me and simply said, “Yes,” and then went back to crocheting.  I closed my eyes as tightly as I could as we continued to move on.  

The sun was setting.  It was getting cooler as we moved farther up north.  The truck heater kicked itself on automatically as the inside light brightened just a little bit.  I knew this would be a good day even with the crazy woman there.  Was she crazy or was I crazy again?  Maybe she wasn’t even real.

I was overwhelmed by the beauty outside my window as we moved through ancient forests, small towns, and settlements.  That's what I liked about truck driving–the feeling of freedom and of being alone.  But I really wasn't alone.  I was with this Doo-Ste Mahn woman.  I looked at her again.  She looked up at me from her crocheting and smiled.

“What?” She asked.  “Are you starting to remember me?”

“Maybe,” I responded with a grin.  She nodded.

“You grew up well,” she simply said.  “I’m glad our interactions didn't drive you mad.  That wasn’t our intention.  I promise you.  You are a part of us though.  You had to remember.  This world did everything to make you doubt yourself to the point where I had to do this.”  She passed her hand down the front of her body.  “But here we are again, in the quietness.”

“Quietness?  What do you mean by quietness?”

“No worries, no fear, no anxiety, resting in the understanding that this world provides everything you really need in abundance.  That is the natural state of the human being.  But that has changed since the liars and thieves captured this world and created an artificial reality reinforced by greed, anger, ignorance, and violence.  They are your false gods.”

“How can you tell a false one from a real one?”

“By what they are reported to have done or said.  If it isn't based on loving kindness it isn't from a god, it is from a pretender.”  

I was really thrown.   What was she saying?

“You know what I'm saying,” she responded.  “They are frauds.  Does an all powerful God who created everything need to recruit the worst type of people who will kill and destroy in its name?  If something needs to be destroyed it will do it itself.  How can something that spoke all of existence into being not be able to remove that which is evil by itself?”

“That's not for me to answer.  Who am I to judge God?”

“You aren't judging God.  As a finger of the real One you are judging false gods.  The real One flows like many rivers from the source branching off into many streams and wells.  If you are clear and connected you are a channel of that real God.  If not, you are separate, stagnant, and toxic.  Any being that tells you to kill and destroy and celebrates those actions is a lesser god cut off from the source and is inferior to the pure human being.  Thus the saying that the Buddhas, the awakened ones, are superior to the gods.  The false gods are foolish and vampiric.  The One is awake.”

We come to destroy the false gods through the introduction of the truth.  Your actions and habits determine what your god is and if it is the real one or a faker.  If there is no love and nurturing, there is no god.  It's just a projection of your lower drives or some demonic energy floating around in the collective conscious of this world, or your people.  That's all it is.”

“Saying something like that could get you killed.”  She just laughed.

“Death is your illusion, not mine.  The true human can't be killed, touched, or even comprehended by those who are asleep.  I’m here to destroy their gods and I hope you’ll help me.  I've come a long way to be with you.”  I was silent.  I turned and looked out the window.  The forest was streaking by…now snow covered forest.  This was overwhelming.

“No rush.  You can decide on your own.  I won't force you, but I'd be happy if you took this little journey with me.” She smiled warmly.  

I shook my head thinking, “I must be crazy.”

“Just a little,” she responded.