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Every Man a God
It was only a matter of time. The Parnelli Envelop was far too simple to build, and, as feared, impossible to keep secret. On January 3rd, 2093 the inevitable insanity of Internet disclosure happened. It first appeared on a small three-page website in Shanghai, posted there like the recipe for a chocolate cake. The site was shut down immediately and the webmaster was executed on the spot. However, the genie was out of the bottle, and it was totally destructive. Practically any nut with a bone to pick, and no regard for his life or that of others, could destroy the world. There was no stopping it. Lethal technology had suddenly won the race against the readiness of mankind to meet the threat. This had been predicted by Dr. Henry Ketch back in 2050. He called it the “Point of Simplicity” where the common man would be able to wield vastly destructive technology. He had said it would happen around 2150. Parnelli got there ahead of time. Martha Childers looked at the Herald front page. It was three days old. No papers had been delivered since. Services broke down rapidly as people chose to stay home. THE END IS NEAR. Who would have ever thought that a major newspaper would run a headline like that? Of course, everybody already knew the truth of it before it was printed. “Even I,” Childers thought, “could make a Parnelli Envelop in two or three hours, and create a black hole before noon.” Almost certainly some disgruntled madman was doing that very thing, the ultimate suicide bomber. Childers had the ironically humorous ingredients in her kitchen for years: white vinegar, saccharine, aspirin, liquid black shoe polish, twelve empty cat food cans, tobacco from one menthol cigarette, a small bag of candy corns, freeze-dried decaffeinated coffee, mentholated spirits, and 240 volts of direct current. The only hard part was the sequence of assembly and mixing the formula. "How in the world did Parnelli ever come up with it?" she wondered. Parnelli’s detailed explanation occupied seventy pages of finely written mathematical equations defining a freakish reaction that almost defied science. Before he could encrypt it, it was stolen. A month ago, nobody knew Parnelli’s name. Now it was a curse word. Childers went to the window of her city apartment and looked down on the death of civilization - no riots, no sirens, no gunshots, and no screams. Just empty streets. She was at that moment very proud that people, at least here, had chosen not to go crazy. Suddenly there was a bright soundless flash in the sky. “This is it!” she thought. A moment later there was another flash, then another, forming an arc of beaded light across the sky. “That’s not right, it wouldn’t look like that.” Then she was unafraid. The Parnelli Envelop would not be used. The thought of it was revolting. All reference to it would be destroyed. She knew this now. Everything was going to be fine. One week later the Z department of the Institute for Botanical Studies gathered in Conference Room B. Gordon Teller looked around. “All here? OK. I’ll begin. First, I want to thank everyone here for your Herculean effort on the Parnelli problem.” He winced, and there was a general moan from the audience. “It is proof of our success is that the very mention of the name causes discomfort, and speaking for myself, nausea.” “The satellite chain that we launched in 2091 equipped with Darket Alpha Modifiers worked exactly as planned, in spite of the lack of full-scale testing. It was a gamble, but as we all know, it was the only chance we had. Thank God for Paul Darket, may he rest in peace.” Strong applause followed. An assistant had tragically bungled Darket’s final prototype test and Darket caught a full blast of radiation that destroyed every synapse in his brain. At least it was instant and painless. “All of you have sacrificed relationships with your family and friends, and suffered other severe hardships in the course of these difficult months as we strove together to stop a disaster from befalling our planet. Unfortunately more hardship must follow. When I look at your faces, I think of you as soldiers who have fought in a difficult war, and for your service and dedication to our cause, you have my deepest personal gratitude. And if I may speak for the rest of the world, that will never know what you did, thank you. Thank you for saving the world.” All of the Darket Alpha Modifiers have been destroyed, and we are each submitting to low-level cerebellum formatting,” he looked at his watch “next Tuesday, is that right, Mike? Yes. After that we will resume our normal duties within Z department. Now I know that most of you have legitimate concerns about formatting, and I can only say this. Ladies and gentlemen, no one more than I would like for our efforts of the past two years to be remembered and celebrated. However, for the continued safety of the world we must not exchange the ultimate power of destruction for the ultimate power of control. In order to guarantee that all of our hard work has not been in vain, we must be formatted. I will undergo the final format, and the formatting software will then self-destruct, along with the hardware. Thank you all for this last act of courage. I will see most of you next Friday. I understand that the Blue Tulip Research Committee will be briefing us on a promising new gene synthesis technique.” As the conference room cleared Melinda Tomlinson tipped back her cup
of orange juice and swallowed the recording chip disguised as a taste
bud. It still had enough disk space left for another year of recording. “Forget,
my ass,” she thought.
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© Bill
Rockman, 2004
