Status: On hiatus

They Live

Chimerical — Adelaide

Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.
~Julius Robert Oppenheimer / Bhagavad Gita


—– Chimerical:Adelaide –—


I don't get it. I don't. I just don't. How is it that an upstanding citizen, a moral, productive member of society, can fall so low? I used to be really moral. I used to be one of those granola girls you see on TV. You know the ones; the ones who chain themselves to a tree because it's something like four hundred years old.

I'm not that anymore. Not even close.

What do I do now? What I do now is far worse than the animal testing I was once so against. Human testing. I'm testing biological weapons on vagrants and those low-risk cases, those prostitutes and runaways whose disappearances go unreported.

Worst part of it all? It's easier.

Yeah. It easier to give in to that little black stain that hides in the back of your mind. You know the one. The one that whispers cruel, poisonous words in hopes of forcing them out your lips. The one that chortles with disturbed delight when a video of a man punting a squirrel into the Grand Canyon goes viral. That is what I surrendered to.

It actually... Feels good sometimes. Especially when I've got a moral reasoning that I can shoulder like a shield. Not that any of the world need know about the true nature of the experiments Envirex conducts, mind you. Civilians and the press would panic were this to come to light.

The military keeps quiet about it, and in turn we get a pretty penny. It's not blood money, not if you're saving lives. How many young Americans would die if we were to go to war? Too many. If we can save even one, that's worth it.

No one should have to send off their flesh and blood to fight in something so damn bloody. No one should have to worry if they'll receive a dreaded letter with the words "Order to Report for Induction" written across the top. It's a death sentence. You go to war and even if you return alive, the person you were before is dead. In your place, a facsimile; this fake clone doesn't smile right (it never reaches the eyes) and it doesn't act the same (nights are filled with screaming and fireworks are an ordeal). War ruins all. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar, and a piss poor one at that.

Yet, we are the immoral ones when we save thousands and millions of lives from the monster that is war. The common man is far too easily swayed by emotions, irrational and narrow-minded. It's a shame.

My dad always said, "Nothing hurts science more than morality." Now I think I understand.

When this whole mess started, Elizabeth Goodman said, "We will go down in history either as the world's greatest statesmen or its worst villains" and she couldn't have been more correct.

Envirex is fast on its way to weapons that will make world war untenable, impossible, nonexistent. It's a glorious dream, one that is more and more concrete every day. If in the mean time, a few parasites were removed from the social system, isn't that even better?

So why, now, do I have #0136's hands wrapped tightly around my throat?

#0136 breathes heavily, grunting like a wild beast in heat, and uses its weight to pin me to the ground. Interspersed between the wet panting and the tears that stream down #0136's face to splash against mine are fits of deranged, broken laughter.

Man's worst enemy is himself.

As my vision starts to darken, my pulse throbbing behind my closing eyelids, my brain has time only to focus on one thought before my consciousness flickers out.

Absolution is a quixotic pursuit.