The Final Instinct

The Final Instinct


Our army was plagued by camp followers. They were rabble, but they dressed well. Fine coats, jewelry, even lace littered their bodies. They got it from the dead, which were everywhere. They might have been day-laborers, porters, technicians, or whores and thieves, but they dressed like the finest gentry. Some of them even claimed pedigrees. They adopted what they thought were high-born or educated accents that fooled most the soldiers, but I knew what they were. Sometimes I would catch the eye of one of them, and then they would falter for they all recognized me. They would seem ashamed or fearful, perhaps it was just hatred.

Sometimes when I watched them and saw their pretension, I would question myself and the cause that I had joined. Once what I was doing would have seemed inconceivable to me. To go against my father and my family would have been blasphemy not so long ago, and I suppose that in some way it still seemed that way. So like them I was just a pretender. I was a wearing a costume, a disguise, tricking those around me to get what I wanted, what I felt I needed.

When I felt like this I would set my eyes on something that was not human, something of nature. I would walk away from the camps, travel out to what was left of the countryside: some piece of forest not yet burned, a river not boiled away, some herd of antelope that had not been hunted down. I would take in the grandeur of the world and feel myself small, and think about my father and his plans, his will. I would shake the gloom from myself, feel my own strength and get back to the business of the war.

One of my father’s killing machine was on the horizon: a massive grey bulge that was busy killing yet another species. We watched through binoculars and other passive sensors that would not alert the machine to our presence. We were afraid of it. It had proven to be hard to kill, very dangerous and clever. We were glad it was busy killing birds rather than hunting for us.

The Killing Machine approached a great lake where a huge flock of birds was feeding. It belched gas and the flock died. I called in the rockets. The salvo came in low and struck the machine and it burst into flames. Even if we had fired earlier, the explosion would have killed the flock. This way was safer. The machine’s gas discharge clouded its senses, and drained its reserves. It made sense to attack after it had killed the flock. The men did not like it. Some of them gave me dirty looks; they still did not trust me entirely. Given my family, I could not blame them.

I am called the traitor, and even I use the name sometimes as a reminder, and as a caution to myself to not become to arrogant and proud. I do not want to lose war: the stakes are too high. That sounds like a cliche, and yet it is the opposite. It is the most accurate representation. In this war the stakes are too high. My father’s desire is not to conquer, not to kill, but to destroy everything, to kill the earth, to end all life and perhaps even more if the rumors are true.

It was a day’s march to the remains of the killing machine. We passed by it’s grizzly work on the way, and I must admit a certain envy. My father’s weapons were magnificent. I recognized the genius of my brother Vincent in them. He was still bent to father’s will. Perhaps it was brainwashing, perhaps he simply not care. Vincent had always been a twisted man. He loved only machines and as long as he was supplied with materials and tools he was happy.

What worried me was his brilliance. He was more than an engineer: he was a physicist, a mathematician. He understood the deep working of the universe, and if anyone could build our father a doomsday machine, it would be him. I had tried to turn Vincent to my side of the struggle, but he had laughed at me. And so in this long war I knew that I would have to kill him as well as my father. In this long war I knew that all my family would have to die, and probably by my hand. Only a prince should kill a prince or a princess or a king.

I consoled myself by saying that their ends were inevitable, that even a noble is ultimately mortal, and that my cause was greater than their lives, than any life -- even my own.

That may seem overly noble and a bit romantic, but again it is actually the clearest representation of the reality of the situation. My father was an insane, god emperor who had decided that he would be the bringer of Armageddon, that he would be Shiva, the destroyer of worlds.

I blame the philosophers who in the days when we were all at the court entertained us with lectures about the will to power, whose ultimate manifestation was destruction. I remember how taken I was with their talk: it was one of the few things my father and I ever shared. Little did I realize that it would lead to this war.

When we came to where the killing machine had exploded, we donned protective suits and left the camp followers. Martin came up to my side. He was one of the first to join, to trust me.

“There’s a lot here we can salvage,” he said.

I nodded and began to point out certain aspects of the machine that would be especially valuable, and other things that would be too deadly to tamper with. We set to work. It would be a long night, but a profitable one. There was fissionable material that could be used, a variety of metals and even whole weapon systems that could be repaired. But all of that was secondary.

“Do you see it?” Martin asked.

“No, not yet, I need to go deeper into its works.”

“That sounds dangerous.”

“Yes, but the reward is worth the risk.”

“I’ll come with you.”

No, You cant help and there is no point in risking both of us. Besides there a certain barriers that only someone of my family can pass.”

I set out

The machine was a deep dark cave, a lead womb that coated in poison and radiation. I wondered if the suit would be enough protection. It took most of a day. I had entered a city devoid of life, a vast maze that had been built by my mad brother. At the machine’s center I found it.


Martin was waiting for me as I came out. I held it up for him to see. I seemed such a little thing: a metal flower, a delicate sculpture. Each time before it had not survived, but now our plan had payed off: slowly reducing the numbers rockets, being more careful in their placement, We had finally accomplished something significant.

We both danced. We stood in our radiation suits amid the rubble and waltzed. Finally we had an advantage -- for the first time in a long long time we saw a chance for victory



“Explain it again,” Andre asked.

I sighed. He was stubborn and suspicious and he hated all nobility, and for the royal family he reserved the highest contempt. We had killed his family, his village, his entire nation I could not blame him. I wondered if he knew that I had been in charge of the war against his nation. I doubted it. He would have tried to have killed me by now.

Explain.”

“My father’s weapons are all tied to a central network.

“If this is so why can’t we jam that network

“Because it doe snot use radio waves or any form of radiation to broadcast. It is a network tied together by quantum mechanics.

I held up the metal flower

“This is a quantum hub. It can communicate with another device, its twin. The communication is instantaneous and it cannot be intercepted. This is what allows my father to control his machines so efficiently and why we cannot interfere with that control.”

Until now, Martin said smiling.

I smiled back

“Until now,” I echoed. “The devices are supposed to self-destruct, but there is a design flaw that we were able to take advantage of. It’s been a long process, but we finally have a quantum hub.”

“Because the communication is impregnable and instantaneous, there is no security protocol, It is an open channel. We can use this device to eave drop and to even send transmissions, but we have to be careful, eventually they will discover that we have this.”

“We hope that before they realize this, we can win the war ad stop my father.”

“How do we know this is not a trap like what they did at Nova Avalon?”

“Because I know our enemy,” I said. “They would never let this technology fall into enemy hands.”

“And we should trust the first-born son?”

“If my father wins this war, I have as much to lose as anyone--even more.”

“What do you mean more?” One of the other generals asked.

“He thinks he’ll get the throne if he leads us to victory,” Andre interjected.

I shrugged. Let them think what they wanted. It did not matter. In the end they agreed because they knew that if something did not change, we would all lose.

Espionage is a tricky business, and we moved forward with are, or so we thought. We were startled to learn that the enemy was preparing a withdrawal. The had been winning, but some new development at the capital was causing them to draw their forces back into holding positions. They were preparing for a siege. What this meant worried me.

Around this time I fell in love. Perhaps love is he wrong word. Perhaps I should say I grew enamored. Her name was Helen. She was a camp follower, but that meant nothing to me. I was used to court women, and she was nothing like them though at first she tried to pretended to be one, until she found out that I did not like them. Then she became herself. I had never meant anyone like that. She had stories to tell me. Adventures about her childhood in a city that was gone. Talk about relatives that had owned farm, also gone.

I told her about the capitol, which still existed.

“Does he really want to blow up he world,” she asked me one night. We were laying in my tent and it was pitch black and cold and I was holding her tight against me for warmth. I had though she was a sleep.

“Yes,” he does.

“He’s mad.”

“No. I don’t think he is. He was influenced by a someone, perhaps that man was mad. I don’t know for sure.”

“But how can he want to destroy the earth.”

“Oh, it’s more than the Earth. He wants to destroy everything. The sun, the planets, the starts if he can.”

“Could he do that?”

“Yes.”

“But why? Why do such a thing?”

“What greater act could any king commit? Do you realize how outraged he is? He conquers the world, bends everything to his will, but he knows that eventually he will die, eventually his line ends, all his monuments will rust. Nothing will last. He used to walk through the palace, bellowing in outrage about it.”

“But no one can stop that.”

“Yes, but maybe you can trump it.”

She looked confused.

“A man came to our court. Nolos was is name. He was supposed to be the wisest man in the world.”

“My father locked him in a room for three days and interrogated him, and then he took him into the garden and feed him apples and talked to him for another three days, and then he handed Nolos a gun, and the great philosopher blew his own brains out, which seemed to prove something to my father. “

“It all sounds mad,” she said. She was frightened and I held her even tighter.

“He said that Nolos had given him an answer: a way to beat the world at its own game.”

“What game?”

“The game of power. For a man like my father everything is about power and the will to power. Nolos showed him that if he ended the world, if he ended existence, then it was he that would triumph, his will would in a sense survive everything -- because his will was the final act. The only way to defeat entropy is to end the universe, and that became his goal. At first it was just the world, and that was bad enough. I did not think anything of a greater scale could be possible, but he has some clever men serving him, and he has my brother whose mind is horribly brilliant. I think they may be able to do it.”

“You must stop him. You must.”

“I know. I will. There’s no alternative. Try and rest.” In the end I gave her a strong drug so that she could sleep. I left the tent and went outside. It was still pitch black: the Milky Way was visible. I spent the rest night counting the stars and planing for the final battle.

By the end of the week, we knew that my father had developed what could only a quantum mechanical bomb. It was based on the same principle as the communication devices, but rather than synching information it synched something nonexistence.

“He has created a black hole,” Martin said, and he plans on replicating it everywhere.”

“I think I know how to stop him, but it will not be easy. Most of our men will die in diversionary tactic, and those of us who go in will not come out: it’s a suicide mission. If we succeed none of us will get out/”

Martin shrugged. “We only stopped losing when you came to us. You understand him. Only you can defeat him. It doesn’t matter how many of us die.”

I nodded. “I wish it were not so, but you are right.”

The transmissions had given us the location of the device. It was in the winter palace at the top of the world. I knew the place well, because I used to go there secretly as a young man. I knew it better than my father and I knew that there were secret ways in: dangerous ways, but not guarded, at least not by father’s forces.

We sent the armies to the North in giant planes and rockets with orders to attack and not give up and to die to the last man. We drafted the camp followers and even children and they all armed themselves and shouted yes because really what choice did they have? There was no other choice for them. The word had spread. It was Armageddon.

The night before the attack. Helen came to my tent. She knew that we would never see each other again. I knew it too.

“I will stop him,” I said.

“I know.”

“This is our last night though.”

She nodded. She knew. She was to go into one of the rockets and attack with the rest of them. She went to my bed and got carefully into it and smiled at me. That was perhaps the best moment of my life. That smile. Win or lose I will die, I thought. There is not happy ending to his. But I knew that at least tomorrow it would be over. Finally over. So that night I went to bed happy.


There was an old tunnel, build supposedly by lovers long ago that led to the palace. The winter palace was old. It had belonged to some ancient empire that had tried to control the weather. My father had always loved it, and so I had pretended to hate to infuriate him, but just like him I found it charming and seductive and so I would escape to it whenever I could, but I always made sure than my family knew nothing of my fascination.

The tunnel was infested with giant rats, androids, troglodytes and a hundred other terrors. We snuck and fought and burned our way though it, It ran over twenty mies with twisting passages and dead ends and traps. We lost over our number, and near the end we could hear atomic blast from far above surface. Some of them ours some of them my father’s. It was a good sign. The battle above was not over: it would make our job easier.

The passage opened into the palace near the laboratory. We made our way in and found many soldiers. We fought our way and came finally to the lab.

There I saw my brother Vincent: tall, slightly misshapen both physically and mentally.”

“You’ve come home to die,” he said.

“Yes,” I replied.

He threw a bomb at us, but I used a deflector field and sent it back at him. He was vaporized. Just like that so quick. I had thought it would be harder.

Then I saw him. My father.

We all stooped at the sight of him. He had about a dozen of his personal guard, but they looked superfluous. He was a terrifying sight. He was the ruler of the world, He was than man who was planning on ending it, on ending everything. He had already killed nations, a continent, even an ocean.

He was not tall, but he looked like a giant. With a wave of his arm his guard moved forward and attacked us. We met them, but I kept my eyes on him. I made my way through the melee to him. He saw me and at one piont even ordered some of his men away so that we could met.

He drew a knife. I drew one also. How insane that the fate of the universe would come down to a knife fight. He was stronger, but I was faster and I was far more desperate. He lunged at me and I sidestepped, and clenched with him and then I whispered something to him and he looked stunned but also proud, and I had my opening. My knife was in his chest and he as dead.

“The King is dead.” I screamed. “Long live the King!”

His men panicked. They went mad and we mowed them down and I ran for the lab, for the device: fearing that its timer had been activated and that he might win after all, I reached the bomb and breathed easier. The timer was not activated. Gently I lifted it up. It had a trigger: a brown metal grip. I knew it from the schematics we had intercepted.

I turned. Martin saw me. He and three men were still alive. More than I had thought.

I lifted up the device to show him, and then I set it gently down, gently gently. I was in awe of it. I pulled my blaster out and killed the other men, but Martin I spared. He was dear to me like Helen, and I wanted him to see what was going to happen. I fired the blaster at his legs and he fell.

“I am sorry Martin, but I couldn’t risk you stopping me. And while I doubt you could, it would be undignified to have to brawl with you now at the moment of my victory.”

“What are you doing? We’ve won!” He screamed

“Not quite.”

I picked up to the device and placed my hand on the trigger.

“Stop,” he yelled.

“As you said I understood my father, which was why I had to defeat him. I could not let him destroy the universe. That would be intolerable, Only I can be the final cause, Only I can be Shiva.

Martins eyes widened as I pulled the trigger.

Notes on a Fantasy Novel

The Orcish Invasion

… and King Altair sent his armies East to guard the mountain passes. Many months went by and no sign on the Orcs came, save for a few meager raiding parties that were quickly forced back. Then from the Northwest came word that the great city of Ordra was besieged. Only a few within the court believed this. For how could Orcs have reached so far? Only by crossing the great Northern desert, and this was believed to be too difficult. Then too, the King of Ordra, Lucexar was a great warrior and would never have allowed his city to be attacked by mere Orcs.

It was judged impossible.

More months went by, and no attack came, but also no word came from the city of Ordra. Still the king’s advisors said that Ordra was impregnable: its walls were taller than the walls of the king’s own city and Lucexar was a proud, great king. Perhaps this was the truth: that Lucexar was too proud and had ambitions of his own, and had betrayed King Altair.

Altair sent an envoy to the Ordra: it did not return. He sent another and it too vanished. Finally from across the plains a beggar arrived: a blind beggar, whose face was horribly scared and who was dressed in rags and who smiled without lips. It was clear that great atrocities had been committed against this man. He said that he was from Ordra and that he knew its fate.

And so the beggar was brought before the king.

King Altar stared at the blind man in the uncomfortable way all sighted men behold the blind.

“You hail from Ordra?” the king asked.

“I did,” the beggar replied. His speech was slurred – for without lips he could not speak well.

“How fares that noble city?”

“It does not fare. It is dead.”

“What do you mean? How can a city be dead?”

“The city has been killed, as surely as if it was a beast of the earth or a bird of the sky. It is dead. Its walls are destroyed, its buildings burned. It’s people, all of its people, are dead. Ordra is no more.”

“You lie!” The king shouted. “Its walls were as tall as mountains.”

“Then those mountains are fallen, my lord, fallen into a sea of Orcs.”

“And my cousin, the king? Did he not fight? How could he be overcome by mere Orcs?”

The beggar laughed, and as he laughed he reached into his shirt and pulled out a crown of gold and held it up for the king to see.

“How did you get that?” the king asked. “What has become of the king of Ordra?”

“I AM THE KING OF ORDRA!” the beggar screamed. “I am Lucexar! Of all that was Ordra, only I remain.” And then Lucexar screamed.

These were the last words of Lucexar, king of the once-great Ordra. 

 None would yet dare admit it, but the downfall of the Empire of Man had begun. The Orcs had conquered the entire Northwest and held the empire in a pincher grip from which it could not escape.


The Fate of the Orcish Empire

And after a thousand years (really a hundred, but the Orcish historians loved hyperbole), the golden age of the orcs ended. The elves with the aid of men and dwarves overran the Orcs. The empire fell. No more were the great festivals, the giant drums of the North fell silent, the war poems of Grag the One-Eyed were lost. A great age of darkness descended upon the land.

The scheming Fey Elves wormed their way to the top. Men and dwarves manipulated by the elves helped to destroy the great tent cities of the plains, never realizing their folly. Orc children cried out in the night, but their mothers' were dead.

The Legends of Creation
What is evil? Is it to go against the creator’s will? If the creator were to will that the eating of leeks was evil, would that make the act of eating leeks evil? Is evil merely rebellion against God? Or must even God bow to reason?

God cannot make a square circle and he cannot make a moral action immoral or an immoral action moral.

Why would Thexor (the high angel) rebel against the creator?
Was it from pride or perhaps from awe? For when the creator made the earth, Thexor was dumbstruck, it was an act that he could not even conceive of and the shock of it was too great for him. How can it be that I (who was most like the Creator) could not see this? 

Thexor supposed himself nearly like God, and then his world was upended. He rebelled against the act of material creation.

Others say that Thexor was fated to be evil, that even this was part of the Creator’s plan for how else could it happen? The Creator knew Thexor, knew his essence, created him and must have known that he would become evil – even if it was of his own volition.

Still others claim that Thexor saw his own act of rebellion as proof that the creator was flawed.

The esoteric philosophers claim that free will negates omniscience, and that God created free will in order to feel delight: only ignorance can lead to surprise and only surprise can lead to delight.

It is said that the supposition of a supreme creator leads to paradoxes which implies that either God exists or Reason exists, but not both. But this argument is based on logic...

Otal the supreme philosopher said that he finally understood the truth, but he went mad. His book was lost. The last copy burned by its author who said he wanted more light.

All these philosophies (even Otal’s) were scattered and hidden. Only the secret brotherhood seeks them out now...


The Wizards

A wizard without his staff is like a bird without its wings.
The staffs come from the Ur-Tree. Wizards must hang from the tree in order to gain a staff. The staffs are alive.

Toxis: a Wizard with a forked staff – in the fork is a spider and its web. He is adept at poisons. He admits that he is not good, but insists that he is not evil either.

What wizards say of priests: they believe in dead wood.



Saw One Hundred and Thirty One Review

Review of Saw CXXXI
Taking our beloved Franchise to a whole new level
by
Coleslaw Lem


With this the latest in the much beloved film franchise, we are given a whole new Saw experience to relish and to cherish. The first hundred or so killings are the typical Saw fare: cathartic, nail-biting and classic in their approach. They are there to satisfy the more typical, unreflexive fan who is just there for the thrills, the nostalgia, the fun of a Saw sequel. When the school bus is slowly crushed in the ironically named Jaws of Strife (they are powered by the bus’ occupants squabbling about who should live), we are brought back to a similar scene in Saw XXIV (an instant classic that you should order if you have not already) that is many a fan’s initiation into true Saw-mania. There are many homage scenes like this in the first three hours. Unless you are a diehard fan you can skip some of them (but not all -- they do set the mood) for a BRB. The pregnancy explosion, the liquefied zoo, the choir scalping, and of course the Flame Bunny/Geriatric piece ( a homage to the power of thirty at least) all fall into this comfortable, happy category.

It’s after this comfortable beginning that the new stuff begins. Ever since Saw went into triple digits its gained a certain freedom. With the deification of the protagonist Krammer into the being Thanax, we gained a greater freedom. Is Thanax a god, is he insane, are we seeing his powers or just his hallucinations? Is there a difference? Sequels 107 to 116 all deal with this question in its various forms, and by now we do not to worry about it. The rules of the game have been set, we can interpret what we see, hear, feel (sometimes smell) however we wish. All the interpretations have been blessed. All interpretations are equal. Or as Thanax itself says in 115’s wonderful nunnery scene: “It’s all good.” (Yes, I subscribe the the theory that he is saying “good” and not “God.”)

So where is there left to go? Many of the post-116 films were (even I have to admit) a bit lost, but 131 solves all of that. It’s a whole new ball game. I must warn the reader that what follows is a spoiler alert. You may want to stop reading and spend the weekend watching the film.
The first aspect that we are in truly new territory is the fact that a spoiler alert is even possible. Did not the glorious 109-116 run eliminate the need for plot, freeing us up for the pure delight of the spectacle? Fear not dear Saw-fan, we have not gone back to some dull linear narrative, the spoiler is not about what happens but about how it happens for what you will see and experience and feel in the this all-new and near genius level epic is itself epic.

For me it began in the fourth hour as I noticed a certain new kind of familiarity. The scenes seemed all too familiar, but checking my in-line database, I could find no reason for this familiarity. There had never been a triple cheer-leader-flaming-monk catapult number before. I could find not even fid a reference to a scene that had a slow dolly shot of a blood cloud drifting along a children’s hospital ward. No, this was all new: the razor blade truck, the acid squirt guns, the guano suffocation, all new material here. What then was familiar? I pondered this until I saw my third-grade teacher in one scene, and then I realized what I was witnessing: my life was up there.

Facial reconstruction software, special optical lasers, the world wide observation surveillance network, all of this is being used in 131 to create a unique experience. In a sense it is a real experience. As the film progressed I recognized more and more, my old street, my current street, friends, neighbors and finally family. They are all at the mercy of Thanax in this latest film. You sit and you watch your life slowly being torn apart. First strangers, then friends, then mom and dad, the kids, until finally you are alone. It’s just you, and then, yes dear reader, then it’s you up there on the screen being pulled apart.

The final torture scene has been different each time I have seen it. It is never the same, it is always new, it always me, sometimes I am just the victim, sometime I am the victim and Thanax, but each time I sit there, bladder ready to pop, transfixed as I see myself as the star in this the greatest film of all time. Don’t listen to these silly news reports, do not worry about what you might do afterwards, go, do not walk, do not run, FLY to the theater if you have not already and be prepared for the ride of your life. What SawCorp will do next month for 132 I have not foggiest, rumors abound. I am praying for a musical.