Abducted Chapter Ten: Magnanimous' Book
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Chapter Ten: Magnanimous’ Book
Arriving home after becoming manager, I take up the book on my doorstep, head inside and I’m slapped in the face with the rank odor of low tide. Using a dilution of fish emulsion I feed my outdoor and house plants. No matter what I do I can’t air out the smell. Normally I’m used to it but it’s like I’ve been away on vacation and arrived home finally knowing what guests smell on their introduction. Not that I have any guests. Apparently, my house smells like a salmon hatchery.
Jeffrey texts: I guess we’ll learn about each other on the date. That is if you’re still interested.
After setting down my purse, the book, and taking off my coat, I text Jeffrey: I’m still interested.
Then I text: I’m now the manager of my Walmart.
Jeffrey texts: Congratulations! You should update your LinkedIn.
Somewhere along the lines I’d made a LinkedIn and left it to rot. 10,000 messages, all management types or AI’s hoping to pay me slave wages and talk down to me. Just what I was looking for. The only one I ever responded to was the old manager’s, before Harvey, back when Brad used to work there. But that’s a whole other thing I don’t want to get into.
I update my LinkedIn, Walmart Manager.
Standing in my kitchen and taking up my sleeves, I’m lost in the creamy smoothness of my skin as it moves seamlessly from wrist to shoulder. In just the drive home and the few minutes in my kitchen the transformation’s progressed. In my reflection in the toaster, my dark circles are gone like I got regular sleep, my hair is straight like a new keratin treatment, and my lips are pouty like I’d kissed a vacuum. There’s fear, but it passes.
Tearing into the Amazon package, I crack Magnanimous’ book to the first page. Like any other garbage-guru book it has a disclaimer in the preface explaining that the ideas herein are just the authors opinions. Throughout the beginning chapter is a rough recounting of what was said on the website then:
“Chapter One: Technology. You’ve heard it said that whatever technology presently available to the public has probably been in government use for nearly 20 years. In the following chapters I will argue that the actual time frame is more like 100 years. In some cases 150. And that the speed of technological advancement is not limited by Moore’s Law, but that Moore’s law is a myth along with the Landauer Limit. (For the more math savvy read Chapter Thirteen: Mathematics and Thermodynamics, but it’s not required.) Meaning that the year Lincoln gave the Gettysburg address cellular phone technology was secretly in use amongst the elite and powerful. Also, the supposed year of the first proliferation of the Gutenberg Bible 1455, the cotton gin was already pumping out fine fabrics and clothes for upper classmen and elites.”
For pages and pages the book elaborates on numerous accounts and examples of impossible technological advancements at times earlier than surmised. Supposed photos of time travelers in the past and ancient lasers used to shape the pyramids. All laughable stuff really. But keeping an open mind, I read on.
In the index there are four parts, The Block, The Post, The Cart, and the Retreat, along with 21 chapters interwoven as explanations for each. I tell myself there’s only 400 pages double spaced with dozens of pictures. Not much of a read. With the progression of my healing, by the time I’m done reading there won’t be much for me to do to doll up ‘cept throw on an evening gown, toss my hair over my shoulders, and walk a few times around the house in high heels to practice. It’d been a while.
Just like riding a bike.
Summarized the first three parts entail a story of humanity’s woes. How at this point in our history, and it states history as if the whole of time has happened already like some True Detective Rust Cohle shit, our curiosity should have led us to the stars. Indeed, we are just one amongst a host of species with enough intelligence to do so. But for several regulatory, bureaucratic, religious, and technological setbacks and limitations we’ve been held in place on earth. Each of these regulations are called The Block. Then a chapter entailing the use of technology to produce fear of advancement, like the Chernobyl incident and Hiroshima, as well as a simple explanation of how blockchain technology works as it’s apparently been in use for a long as time, to calculate who advances in life and who doesn’t. The Post. Then a chapter on the use of governmental regulations to slow progress by limiting resources. The Cart. Then a chapter about the use of religion to prevent uprisings and stammer creativity all in tandem to limit our power and reach. The main implication being that were the lower classes ever to rise up against their oppressors, they’d still inevitably fall in line and maintain the status quo.
Throughout each part is interleaved the fact of humanity’s evolutionary desire for conquest, domination, consumption, lust, and hatred. Magnanimous details what he believes to be the secret undermining and complete submission of our species by a few select upper echelon leaders and hosts who in recompense for their deeds are rewarded by our star-faring neighbors in perpetuity throughout the beginning of our history until a supposed end sometime in the future. The business of aliens and the punishment for human curiosity.
“Perhaps you’re asking about Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos going up in rockets. It was just them who went up and came back. You’ll never get a ticket,” it reads.
That leaves the last bit of business, The Retreat. The place where the most powerful, with unlimited resources are supposedly conditioned to submit. That’s me. That’s Brad. Mom. Dad. Bill Gates.
“On the outside, The Retreat is a quaint camp in the woods of Montana, that encompasses 100 square miles of woods and mountains, unforgiving terrain, rivers, and lakes, at which the children of the elite are treated to harsh times. Lack of food, water, shelter, money, guardians, butlers, showers, soaps, creams, pills, clothing, gifts, praise, solitude, privacy, books, internet, shops, malls, cars, phones, nurses, doctors, firemen, police, authorities, (other than the precepts and councilors), judges, or any other benefit of upper class first world society. Here they cook their own meals, wash their own clothes, make their own beds, temper their angst, and comfort their own woes.”
“Some may say it’s healthy for these youngsters to face the reality of life for the lower classes in order to empathize with them once they rule. That this will temper their judgement and rebuke of the lower classes and homeless. Others however, find it distasteful to use the cruel reality of life as theme for a summer camp. While the silver-spooned children are able to leave the camp after a four month stint, and return year after year like Disneyland, the serfs have no choice but to plod on in the hopelessness described in earlier chapters. Imagine your life and reality being put on like cosplay and paraded around as if they’d really lived it. In this, one can empathize with the recent news reports of negative cultural appropriation, only it’s the 99%, people of all races, being strutted about like a Native American headdress.”
Think of my favorite boy Bradford strutting about beating his hairless chest and making whomping noises.
Magnanimous reads, “Here I must place a stern reminder that these are children who no more made the choice to be born affluent than they choose what most of daily life is going to be. Dislike the situation, not the children whom it is heaped on. The disdain should be rightly placed on the parents and adults who dreamed up the scheme.”
The fact of my and Bradford’s enjoyment of The Retreat floats through my mind and I feel a pang of self-loathing in the pit of my stomach. It lasts a few minutes then subsides when I think of mother whom I will visit shortly and cuss out. I’ve done- no, am doing, and will do what I can to help. I think of Jo-Jo. I think of Yuri. I think of Ruzan. Unlike all the other girls, I took The Retreat to heart, took it deeply, and I never forgot the lesson. In the back of my mind, an evil voice says, “sure, that’s what they all say, until they’re given power,” and I ignore it. But the recent changes in my appearance… I turn to the reflection of my ass in the toaster. It’s taut and meaty. Just the sort of ass Jeffery would like to grab like a pair of bike handles. Isn’t it always that way? My body for his pleasure and his for mine?
I shake my head of this and read on.
“However, behind the campground façade are more diabolical machinations. Things no child should be subjected to, wealthy or not.”
I sit down in my stained Barcalounger and read on for the next two hours unhindered.
Later, Sharon, the receptionist at Golden, gives me a double take like I’d never given her helpful tips for perfect roses. Mix cows blood with your fertilizer 30:1 dilution with water. It makes for a good blood meal and keeps the rabbits away. Down the hall there’s the sound of wheezing ventilators, shuffling feet, cries for help, and the banging on doors to be released. Smells like a mixture of vomit, piss, shit, and conventional cleaners used to cover them.
“Now is the most dangerous part,” Magnanimous wrote, “the part where you learn the devastating consequences and double edged sword of living amongst the gods. TAGC. Four little letters that control every aspect of all life on earth. That’s you, that’s me, that’s the deuterostomes at the bottoms of oceans, and the Tyrannosaurus Rex.”
I sign my name in the visitors book and looking me over through her horn rimmed glasses, Sharon’s normally elderly prudish scowl melts into delight. I’m still in here under this Cinderella-like transformation. Like I still look like me, just the me I never wanted to be again. What changes there’ve been are ultimately superficial. Higher cheekbones, plumper lips, tighter hips and ass, engorged boobs, all under Calvin Klein underwear and bra, wine colored Armani dress, Manolo Blahnik high heels, a white silk shawl with sleeves, and a Coach bag, all suspiciously delivered to my doorstep the second I finished Magnanimous’ book.
Magnanimous reads, “With those four letters we can convict or exonerate criminals, determine paternity, create ancestral trees that demonstrate the relationship to every person on the planet, and their relationship to all other life on earth, as well as feed entire populations with genetically engineered foods. With it we can generate drug therapies, cure disease, and make vaccines. We can also devastate entire populations with bioengineered viruses, use targeted radiation to unlock certain cancers, and irrevocably alter the entire genome of individuals without their consent.”
Underneath all this decked out beauty, I’m a usual wreck but without the lower back pain and knotted skin. If you’re wondering why I’d believe a random book by a crazy author found online for $70, imagine instead of guru wisdom, vague biblical prophecy, or fortune telling, I can see it all in the mirror. Guess I’m one of those I didn’t believe it at first either until I saw it with my own two eyes people. Told me things I already knew, but also told me what is to come and the secrets of the universe. All things I should have known a long time ago but refused for the sake of goodness. For the sake of Bradford. Ignorance really is bliss.
Magnanimous reads, “Imagine unlocking otherwise junk sequences via simple addition of a TATA box and read sequence that gives a soldier larger muscle mass and unbreakable bones, lack of fear, empathy, and a docile willingness to follow orders. Super soldiers. However, this is not the road I want to lead you down. Merely an example. But you already knew that without me telling you.”
Not 100% convinced by all of that, just 85%, I did what little I had to, to doll myself up, then got in a newly delivered BMW M4 that magically replaced my old Ford Aspire like a pumpkin into a stagecoach. It’s like all the self-talk in the world is worthless. I’m doomed to be less like a diamond in the rough, and more like a polished turd, unwilling to give in to the demands of my station. But gods does this BMW move!
Driving by an obvious speed trap on the long winding road to Golden, I could have, should have been pulled over. They say women can judge whether or not they’d sleep with a man in seconds of inspection. No really, it’s true, but gods the look in the male officer’s eyes when I came a full 60 miles an hour around that corner in a 30 mile per hour zone. With less than a second to judge all of me with this costume appearance, he looked like a salivating wolf about to dine on his red riding hood. Then he blinked and slid his hand out the window, palm down and bid me slow down. Is this what it’s like for beautiful people all of the time? I don’t remember.
Turning from the receptionists desk to the elevators, in the hall and waiting area are a line of elder droolers, gropers, shouters, sleepers, criers, weepers, all taking in the afternoon sun like old crocodiles. As if awakened to the presence of prey, they lift their heads from their chests, and look me over. Even with cataracted eyes, they see my hourglass shape, the 2:1 ratio of my waist to hips and turn up the 50’s jukebox charm. Jumping left and right away from pinches and pats, gropes and wiggles, the hall from the desk to the elevator is a gauntlet of limp old men trying to have their last supper.
One says, “now that’s an ass. I could eat that today and not starve for a week.” I snort. Another reaches from behind and gropes my butt like it’s an orange at the grocery store, says, “firm, girlie. Wanna have ma babies?” Still a toothless other says, “give me a minute and I’ll have you wetter than a cow on Tuesday.” Whatever the fuck that means. Left and right, the women of the group judge me with their eyes. Harlot, slut, filth, and piping up, an Afghan shrouded nana says, “women ought not dress that way. You’re just asking to get raped!”
I reach the elevator doors and with relief they open before I can press the button. Offloading a couple of nurses eye me the same as their elders, whore, but hold the door so I can escape the gnashing teeth and waggling fingers of the men.
Magnanimous reads, “as before I mentioned the affluent children of the upper echelon. The crumbs of the upper crust and their part to play in all this. What The Retreat teaches and what the genetic implications are for the little ones and the rest of humanity. Rest assured of this fact first: most affluent children do not attend the Retreat. For them it’s not needed as they are born pitiless. You may think I’m cruel for saying it. Of course, no child can be born callous, right? Wrong. It seems some are merciless straight from the birth canal all the way until their death.”
Having witnessed it firsthand, I agree with Magnanimous on his word. People like my mom are ruthless. Picture her non-surprise when I yank the curtain open during her wound debridement to confront her. Imagine the look on her face when I tell her everything I know and tell her I won’t go along with her evil schemes. Look at her pinched face when I say I will not be a part of this.
“Ma-.”
I thought of this moment a thousand times and it doesn’t hit right. Practiced what I would say just before she went. But she took it from me.
Magnanimous reads, “for the few good hearted wealthy children there is The Retreat. Apart from the obvious, the Retreat being a poor-town representation of life in the lower classes, contained beneath this façade is a honeycomb complex of repeating rooms built into a cavernous tunnel system that goes on for miles and miles and is miles deep. Neither I, nor my spies have been able to find the entryway, but I know people who’ve seen the inside, and I’ll recount the wonders they saw. After years of hypnosis, they drudged the memory up from deep within. From user9876nocturnes excerpt, on the inside, ‘I was given a drink loaded with sedatives and so instantly fell asleep. On waking I was in a trundling vehicle, possibly a train or cog-rail, shrouded so I could not see where we were going. After an interminably long time the vehicle stopped but still, we were made to wait. I knew there were others by their coughing and shuffling in their seats. There was a sudden feeling of vertigo, like the world was folded. I don’t know how else to explain it. Then a grinding noise. Then a sudden halt. Then a man removed my shroud, and I was blinded by white light.”
Looking over mother all my hate and disdain drains away. There’s supposed to be screaming, shouting at every swab, every nick and pull at the exposed nerves and muscles under her open flesh. There’s supposed to be pain. Behind the curtain the overhead light is off. Under a shroud to her neck, mother is motionless, and emotionless, fingers interleaved over her stomach. Face sallow, pale, eyes dry, hair brushed, her chest does not rise or fall. Before I can tell her one more time to go fuck herself the wicked witch went and died. Three fentanyl patches are on her neck. She didn’t even get to see what she’d done to me, to my body, to my life.
User9876nocturne reads: “When my eyes accommodated, I was astonished. What gargantuan amounts of money could not only build such a place, but maintain and hide it, neither you nor I will ever see, and I was raised in a house with platinum inlayed wall paper. Less like how I imagine Area 51 and more like the world of the surface turned upside-down. I was sitting in a bright lit dome-shaped room, and it was as if the walls were made of starlight held back by some tenuous force. Looking around I saw my bunkmates strapped to seats backed to a central spire. Each of whom shall remain anonymous, just like myself because of what I’ll reveal henceforth.”
In case mom’s playing a joke, I touch her shoulder. She’s stiff like an aged slab of beef from the back of the freezer you forgot some years ago. Not pestering, nagging, being cruel, or even her usual knotted self. Relaxed. At peace. On the bedside table is a short and sweet note written on a card in her dying hand.
“For Tabby. I’m going septic as of this writing. Sorry I didn’t tell you but I don’t want to ruin your date. Now you don’t have to torture yourself anymore. Further instructions for my estate and burial are in the glove compartment of the BMW. Goodbye, and Love Mother. Signed: The Wicked Witch of the West. P.S. Rest easy while you can dear, this is just the beginning.”
Unbeknownst to my senile, now dead mother, Bradford and I had settled all this sometime back and her gesture was a formality to keep her from screaming day and night. The formality of her documents was just for show.
User9876nocturne reads, “All of us dressed in fine pure-white sweat clothes, our heads shaved bald, our pupils pinholes accommodating the strange pulsating room. After a moments acclimation I saw that the outer edge of the dome had alternating shut doorways at which each of our seats was poised. Between our feet and winding to each of the doors was a track to which the seats were affixed singly.”
Imagine mother laughing up from hell. Then I feel bad about it. Like forgiving. Not like I forgave her right then and there, but like that relief when you let go of some long held grudge. Only relief is forced on you. You bump into some relentless bully from your past only to find they’ve spent their years since high school donating their time in soup kitchens and giving away their meager disposable income to children with cancer. They have early onset Parkinson’s and wouldn’t remember you anyway. Eyeing them from afar, you know they’ve changed, and you could no more hurt them than could God by killing them. You have to let go.
But then who will you hate?
User9876nocturne reads, “In the corner of my eye, strapped to the chair next to me was my friend. For the purposes of this retelling, I’ll call her Darla. Like me she was shivering in a cold sweat unable to move against the restraints that held her to the seat. We dared not say anything. According to our parents, it was the right thing to do. Our nerves not steeled enough, our disdain not bitter enough, our lives too cheerful and carefree, we needed tempering. Out of Darla’s eye streamed a tear. Probably I was crying too, but I don’t remember. The doors at the end of our tracks opened, and behind mine was a great black nothing. Like how you’d picture the inside of a black hole. Infinite crushing pressure upon infinite crushing pressure. Then we were sent into that dark, shooting along the track at breakneck speed. That folding feeling returned. The pressure in my veins climbed ready to burst out at the slightest movement. I could have died right then but it only got worse.”
Behind mom’s curtain I stand listless, immobile with indecision, the card between my fingers. On the other side of the curtain an aide says, “poor lady, I’m gonna miss her.” Another replies, “apparently she was a billionaire.” They ask, “how did a billionaire end up in this dump?” “God knows but what I wouldn’t do with a billion dollars.” Their voices drift away down the hall but the other said, “probably some good I hope.” Then, “nah, I’d buy a private island with a little shack, some internet, a haram, and drink myself to death.” The other agrees with a cigarette charred laugh.
I wanted screaming but all I get is silence. Someone knocks on the door, and I don’t answer. Coming in the shuffling feet come to the curtain. A voice says, “this is a private room, you shouldn’t be in here.” I pull back the curtain and standing there is the charge nurse, Shelly, who’s always looking like she hasn’t slept in a decade. I say, “how long ago did it happen?” Taking a moment to recognize me, she steps to the bed, pulls the curtain around us, says, “about six hours ago.”
User9876nocturne writes, “there was an interminable space of time between entering the black hole and when anything could have been said to have happened. Just nothing but cold and black. There was a pinhole of light off in the distance that came ever closer like a firefly on a moonless night. As it neared, I heard a baby crying like when a parent lets their kid cry it out. At first, I tried to blot it out by singing in my head, frères Jacques, freres Jacques, dormez vous, dormez vous, but inevitably no songs overcame the climbing noise. Moment by moment the sound gradually rose as the light neared. I yelled, screamed, and cried for it to stop but all that answered was the intolerable wail. Where babies get the energy to do this one can never know. After what seemed like years, finally I was nothing but angry. Though I’ve loved and rocked babies to sleep, after a century of sobbing, I’d’ve done anything to silence it. Leave it for dead. Throw it off a cliff. Smother it to get relief from the scraping noise. By then the light was close enough I could focus on it. A sphere of white hot light sunning me so bright it shined through my lids like a day on the beach. The sound was like a cheese grater on my eardrums and my one pulsating thought was, make it stop, make it stop, make it stop. The chorus in my head chanted kill it, kill it, kill it. And then it stopped.”
“Why didn’t you call me?” I ask Shelly.
“She told us not to,” Shelly says as if that’s it.
I say, “I’m her healthcare proxy, her power of attorney, I’m her only living relative.”
Shelly backs off preemptively, says, “you never visited her.”
I want to say, I was there as much as I could be, but don’t. In my present state, looking like a barbie doll on the way to Beverly Hills, it’ll fall on deaf ears. I ask, “when will the funeral home get here?”
She says, “we were waiting for you because there aren’t any arrangements in her file.”
“Give me a moment,” I say and take the back exit out to avoid the gropers.
Sure enough, in the glove compartment is an inch thick manilla envelope.
User9876nocturne says, “there was relief. Like when you urinate after a long car ride, but still the bright orb assailed me. It took me over. Enveloping me. Swallowing me whole. Digesting me, like a little morsel in the mouth of some Lovecraftian beast. There were a thousand tongues on me then and consequently pleasures I’d never known existed. On my skin, in my ears, in my mouth, up my spine, in my vagina, in my anus, and even between my fingers and toes. I was left wet on the floor of a sealed room with black glass walls, ceiling, and floor. But for the trap door big enough for a mouse, through which they’d dispense morsels of bread and bowls of water, there were no doors or windows. No escape. Daily they’d perform the same action of the infant crying until I couldn’t stand it anymore and at the point my ire turned against the sound and at the very idea of babies, I would be again swallowed whole licked clean and put away wet. Gods whoever conjured this was a spiteful demon who hated the young and sought to break us. Break our hearts and spirits. Before I’d thought I was a strong willed one, but then I was beaten.”
Sitting there in the new car smell I’m alight with the possibilities for my incumbent windfall. Amongst the legal documents is my mother’s will; the same will Bradford, mother, and I had put together years back. Leaving everything to me of course in the event Bradford should die. The money, company, cars, land, big house, employment of a hundred assassin maids and servants, lake house, private island, two jets, investments, our millions of shares of Microsoft, Apple, our gold, silver, copper, platinum, uranium, lithium, diamond, emerald, sapphire, quartz, salt, opal, and lapis mines, all manned by slave labor, and our sweat shops in Peru, China, Africa, and Mexico. I have 100,000 employees whom I’ve never met.
Shuffling away the bonds and trusts, and legal jargon, there are the instructions for her burial written on the inside cardboard cutout from a box of Fruity Loops. Toucan Sam’s grossest treat. They taste like chemicals. Bradford liked them though. She’s to be taken by Gangman’s Funeral Home for preparations. Small Catholic burial presided over by Father Jonas Kilcoyne in the family plot on the property behind the big house. I’d be the only one in attendance. Or maybe not. Explicit instructions for the removal of her brain to be donated to The Westington Foundation. There it was again. Like hearing a new word, within a few days you’ll hear it again. Instructions to hand this sheet to Courtland or Jennifer Gangman on arrival at Golden.
Shuffling everything back together, I put it in the envelope, bring it inside and dictate the instructions to Shelly sitting at the nurses desk. To which she flips through a rolodex for the number of Gangman’s calls, relays, and hangs up.
User9876nocturne says, “I’d always wanted an explanation for my undying annoyance with children. My dislike of their frolicking, joy, happiness, and inane sense of wonder with the dumbest of things. Always, I’d wanted to know why I hated my own children. They’d done nothing wrong. The retreats efforts to dull my motherly instinct had worked. Any whine, cry, or petulance by them was met with disdain and mockery. Like out of nowhere I’d spit venom. Or just spit. Uncontrollable, inescapable.”
I barely blinked and the Gangman hearse was there with a stretcher and red velvet body bag. Elderly man and women, kindly, they shuffled mom’s stiff as a board body off the bed and into the bag. Like Batman without his Joker, I was free.