Character Guest Post: Dr. Mark Freedman - IMMORTALITY and GHOST OF THE GODS by Kevin BohaczHey you, hold up a minute. I’m not going to bite. You can finish crossing that street anytime you like. Here… see this magazine. That’s me on the cover. You see that? Okay… That’s my name, Dr. Mark Freedman. You probably don’t remember me but I got a lot of press when I won the Nobel Prize. I discovered a bacterium named COBIC-3.7. See this article. It’s all about me. That little microbe pictured there is 3.7 billion years old, the oldest known form of motile life on the planet. That little guy is the origin of an evolutionary branch that eventually led to us and it’s still swimming in the oceans today. I was on the fast track to win a second Nobel. I had proof there was a direct link between COBIC and ancient mass extinctions like the one that killed off the dinosaurs. I was all set to prove my discovery, my COBIC, was the canary in the coal mine that warns when the end is near. Too bad it doesn’t matter any more.
God, all that fame seems so long ago, but it wasn’t really that long ago… was it? Everything good seems so long ago in this new normal, this new world that has been gutted like a fattened lamb. A year ago ordering a burger and fries was something I did without even thinking twice. Now it’s something I can only dream of doing. Is that crazy or what? But then you know all about those big and little losses. You’re still breathing or we wouldn’t be talking… and anyone still breathing knows all about grieving and loss in this new normal.
Hey, hold on a minute. Don’t walk away from me. This is important! I’m done telling you what you already know. Okay? Now I’m going to tell you what you don’t know. I’m going to tell you what our all-powerful government does not want you to know. I’m going to tell you about the big lies. You can’t possibly know this but the end started in a small village in the middle of nowhere. Some isolated insignificant spot in the Amazon jungle that later became known as ground zero to us scientists and doctors on the inside. Almost everyone in that village died instantly from what first appeared to be asphyxiation. The crazy thing was that some people survived only a short distance away by a river. They were fishing and when they came running back to their village they remained unharmed. They won the prize. They got to hold their dead loved ones and keep on breathing. It was as if someone had inscribed a circle on the ground. If you were inside the circle when the event happened you died. If you were a foot outside the circle you lived. It was as simple as that but it took us precious weeks to figure even that much out. The top expert at the CDC, Dr. Kathy Morrison thought it was the work of some psycho-regime or terrorists testing a chemical weapon. Shit… The video images of the aftermath were terrible and sure supported what she thought. I mean those videos were beyond your worst nightmare. People just collapsed in the middle of whatever they were doing as if they were marionettes and some grim reaper had cut their strings. But what was so terrible was they didn’t look terrible. You get what I mean? There was no mark on them. Some of them were even smiling. That’s just not how dead people are supposed to look. People who were violently killed should have some sign of trauma. We later started calling these mass deaths kill-zones but at the time of that first one we just called it an anomaly.
The politicians in charge of the CDC purse strings were not that interested in investigating the anomalous deaths of a few dozen people in a remote place south of the border especially when those people did not vote in any election. So that first chance to get a jump on figuring out this bloody mystery was squandered. The lives that were ultimately lost are on the heads of some of those politicians… and that’s where the cover up started but not where it ended…. Not by a long shot.
In the weeks that followed we scientists discovered things that if I told you about them you would think I was some crazy mad-assed junky ranting because I needed my fix. Let me ask you something. How do you know your thoughts are your own? I mean it. How would anyone know if something from within your own head was spying on every thought, and worse, editing them? Would you know it? How could you possibly know it? If something deleted a memory from your head along with all the memories that were somehow linked to it, you would never know. Would you?
Yeah, I can see that look in your eyes. Now you’re thinking this Nobel winning guy has lost his marbles… and you see that’s the insidious part of it. The few of us who know the truth can shout it from every street corner and no one will believe us. Why? No survivors see an advantage to knowing the truth and if they did, the memory of having that desire would be edited right out of their empty skulls.
You think things are better now. Don’t’ you. You have food to eat and a place to sleep. Hell you even have a big screen TV and all the toys that money used to buy. Yeah, you’ve got it made. Anything you want is free for the taking because money isn’t worth squat and there’s just too much of the stuff of dreams sitting idle in every deserted home, store, and garage. So why listen to a mad scientist? What can I say that will possibly make a difference in your new improving life style? Well my friend I’ll tell you why you need to listen to me. The awful truth is we do not know why the plague stopped and you can bet your sweet little life that it’s not over. This hell is coming back at us with ten times the fury of the last outbreak and that big screen TV is not going to save your bacon. It’s everyone’s ass this time and some say we deserve it and I kind of think they’re right for a whole lot of reasons.
About the Author
His latest books are Immortality and Ghost of the Gods.
Visit Kevin’s website at www.kbohacz.com.