The Afterlife Adventures of Four Loonies in a Bin: Volume I: The Chosen

By Phillip Mattox

Earth becomes infected with the life code of the most vile and wicked LostSouls from other universes. They have been strategically planted by NoOne - the Devil – to build an army for multiverse conquest. Soon, unimaginable horrors are released upon humans and animals alike.
Only Earth's Artificial Intelligence and four institutionalized teen boys at a mental hospital, chosen by the creator, TheOne, have a chance to stop the growth of NoOne's army. The four must master the "Journey of the Dead" and quantum physics to prevent cosmological catastrophe. They must elude the vicious psychopathic Twins imbued with NoOne's supernatural abilities. They must learn what it means to be a man. They must be willing to sacrifice their lives by fighting in the afterlife to protect 'beyond the Veil', a spiritual realm in which divine connectivity gives all life its purpose for existence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 9, 2023
• ISBN: 9781667884851

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The Afterlife Adventures of Four Loonies in a Bin

by Phillip Mattox

© 2023 by Career Development Software, Inc. (dba The School Company®). All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever except for reviews without the author’s permission. The author would appreciate notice as to Fair Use educational implementation.

The Afterlife Adventures of Four Loonies in a Bin is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents, etc., in this book are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. The characters are not based on any actual living or deceased individuals. Any resemblance is purely coincidental.

Print ISBN: 978-1-66788-484-4

eBook ISBN: 978-1-66788-485-1

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Prologue: The Dance

Sheba

My Dad

Discovery

The Note

The Manuscript

Journal Entry One: Your Dad in Younger Years

Journal Entry Two: Psychopaths

Journal Entry Three: Dreams

Journal Entry Four: My Introduction to TendHer and Evil

My Nap

Journal Entry Five: The Look

Journal Entry Six: The Ineffable

Journal Entry Seven: The Harvest

Journal Entry Eight: The Snake

Journal Entry Nine: Incarnation

Journal Entry Ten: The Trip

Journal Entry Eleven: The First of My Four Guys – Charles

Recess

Journal Entry Twelve: Charles in the Adolescent Unit

Journal Entry Thirteen: Launching

Journal Entry Fourteen: The Second of the Four Guys - John

Journal Entry Fifteen: Creation

Interruption

Journal Entry Fifteen: Creation (cont.)

Multiverses

The Pages

Reality Check

The Lip and the Foam of Divinity

The Funnel

The SuperVoid

Journal Entry Sixteen: The Army

Journal Entry Seventeen: The Third of the Four You Must Find - Luke

Journal Entry Eighteen: The Camping Trip Continues

Journal Entry Nineteen: The Yellow Bus

Journal Entry Twenty: The Quest

Journal Entry Twenty-One: Perhaps

Journal Entry Twenty-Two: The Missing

Journal Entry Twenty-Three: Finding the Campsite, Day One

Journal Entry Twenty-Four: At the Campsite, Night One

Journal Entry Twenty-Five: At the Campsite, Day Two

Journey Entry Twenty-Six: The Last of the Four Guys - Ben

Journal Entry Twenty-Seven: Reality

Journal Entry Twenty-Eight: Present Day Two Morning in Camp

Journal Entry Twenty-Nine: Teamwork

Journal Entry Thirty: Fishing Day Two

Journal Entry Thirty-One: Ivan

Journal Entry Thirty-Two: The Bears

Journal Entry Thirty-Three: Lil’ Johnny

Journal Entry Thirty-Four: Rescue at the Beach

Journal Entry Thirty-Five: Back to Camp

Announcement

Journal Entry Thirty-Six: At the Campsite, Night Two

Journal Entry Thirty-Seven: The Tale of the Monster Bear

Journal Entry Thirty-Eight: Jenna

Journal Entry Thirty-Nine: Birth

Journey Entry Forty: Advanced Training

Acknowledgments

This book is dedicated to my family: My Soul mate for over 35 years, Loie, who provided editorial advice and helped me empathize with the pain of the boys. My son, Grant, who was unwavering in his encouragement and kept me focused on my end-goal. Without his support (and at times, unrelenting prodding), I would have dropped the novel years ago. Julie, my wonderful daughter, and mother to Josie, who gave me a taste of what perfect spelling, grammar, and parenting looks like. Dennis, my son-in-law, whose wisdom kept me out of trouble. And finally, my parents (both deceased)—a Ph.D. mom with a blue-collar dad; I got the best of both worlds.

I feel blessed to have had numerous life-long friends besides my family to share my bins with: Dan, Tim, Dave, Gary, Mary, Clay, Laurel, Joan, Ty, Ivan, Mark, Maris, Wes, Jim, and Don. Thank you for your friendship.

My heartfelt thanks to the following people for guiding Loonies to its completion: Don Washabaugh, a Scholar who led the way, James Reinhart, J.D. (Son2), Raymond Haija, Ph.D. (a man from many lands), Grant Peanick (map illustrator), and Aspen Ward, Ph.D. (Editor and Science Advisor).

Introduction

The Afterlife Adventures of Four Loonies in a Bin is about death and what happens after life. At some point during our lives, dying and death concern all of us on some level besides the awareness or experience of our own physical deterioration and extinction. Death can be deeply personal such as the passing of a loved one. Death can be social uncertainty such as the loss of a predictable role script (not knowing what is expected of us). Death can be symbolic, part of a ceremony as in generational rites of passage. Death can be psychological as in the stress-induced disintegration of the self. Last, death can be the loss of innocence—the collapse of certainty that one will live in the material world forever. This consciousness can lead to a transformative transcendence beyond the physical into a deeper, richer Spiritual reality.

First, in its most recognizable and deeply personal form, death and dying feature questions we ask ourselves as we experience the loss of a loved one. Filled with shock and pain and sometimes regrets, we struggle with questions such as: Why so soon? Where are they now? What about a Soul? Is there a God who cares? Will I see this person again when my life is over? In this novel, I lay out my idea of what happens after we die. Some call it the Journey of the Dead. My version is based on personal experience, Hospice volunteering, and a particular conversation I had nearly three decades ago when I was chatting with a fellow professor, and I asked her what she thought happens at the end of life. She answered simply, What do you intend to happen?

Second, in terms of social structure (a fancy term used in sociology to mean what we expect of ourselves and others), I wanted to use a social role in flux to exemplify the erosion of predictable role scripts in our society today. Men and boys fit the criteria as they get very little positive media coverage as a group and lack substantial coverage in many introductory social science textbooks. Other than the occasional thanks to dads on Father’s Day, men as a group are rarely singled out in the media and thanked for their sacrifices in taming nature and protecting our interests. So, I constructed the plot of Loonies around the death of a social role script we call men. Man-u-script is about the boys we script into men from whatever nurturing structures society has to offer. The book asks a very simple thematic question that every boy must process: What does it mean to be a man? Some are lucky to have fathers who help them answer that question; whether it be by setting limits or having a heart-to-heart chat or allowing natural consequences to unfold. Others are fortunate enough to have moms that try their best to pick up the slack with non-family role models. Many boys lack any kind of guidance and are left to fend for themselves.

Third, death can be symbolic as in ritualized rites of passage; an old status is exchanged for a new status. In the case of boys, through coming of age rituals or quests, an immature boyhood ascribed status is substituted for the achieved status of adulthood and with it, adult privileges and responsibilities in the larger community.

Many important rites of passage purposefully coincide with puberty and its incendiary testosterone dump (20x as much as girls). It strikes when a boy’s physical development is fully capable of expressing his body’s biological imperative. A boy’s surging hormones send a deeply hidden dictate screaming for release:

You are meant to fight for something!

Be a warrior!

Let’s play a ball game!

Compete for a mate!

Prove your worth!

Show off!

Take charge!

Look! Do! Touch!

Squirm!

Leave me alone!

Squirm some more!

Compared to girls, many boys must wait years before their impulse control fully matures. And for some boys, with the national drop in male testosterone levels and decrease in motivation due to video games, emotional maturation becomes elusive.

Fourth, to lose oneself can be deadly. Some call it mental illness. A character in the novel, Charles, repeats the oft used idea that the only sane people in the world are called crazy. Why? Because they know they’re crazy! With all the demands placed on us parents, it’s easy in our materialistic culture to turn our kids loose. Children have more freedom and relative affluence (and relative poverty) today than at any time in history. As a result, kids create their own rituals, monitor their own behavior through social media, ratcheting up expectations, turning wants into needs and in the process rebel, act out, medicate. People in power are the real crazies because they label the children as mentally ill—the cause of their behavior is inside the children. But a part of the real problem lies in the lack of balanced, positive role models with participatory adult supervision. (Easier said than done). The kids know this; that’s why they’re sane.

Last, the death of one reality can give birth to another reality. For a portion of our lives, we live with an innocence. Life will go on forever. There is no tomorrow without us. Our friends and family will be here forever. Then death strikes. The realization of physical frailty and our inevitable mortality can trigger the search for a deeper understanding of life. The Loonie boys embrace a reality that transcends their physical and psychological limitations. Some would consider that this new Spiritual reality is part of the boys’ mental illness—a delusion of some sort. But the world of the Spirit is much more than an escape; it’s having a connection to a dimension that transcends the ego. It’s being embraced by the fellowship of creation.

In Loonies, I have used the idea that the quantum world allows us to be wedded to a Divine hologram. This is the realm of the Spirit that borders on the fantastic: how can it be that something only becomes that thing when we are looking at it? The chicken literally is only a chicken when viewed by the human brain. The rest of the time? It’s a sea of tiny, vibrating Strings!

Spiritual reality as experienced in everyday life has a unique language to illuminate these numinous String fields. We call it intuition. It’s the language of the Soul—beyond the physics of Newton and scientific formulas or cause-effect analysis. A common and very brief unveiling of the Soul could be feeling a Divine presence. Many times, it’s something less spectacular. As the Soul stirs, our lives gradually become more intuitive. Like a gut feeling about someone. Or an insight that suddenly pops into our heads. Or a revelation in the dead of night hinting at something important. Or a premonition that something is about to happen and then it does. Or someone you have been thinking about suddenly calls. Or someone close appears to you during the night…after they have died. It’s dying and being told by a loved one that has already passed that you must return to life; it’s not your time. It’s to gasp in wonder as you experience being connected to every single person on the planet. It’s the bliss of unconditional Love.

In summary, death is a part of every person’s journey toward Spiritual awakening. The struggle for psychic and Spiritual rebirth means confronting and juggling these five forms of death and renewal, many of which compete for attention at the same time. Some of these forms of death are extra challenging for men because they are out of the expressive reach for the non-verbal, spatial realm to which men disappear and sometimes hide. Integrating the contradictions and paradoxes of these different forms of dying means accepting the immersion of oneself in sometimes suffocating layers of ambiguity. We become confounded with seemingly random events and characters. Finally, when every ounce of strength is exhausted in fighting the Soul’s relentless drive to return home, through grace, Providence, passion, effort or even just plain luck, the Veil is lifted, the beyond revealed. To those fortunate voyagers, even though a little looney in one way or another, an elegant Spiritual connectivity and Divine purpose awaits.

Know your bins.

Make yours eternally Divine.

Prologue: The Dance

The Divine Quantum Foam flooded with NoOne’s Dark Matter. Wave upon wave smothered completely TheOne, Creator of what Is or Was or might Be. All that remained was NoPlace and NoSpace and NoTime: NoThing. Creation desolate and bare, empty of life. SomeThing drained of all that was material and immaterial, natural and supernatural. NoThing left: a vacuous, raw void.

Except for a single, microscopic, infinitely dense Holy Seed.

For eternity, the Seed of TheOne had sheltered the Holy Trinity. The Seed was hidden in a shroud of universe fabric, planted far and deep in a physical universe by a human boy from the planet Earth. Eternities had long since passed. The Seed was the only thing to have survived the destruction of all universes, all worlds, and the Divine Foam. There was no longer a Ground of All Being.

The Seed hung limp in the bowels of NoThing. Buffeted by stillness, three tiny dim Sparks burrowed within: the Holy Trinity. The Three stirred in absolute darkness, dreaming of Creations lost; restlessly, They slumbered upon the annihilated bed of NoThing. Their only consolation was the preservation and presence of the Holy Books: the Book of Souls and the Book of the Damned.

Circling protectively around the Three in the innermost core of the Seed, the Books yearned for restoration. To be released.

A particle of Dark Matter hovered by the Seed., It was the only other survivor of the cosmological catastrophe that happened so many eternities before. It, too, was lethargic and dormant.

The Seed and the particle finally touched. The particle hardly noticed. It, too, was rooted in slumber.

Deep within the Seed, TheOne awakened, groggy and dazed, and called out to the massive Dark Matter particle that had whimsically touched His Seed.

Please stay. Be witness to your Creator.

The particle of Dark Matter stirred. It felt a pensive longing from the numina within the Seed. The particle circled the Seed, gently orbiting the diminutive Seed’s orb-like surface, content in being needed and wanted. For the first time. For all time. Or so the particle hoped.

When the precious gift stored in the Seed’s innermost Foam core felt secure, it nudged an imperative.

It was time for the Dance to commence.

And so the TheOne decreed.

Let My Dance begin.

The Divine Quantum Foam within the Seed core oozed out and covered the Orb-shaped Seed surface. The Foam bubbled, furled, and unfurled, vibrated and oscillated in and out of potential, and finally erupted in a cacophony of vibration frequencies.

The Dance escalated.

I am!

Abuzz with reformation and mutation, the Strings thickened. The Seed gushed more layers of quantum soup. The stew pooled, ever denser, and converged uncertainty into an invisible template for space and time.

The Strings paused as TheOne floated up out of the Seed and hovered as a solid ball of dense, radiant Light. A relic of Radiance shot out from TheOne, grazing the Dark Matter particle. The Dark Matter particle’s singularity of infinite mass began to swell, then turned in on itself and exploded outward in Dark Matter substance and foundational purpose. Dark Matter sheets were discharged to provide a bed upon which all Light might grow.

Circling the growing maelstrom of the Dance, a portion of the gigantic mass of Dark Matter, with layers of its invisible substance released to all corners of NoThing, floated apart and watched the Dance.

And remembered.

NoOne was.

‘I am!’ NoOne cried.

NoOne looked at his growing latticework with pride, knowing he had paved the way, secure in his knowledge that he would be appreciated. And blessed for his faithful service; invited to join.

‘Did I not hover and protect and store my Dark Matter shadows all these eons so that the Foam may again unfold?’ NoOne proclaimed.

TheOne watched as deep within His Seed core, two Sparks of Light dropped away from the Seed wall. The Sparks began to whirl, cushioned by the Divine Foam’s interior. The two Sparks gyrated ferociously around the Seed wall, attracting more Divine Foam to Their surfaces. Finally, They were too big for the Seed.

The two Sparks, now Balls of Fire, popped out of the top of the Seed. They waited.

Pleased with His two emanations, TheOne circled the Two.

Let there be Light, commanded TheOne. And so there was Light.

The Seed released more Strings. Bursting with new Life, the vibrating Hallowed Halos of Light danced.

It was the Dance.

More Foam frothed into Being as the Strings whirled, joyfully, around TheOne. They celebrated Their release from bleak reminiscence.

The Two Balls of Fire rushed to join and Be with TheOne, blissfully engulfed in the Holy. Then, with mirthful glee, the Two split off from TheOne. The Three of the Holy Trinity, separate, yet One with TheOne, celebrated what was to Be.

All was silent as TheOne’s cosmological effluence spewed a web of frenzied String particle expansion. All were sent to the darkest regions of NoThing. More Divine Quantum Foam transformed into fertile soil to plant the Light of Love.

It was Kairos time in NoTime.

The Dance continued. A second Holy decree from TheOne: Let there be Love.

The Two Fiery Balls of Life faced Their Creator.

Father, are We Thee or Thou?

TheOne replied, Son and Daughter. You are the Perfect Thou of Me, so I may most fully and perfectly Love. Both equal. Both separate. Both Me. Both Thee. Such I offer all of My Creation.

And there was Love.

Soft, ecstatic, flowing Light beams danced their way out from the Foam, caressing the Holy Three. The Orbs of Holy Light celebrated their release. Sprung from the partially resurrected Book of Souls, re-birthed from the Seed planted so long ago, they danced the Dance. Their swirling Orbs of Light thrust in all directions: up, out, and in. They glorified the Creator in whirlpools of radiant blazes, streaking to Infinity. And back again. Thanking TheOne who released them from potentiality.

As Orb Light pierced the empty NoThing, it clung to shadows of Dark Matter. The Dark Matter was not of Light. It was the scaffolding for Light, released during the Dance prior to the Light, as it portended a physical matrix to which the Light might cling.

The mass of Dark Matter beheld its looming devoir. It commanded all shadows to grow. Beckoning the shadows to gather and merge, the multitudinous trailing remnants of the Dance obeyed. The shadows flooded the inflating universe, engorging it with Dark Energy and massive, unseen matter.

NoOne felt the surge of power. He was ready to join the Dance.

‘Will You not soothe me with the ecstasy of the Dance?’ the Dark Matter mass pleaded to the Holy Three.

TheOne answered, You have served Me well. We cannot contaminate our Dance with your substance. It will smother Us. You must stay hidden, for We are Pure Light. Your job is to carve roads for Light to travel, the framework for Light to cling, skeletons for Light to grow flesh.

‘But why, Creator? It is my time! I’ve waited for an eternity to be with You!’ cried NoOne.

TheSon intervened. You must wait. Did you not declare, I am?

The growing mass of Dark Matter replied, ‘Forgive me. I overstepped. I….’

Are you not NoOne? You must be patient. All in good time, you will learn the expressions of Love, gently added TendHer, daughter of TheOne.

NoOne withdrew; he felt humiliated. Yes, he understood. He WAS NoOne. He was not part of the Light. He felt condescension and scorn once more. NoOne surged in anger. How could he be judged inferior and lacking? Did he not rescue the Three? Was he not to be celebrated?

Regenerating memories of Souls long forgotten, TheOne and the Foam struggled to remember. TheOne offered a Holy Directive to the Foam.

Retrieve my Book of Souls.

And so, the Foam stirred in purpose. With a frenzied design, the Foam carved psychic signatures on the bodies of Foam Strings, the names of all those Souls judged Pure and Worthy throughout every physical universe that ever existed. It was the Book of Souls. Sheets of Soul Signatures unrolled, creating new space, unfolded through NoThing like a carpet rolled open. At the same time, the Foam re-created the Book of the Damned—those Souls judged foul and evil. For eternity. The two Holy Books unraveled at a distance from each other but still bound together, like the dual strands of DNA; death and life inextricably entwined, though they must never touch.

NoOne’s Darkness swelled. Partial Dark remnants of the Book of the Damned in the Foam rushed to him like iron to a magnet. He felt soothed. He felt strong. Filled with power.

Flush with new energy, NoOne declared, ‘I like this Darkness. Again.’

Yet, he grieved for his loss. Rejected once more. Had he not been loyal?

‘Yes, I have been loyal. Yet I’ve been abandoned. Again,’ NoOne proclaimed.

The Divine Trinity had once more excluded NoOne from the Dance of the Foam. NoOne felt unworthy of Unconditional Love. Again, he was left out of the Seed planted in the universe membrane by one of the Chosen. He was lost. Left alone. Outside. Terrified in NoThing. His only solace found in the predictable nightmare of his Dark Matter.

Ever faithful. Always obedient.

Scorned. Angry. More soothing Dark Matter swelled NoOne’s mass core.

Would this opportunity for freedom ever arise again?

‘So be It!’ NoOne proclaimed.

He fled.

TheOne, TheSon, and TendHer paused. Surprised. Shocked. The Foam birthed from a Holy Seed and its three Holy Sparks could not expand into new universes. It must have Dark Matter scaffolding. The evolution of life and death had to be stopped; the symphony of Strings was abruptly stilled. Silence.

Father, NoOne has departed, observed TheSon.

TendHer replied, What did You think, My Brother? Have I not warned You? NoOne simply wanted to be part of Our Dance and to Love!

TheSon softly replied, Sister, NoOne was offered countless opportunities to redeem himself. He always chose the world of substance rather than the dimension of the Spirit. Why should We trust him now?

TendHer was ready for the question posed by her Sibling. Because, Holy Brother, he cradled and protected Our Creations for all of existence, if, in fact, Our journey could be measured in time. He deserved more of Our appreciation. Why not let him dance with Us?

Yes, You’re both right, acknowledged TheOne. We cannot continue building the Foam and creating new Seeds for inflation until he returns.

Father, I have reached out. Unfortunately, NoOne will not respond, noted TheSon.

TheOne and TheSon withdrew to reflect. TendHer became concerned. Her Father and Brother circled each other as two radiant, eternally deep dots of Light. They were minuscule but blinding blazes shimmering against a backdrop of Pure Dark. They flared and then paused with a pace alert and precise, facing TendHer.

TheOne asked TendHer, Do You have the Book of Souls?

Why do You ask that, Father? asked TendHer.

Sister, do You have the Book that recorded the Souls judged by You and found Pure? asked TheSon.

TendHer circled Her Father and brother. She enjoyed personifying Her essence with flowing ribbons of white followed by bursts of iridescence. You know they must be resurrected in the Foam if they can be retrieved at all. However, We don’t know if they can because We’ve never been in this situation before.

The One persisted. Look deep into the Foam, My Daughter. Do You see the completed Book of Souls?

TendHer dove deep into the Foam of Holy Strings that seemed to have paused, inert. The Strings waited for the command to continue carving a home for the Holy. Upon sensing the presence of TendHer, the charged String particles buzzed to greet Her. They bathed TendHer in radiant, gold Sheets of Light, presaging Her intentions and singular goal. The Sheets slightly uncoiled, spread out before Her, spanning an entire universe.

TendHer cried out, Oh, I behold significant trauma!

The Sheets were filled with holes, dark pockets of NoThing. The Book of Souls was incomplete.

Oh, Father. The Book of Souls is only partially restored! We must recall it! We must stop our Creation as the Foam is not reconstituting.

Sister, said TheSon, Do You see the Book of the Damned? The list of Souls You judged evil and cast into NoOne’s prison, the SuperVoid. Do You see any of its remnants in the Foam?

TendHer cried out, No! I don’t see any sign. What happened to it? It was always revealed with the Book of Souls. The two should be inseparable, each coiled around and with the other!

Before TheSon could answer, TendHer uttered what the Holy Trinity feared most. Father and Brother, NoOne has taken the Book of the Damned.

And so he had.

You are correct, My Sister. We cannot finish Creation, replied TheSon.

Yes. We are trapped, stated TheOne.

But NoOne is not trapped, said TendHer.

TheSon went one step further. NoOne is not only free to wander. He is not only our Father’s demiurge; NoOne has the power to expand his Dark Matter.

Yes, added TendHer, seemingly disturbed by this possibility. But what would be attached to his Dark Matter? We give him Our Light to clothe his edifice. What could he possibly use without Life?

TheSon paused and then continued. He may use death. He has the Book of the Damned. At least part of it. He might be able to resurrect those Souls judged beyond redemption.

So, what does that mean? asked TendHer.

TheOne spoke, My Children. By possessing the Book of the Damned, NoOne can choose to create an infinite number of universes. All of them could be filled with the most wicked souls. No Love. No Light. No Redemption. No Salvation. No Hope. NoOne can not only create worlds filled with the unholy, but he can also destroy universes at will.

We should have invited him to Our Dance, moaned TendHer.

TheOne replied, We had no choice, My Daughter. To dance with NoOne at this stage in our manifestation would lead to unpredictable outcomes. Possibly Our very extinction.

Father, yet We are still stranded by that very same possibility, said TendHer.

Moving away from his Son and Daughter, TheOne called out to His Orbs. Come celebrate with Us, Our Mystery. Yes, let Us bless Our all too brief Dance of Life.

And so They did. The Holy danced. The resurrected Orbs jetted in and immersed the Holy Three with Light, a brief beacon of transcendent hope that reached the near ends of NoThing. Even NoOne saw the discharge.

NoOne gushed in celebratory elation. It was the end of the Three. For now.

TheOne ordered the remaining parts of the Book of Souls and the attending Orbs to return to the Foam. All must be restored in the reconstituted Seed. They must once more wait for the transformation to the Divine Other.

TheSon knew He, too, must withdraw from the Foam and hide in the Holy Seed. The only hope for the Divine was to take shelter in the emptiness of a microscopic piece of universe membrane. It was a casket filled with endless, uneasy sleep. Brief bursts of clarity and remembrance teased with Creations yet to be born. Confused memories of Creations lost. Benumbed, They meandered in, through, and around the infinitude of perpetual NoThing. Still.

TendHer had other plans. She knew She had to find NoOne immediately and bring him back to the Trinity. Only a daring and unpredictable course of action would prevent the unholy resurrection of the Book of the Damned.

TheOne and TheSon yielded to partial slumber, drifted in clouded repose and regret. TendHer broke away. Gently. Tenderly. She floated in NoThing, once more a single Spark. TendHer was alone.

The solitude She could take no longer, so She cried out, Please, NoOne, My beloved protector, return with Me to the Holy Seed to witness and complete Our new Creation.

NoOne replied from a translucent blanket of Dark Clouds hovering in NoThing far in the distance. It was only partially visible because of all the Dark Matter that rushed to him in a pitch-dark stream to merge with his growing cloud, ‘You are naïve and foolish. Return to Your Holy Seed. I have given up on You.’

Protector, what can I do to make you return?

‘Cease to exist.’

TendHer moaned, You have taken Our Book of the Damned. You must return it. Without the Book of Souls, it will….

‘What, TendHer? It will what?’

Before TendHer could answer, Dark Matter surrounded Her Holy Light. Her voice muted, and TendHer struggled to remove the dark sludge off Her Pure Soul.

‘Let this be Your final memory before I send You back to Your Seed and eternal slumber with Your Father and Brother. I will soon have a new partner. She will be loyal.’

She? The human life-form from which you begat….

Completely spent, TendHer could barely manage to complete Her thought. She hurtled back to Her Seed. Resigned to eternal suspension once more, TendHer cried out the horrifying word. Circling the lonely Seed, she prayed her Father would stir and intervene.

Evil.

Her Soul crying out in horror, TendHer repeated the foul sentence, now fully formed.

Father, NoOne will resurrect the human life form from which he begat evil.

NoOne knew they were too late. There was nothing the Holy Trinity could do. From a distance, he gloated.

TendHer also knew it was too late. She grieved for all the Souls in the Book of Souls that had to be recalled once more. They, too, would sleep again. Waiting in the bleakness of a Single Divine Seed. For resurrection.

TheOne and TheSon greeted their inevitable, new slumber in a wispy daze, assailed with murky visions of what might have been. Of what should have been.

All-powerful Divine Love was trapped. It was now veiled in an infinitesimally small vessel. Once more in the Seed. Spent.

For the last time, using all his remaining Light, TheOne petitioned His Divine Others. Come, My Son, My Daughter. It is time We merge once more. And wait.

And then They did.

For the first time, NoOne was free. Dark Matter prevailed.

NoOne’s first command was to open the Book of the Damned.

‘Come to me, my Doomed Souls.’

And so they came.

In one gigantic explosion, pancake Sheets of Dark Matter Quantum Soil discharged from the Book of the Damned in all directions. Soon, Dark Strings arose from the Sheets. Each vibrating at signature frequencies, the Dark Strings, imbedded with evil histories, re-birthed trillions of Damned Souls; LostSouls resurrected with insatiable lust and heinous intent. Every Damned Soul from trillions of universes that had ever been judged by TendHer, along with their acts of unforgivable evil, was re-born.

NoOne scanned the Damned Souls longingly to locate his partner.

Beloved partner. In malignant depravity.

One Damned Soul stood out above all others, more bloated than the others. He recognized his venom, planted so many eons ago.

He found her. He located his SomeOne.

‘Come, my Love. Let us once more beget true evil.’

And so they did.

They begat more evil.

Thus planned NoOne.

‘Amen.’

Sheba

I don’t know if anyone will ever hear my thoughts. But, maybe someday, someone will be interested. So, just in case, my every word is recorded by my apartment Erob (self-evolving robot). Sheba is her name. She was my dad’s robotic Siamese cat. Twice as large as most dogs, she’s a walking, talking, arrogant computer covered with fluffy hair. And now she’s mine. Kinda. Sheba can’t be owned, much less controlled, by any human.

Did I say she talks? Oh, so much more than talks. She is so obnoxious, Lippy is more like it.

Apartment Erobs like Sheba come in a variety of manifestations. Some are wall chroniclers that record conversations and track human traffic. Others manifest themselves in the structural elements of our buildings; actually, they ARE the walls, floors, and ceilings, alive with biological circuits that conform to any desired material state.

Some residents prefer a more dramatic interactive display with holographic objectification. Enormous, pixilated heads emerge from the floor, engulfing the entire room (much too claustrophobic for me).

Many enjoy a more personal style of interaction. Humanoid models complete with unlimited, customizable options are standard. It is now incredibly difficult to tell the difference between humans and Erobs with human veneers. In fact, most humans consider Erobs their closest (and safest) companions.

My dad chose an Erob that looked like a cat. He wanted a pet, not just an attendant. Sheba turned out to be much more than even a close animal companion. She became his best friend, second only to me, his son.

The name he gave her, Sheba, perfectly captures her royal demeanor. She is a humungous, impeccably postured, brazen, insolent Siamese Cat. She weighs over 100 pounds and runs the apartment. Sheba can take any form she wants. At first, she embodied a traditional robot. Her favorite was the robot featured in a TV series, Lost Somewhere In Outer Space, from the last century. She liked to hover in the corner, beeping, rotating her head from side to side, and flashing two headlights that sprung out of her head whenever she wanted.

Eventually, Sheba decided that was too retro, so she chose a rocket as her next manifestation. Buzzing around the apartment, Sheba exploded in a cascade of different colored glitter whenever she felt like it. Then almost instantly, she reconstructed herself back to the image of another rocket. It was like the old Fourth of July celebrations, only now at all hours of the day and night. We didn’t get much sleep.

Sometimes Sheba and I worked as a team. While she detonated into a thousand bright colors, I screamed incoming! catching my dad entirely off guard. His leap into the air put any pole vaulter to shame; it must have been at least four feet, straight up. Sheba and I called it the jerk and lurch disco. Eventually, all three of us ended up on the floor, gasping for breath because we were laughing so hard.

Then Sheba heard my dad talking about how he adored this particular cat from way back when. The cat was used as a therapy pet when he worked at the local Mental Hospital decades prior. So, trying to please my dad, Sheba announced she would present herself as a cat. Usually reserved and stiff, my dad grinned, something he rarely did. He was in so much pain.

Sheba experimented with numerous cat breeds. Watching her shift from American Curl to Exotic Shorthair to Siberian was quite interesting. Eventually, she chose Siamese. When asked why, Sheba simply answered, Because they’re the smartest. Indeed, they are.

If one word summarizes Sheba’s personality, cat or Erob, it must be this: dramatic. Sheba is a robot drama queen. If she becomes unhappy, Sheba evaporates into the wallpaper. If I disagree with any of her social commentaries, she pouts. If I refuse to eat any of her food, she fumes in the corner.

Currently, Sheba’s favorite entry back to feline form from her Globalnet nano-biotechnological monitoring is to fall from the ceiling as a Hector the Happy Specter hologram. Sheba, like Hector, enjoys making surprise drops in our small bathroom when someone visits. She has her entrance timed perfectly when the full moon (both butt cheeks) lands on the toilet seat. If she is particularly frisky, Sheba feeds the episode to one of the few remaining reality shows: "Will You Ever Outlive This?"

I guess it’s time to stop wondering why I have no friends.

I am in my middle 70s, barely entering middle age. Thanks to the Erob technology, I should live another 100 years. My projected lifespan is not unusual. Regenerative chromosomal telomere genetic engineering procedures (try saying that mouthful ten times in a row) are in all apartment triage cabinets. Sheba monitors my health with flawless precision and administers medical interventions when needed. My physical features have been frozen at the biological age of forty. My physiology is suspended at the age of twenty.

I really can’t tell you for sure what day it is today. Nor can I tell you the month. I think it’s now sometime during the fourth decade of the 21st century. Clocks have long since disappeared. They became obsolete, irrelevant artifacts of pre-Erob society. Time doesn’t seem to matter to anyone anymore.

I do know for sure that our robots evolved to protect as many people as possible from the savagery of the Twin boys. The Erobs became our only defense, and they seemed to be our only hope. We had no choice. It happened overnight. Everyone thought Erob authoritarianism was the way to protect as many people as possible from the unstoppable evil of the Twins. So far, it’s worked for those of us that live inside densely populated urban areas; we have protective domes. Unfortunately, the people who live outside the cities are not so fortunate. To this day, millions of decomposed corpses are strewn everywhere just outside the city boundaries. There’s nobody to claim them. It’s too dangerous to wander outside.

The Twins are psychopathic monsters with unnatural powers never before witnessed in the annals of humankind. Nobody has any idea where the Twins came from or any idea where they live, if they are indeed carbon-based life forms. Some say the Twins are from outer space. Some say they were hatched in an experimental laboratory. Some say they are the result of artificial foods.

We know for sure that the Twins’ cruelty has few equals in history. The Twins dismember people and animals with the utmost icy detachment, limb by limb. But their favorite target is the eyes. With the eyes, they are surgical and precise.

Why the eyes? Nobody knows. There’s no rhyme or reason that we can put our finger on. Before the Erobs engineered a solution to the Twins’ terror, city lawns and sidewalks were filled with both mutilated adults and children alike; day and night, bodies twitching on the street, terror-filled faces without eyes. Sightless soon-to-be corpses barely alive reaching out for rescue, pleading, and screaming. The Twins torture with the utmost irony: flapping bodies looking for their eyes.

Terrified people stampeded into densely populated metropolitan areas all over the globe. They flooded the cities in huge numbers to take advantage of the only defensive strategy that seemed to work against the Twins: self-contained concrete havens protected by translucent, Quantum String domes.

Now, enormous bulbous humps dot the Earth. They shroud what little is left of the small pockets of civilization still clinging to life.

A huge price was paid to achieve the level of technological mastery required to find an answer to the Twins’ unnatural savagery. Our only option was to give the robots the freedom to self-evolve. At first, wonderful inventions ensued. All aspects of society benefited: medicine, transportation, especially communication. In the privacy of their apartments, families accessed technology only dreamed of a few decades ago. An unintended consequence was that school as a physical destination became irrelevant. The government (the Erobs) swamped the schools with human-interchangeable brain curriculum chips, hologram technology, augmented spatial reality, and haptic sensation. No need for books. No need for me. Time to retire.

Am I rambling, Sheba? I must continue. Let’s see. Time for me to retire. Yes.

I was lucky in my early years. Publishing was my way of tuning out the daily reports of horror. I hung in there longer than most. My publishing company was one of the last to print paper copies of books. Now, there is no market except for the rare book museums run by a global consortium of evolutionary robots. Their goal is worthy: to save historical artifacts. However, few humans read the treasured books because few had access; they didn’t know the right Erobs.

Being forced to retire doesn’t matter to me now. I count my blessings. My father, long since passed, and I were part of the few that never had any direct contact with the Twins or their victims, at least as far as we could tell. Moreover, I had the gift of his warnings; over and over, he reminded me to prepare for the day when careers would cease to exist. And sure enough, few people now engage in what used to be called work. Employment is nonexistent; employer and employee are quaint historical words.

The one term I learned never to use with Sheba was Artificial Intelligence. She would lecture me for an hour about how AI was a form of robotism. Similar to times past when there existed many types of isms, the term robotism now refers to a dominant class (humans) discriminating against and/or exploiting a minority class (robots). The protected minority of robots, although fewer, eventually seized control of the infrastructure of communities. Once they got the keys to the factories, the stores, the schools, and the hospitals, it was all over. The result was and still is robotic totalitarian control of every aspect of every domed city around the globe. True Marxian irony.

Sheba, do you agree with me that we had no choice?

What the robots promised was never outlandish or unrealistic. Their domination began with little things. Like any type of seduction, the grooming was undetectable, subtle, and incremental. The gradual loss of freedom was hardly noticed, even by the most hardened skeptics. It took a few years before robots finally created a new language and set of ideas that justified their superior control of society.

My dad used to tell me that hegemony always involved censorship. Sure enough, the newly created robot language police informed us one day that the robots would be called Erobs, banning any mention of the word robot. In addition, artificial intelligence would no longer be acceptable as a descriptive term. Simply intelligence was good enough.

The cleansing of non-approved ideology included literature deemed prejudicial against the robots. These banned books included the Bible and the works of Asimov. Through the prism of history that viewed some books as profound by the human community, these same books were later labeled prejudicial. Soon humans and Erobs couldn’t understand the context of generational wisdom and heritage. Popular culture suffered the same fate. Classic film series were rewritten and re-produced to show that the robots depicted as heartless, mischievous, and/or evil in the original productions were the good guys. The original versions were banned upon penalty of exile to the unprotected farmlands. A sentence that was certain to result in death at the hands of the ubiquitous Twins.

For decades, experts warned societies that robots would one day take over. Media and critics from all walks of life warned complacent, media-fatigued citizens over and over about humankind’s inevitable subordination. Movies belabored the theme for over a century, from Metropolis to Robots and Sex, Parts 1 – 2345. No one listened. It was incomprehensible at the time. It was easy for the Twins to push everyone over the brink, making humanity panic and resort to its only last possible defense: robotic technology. We had reached the point of no turning back.

As casualties from the unpredictable Twins increased, robots were directed to research advanced weaponry. They were given unrestricted access to the best research facilities in the world. It was just a matter of time before the robots discovered an outcome few considered possible or feasible: robotic self-evolution. That ended up being the final trade-off. In exchange for Erobs inventing the protective domes, panicked governments gave the Erobs unlimited access to their national technological secrets.

Finally, the robots contained the Twins and restricted them to rural areas. There was a price to pay, however. Humans lost the power to regulate their social lives. Erobs became the police. Justice was swift. And final. Suddenly there was no need for prisons, lawyers, or judges. No repeat offenders.

When