Abracadabra Is Just A Word, Isn't It?
by Mark Sutton

"Even the most troubled epoch is worthy of respect,
                                              because it is the work not just of a few people, but of humanity..."
                                                                                          Walter Rathenau

"I intend to swallow alive and kicking from humanity's womb the greatest minds and things history has ever produced. Tear them from the very bowels of obscurity. Why? Behind the visible is a excessively complicated invisible. Another reality if you will. One the human mind cannot encompass, much less comprehend. Until now that is."

"I don't get it."

"Of course you don't. Never before in human history has there been a tool to do what the human mind cannot. This tool is at my leisure, and all I need are people like you to transform my wants into existence. I need people like you to program my desires. The frontier between the marvelous and the actual has hardly been tickled, much less porked into orgasmic bliss."

"Bliss...sure..."

"Imagine, throughout history, mental warriors thinking they have touched upon something substantial, but one petal of a rose does not a flower make, and there's hardly any scent. Those to come after, disciples of ignorant messiahs."

"Look, not to interrupt your rant, but this is a job offer, right?"

The pimply little turd-nerd had a point, other than the one marking the apex of his skull. He was one of ten young programming mavericks I was interested in, and it came down to concern in my enterprise, or my money. I didn't care which as long as he performed. I watched him scratch his nose, then pick it without ceremony or shame. For a moment I wondered if he was going to pop the juicy little green tidbit into his mouth; and much to my disgust, he did.

"You want," nerd boy said, "an interlocking series of viral search programs with the ability to analyze, sort and determine-no, suggest and promote theorem, fuzzy logic notwithstanding."

"Correct."

"I can do that."

"Good. The dollar amount attached to your services is quite substantial."

"You want an AI."

Sometimes the smarter they are, the less they have in common sense. "I don't think you understand jack or squat. The last thing I want is an AI. I like to do my own thinking, thank you. I want the programming to search the world over, and if one hunt takes it down a whole new road, I want it to light a cigar and enjoy the stroll."

"But you still want it to tie everything together, right?"

Now he uses a tissue. "Martin, is it? Martin, I have ideas, and need certain conclusions drawn for me. Here's the two-headed calf, Martin. I want the programming to piece together the greatest mystery mankind ever has, had, or ever will, face. I want answers, but I don't know the questions. I just know they exist. Yes? or no. I'm waiting." And I don't wait patiently for a booger-eating wick like Martin.

"Two hundred-fifty thousand each year, with one year minimum under contract? I'm in. I have nothing to lose."

Only your life, Martin, if you don't deliver.

I had my lawyers deliver a contract this morning, and pulled it. Martin signed it in the three places specified. "Report to me in one week." Exchanging the contract for a plain white envelope. "This, Martin, is a check for the first month. Tie whatever loose ends you have together, buy a car and, have your face scraped. I'll provide the tissues."



The year was 1622, and posters had enveloped the city of Paris saying, in effect, "We, deputies of the principal College of the Brethren of the Rosy Cross-Rosicrucains-are amongst you, visibly and invisibly, through the grace of the Most High to whom the hearts of all men are turned, in order to save our fellowmen from the error of death."

A secret society. Not histories first, and certainly not its last. I don't care about my fellow man, and I'll save my own ass thank you. Their reputed knowledge was my sole concern. The transmutation of metals-gifts of the purest gold when it was needed most had been attributed to the Rosicrucains. I certainly want to be wealthier. And the prolongation of life-who wouldn't want to live a few decades, if not a century, more. Terrible and fantastic knowledge supposedly gained from a book called the Liber Mundi, the book of the World and of Nature. And it was this one story which got me thinking. I began to search for other stories like it, and not having much success until I ran across the story of Emperor Asoka.

From 273 B.C. or thereabouts, he was India. Ambitious, Asoka decided to conquer the region of Kalinga, between Calcutta and Madras. A hundred thousand men were lost, and Emperor Asoka, so horrified by the sight, and I imagine, the smell, renounced war. It was his wish that man would never again put its intelligence to an evil use, and vowed to secrecy science. Asoka founded the most powerful secret society of its day, possibly to this very day. The Nine Unknown Men.

The Nine Unknown Men were said to have in their possession nine books, as I understand what little I found, containing knowledge far in advance of what is known, even to this very day.

The first book was said to be devoted to propaganda and psychological warfare. Defeat your enemy without a single shot fired.

The second was on physiology. Turning one man's body against itself. Like spontaneous human combustion.

The third book is said to be a study on microbiology. The entire human genome and other pertinent data as it relates to our species; and other species?

The fourth book expounds the transmutation of elements. Lead into gold. Perhaps even Cold Fusion.

The fifth book deals in communication. Terrestrial, and extraterrestrial. References to intelligent life outside our solar system two-thousand-plus-years-old.

The sixth book was said to be a comprehensive study on the principles of gravitation, space and time. And it was my notion that space, time and thought are not as separate as we think. Patent offices around the globe note the time and date of all concepts submitted, and in many more instances than coincidence allows, many ideas are patented within minutes or days of each other.

Imagine the total universe mapped. The seventh book is said to have done that.

The eighth book; light, and all its implications.

The ninth book was concerned with sociology. The ability to predict the rise and fall of any civilization.

I couldn't help but come to the conclusion that, there is, indeed, more out there than these tender morsels. But how to collect them, use them, how to gather all the secret knowledge of the hidden and lost world in one place at one time?

"Martin," I said, "you seem to have a problem."

"Two years, and each month that goes by you add more to the list of requirements that these machines are supposed to do, find, or translate. Why is that?"

Roger stopped his exploration of last weeks excursion into the land of code, and turned to face me with his annoying perpetual grin. Donald didn't want to get involved and kept at his work with a diligence I bonused him for; quite handsomely I might add. Three out of six geniuses I had hired were all that was left. The taskmaster in me drove the rest into more satisfying yet less rewarding employment. Sometimes I missed them, but I could live with what I had.

"What was in the library at Alexandria founded by Ptolemy Soter?" I asked.

"I don't know," Martin said.

"What knowledge perished in the ashes of the library at Pergamo, or when Emperor Chou-Hoang-Ti obliterated by flame thousands of books for...political reasons?"

"I don't know."

"Then tell me what happened to the Pisistratus Collection in Athens, or the library of the Temple of Jerusalem, or the library in the sanctuary of Phtah at Memphis."

"I don't know," Martin said for the third time.

"I want to know, Martin. I want all the knowledge this world has to offer. And if I want it, I'll have to go get it." I handed him a tissue before he picked his nose and dined like it was French cuisine. Roger's smile widened, but he felt it more prudent to turn back toward his monitor and at least pretend he was hard at work.

"For all of human history, Martin," I began, "information and scientific discovery has been made, lost or ignored at such an astounding rate, I can only conclude two things with uncertainty. One: we are a stupid species. Or two: there has been an organization of some sort running interference for thousands of years. Personally, I lean towards number one each time I interact with you."

Donald spoke up, "Sir, I have information."

"'Sir, I have information,'" Martin mimicked.

"You won't see it coming, Martin," I said. "But I'm going to kill you, and do it just for fun. Slowly. Painfully. I want you to know every moment of horror I inflict."

Donald ignored the last exchange and continued. "It seems Pope Sylvester II had in his collection a bronze head which answered 'yes' or 'no' to questions deserving 'yes' or 'no' answers. A rudimentary binary computer from the sound of it."

"Ones and zeros... When was that?" I asked.

"He was born in 920 A.D., and died 1003 A.D., maybe 975 A.D.?"

"This pushes my estimate up another five hundred years, if not more."

"Estimate of what?" Martin asked. Not that he cared, he just liked pushing my buttons.

"See what else you can find, Donald," I said. "Also, find out if there are any physical descriptions on file for the equipment found in the tomb of the symbolic Christian Rosenkreutz." And left to do some more deep thinking.

The information, the artifacts I had collected to date, I knew in my heart and soul it was all tied to some monumental conspiracy of some sort, but the answers were still camouflaged in history, and I couldn't fathom the why of it all. Actually my suppositions were still in their infancy but, suppose an otherworldly alien influence had been doing all they could to keep mankind naked, tilling dirt?

I had an increasingly paranoid thought that a self-contained bunker with cutting-edge defensive systems was just what I needed.



"Unofficially I call it 'Abracadabra,'" Donald said. He was my only programmer left after six years and million upon millions of lines of code checked thrice. Roger left the year before, about six months after the Martin tragedy. "And with a few modifications it can be voice activated."

"I like you, Donald. Gathering the facts and artifacts was the easy part, even hiring the spies and thieves to document materials I was denied access to."

"The Vatican's archives... I imagine they were the hardest to retrieve."

"Not as hard as one might think, and the information was...unique. It's curious, virtually every government, monarchy and organized church seems to have a secret unwritten doctrine to confiscate, conceal or destroy, unregulated or unauthorized scientific achievement. What little man does. Most technologies eventually find their way back, but decades if not centuries lie between discovery and rediscovery. And very little money is made in the transaction, especially when one stops to consider the billions attached to each modern scientific brick, building monuments to greatness in greed disguised as humanitarian nepotism. Why? And we deify these people when they are nothing more than tools. None of this makes sense."

"Sir, it looks more like happenstance, no more than a--"

"No, Donald, this is deliberate." Of that I was sure.

Donald poured me a drink, and himself a cup of coffee. He was skilled at kissing ass at just the right time.

"I should be living on the Moon," I said. "Vacationing Mars. Hell, I should own the Moon!"

"The genie is out of the bottle with the invention of the computer, and nobody can stuff the genie in again. Information can't ever be controlled again, at least not in the same way."

"Who would have ever thought that a bunch of dope-smoking techno-geeks could have changed the world, but they did with the personal computer, and upped the ante."

"You're making monies. That new super-glue formula from the second century, the rediscovered Oregon gold fields."

"Two weeks ago, Donald, my Dayton plant was destroyed by a fire so hot, nothing was recognizable sifting through the ash. Ten of my workers died. I was experimenting with anti-gravity. I had a working prototype going through final testing. Nothing connected to the project, or the building, was flammable. And the security, it simply failed."

"You think someone set out to destroy the progress."

"Yes I do. Your services are no longer required, Donald. I'll give you a years worth of wages as a severance. Have your section cleared by tomorrow. I took the liberty of transferring all of our work to the protected systems. Call it, proactive paranoia."

"Yes, sir. Thanks, I think."

He should do well to thank me, I may have just saved his life.

My money came to me in a time-honored fashion, I inherited it upon my father's passing. Something I hastened. I, in turn, capitalized on every opportunity to pass my way. So much so I considered my personal motto to be devour mine enemies. And blood on my hands or not, knowledge was not for the weak.

It seemed that knowledge, for some reason unknown, had been systematically stripped, misdirected, and even murdered out of the hands of humanity. Knowledge that could have advanced humanity by centuries. It was if some Faustian bargain in reverse had been struck, and I wondered how many rocks I would have to turn over before I found humanities secret keepers. What secret society claimed its title as "Keeper." I spent months chasing my tail.

Countless centuries of living the status quo, then humanity went from a modified version of the wheel, to the Moon and back in less than two hundred years. A very serious breakdown of the mechanism our keepers employed. The only conclusion I could come up with, the founding of the new world had severed all ties to government and church based agents. The very act of free thinkers emigrating to the United States had made the Moon possible.

Now the cogs of suppression were once again in place. There were no real breakthroughs, not really, just headway made on existing ideas. The space program, hobbled for the most part, though novel ideas might bring it back from the brink of extinction. The personal computer and the web seemed to be a freak accident for the better, now more of a tool for commerce. I sometimes wondered if humanity itself unconsciously policed its own advances. It did yet didn't explain the rise of secret societies, but none of these enigmatic organizations seemed to have survived into the here and now with their power base and mission directives intact. There was nothing to prove my information vampirism alerted anyone, but that didn't explain the fire, and though the equipment was gone, the schematics were not. Anti-gravity was as simple as generating an electro-magnetic field, but it needed the fastest computer made to control the field's influence, effectively negating Earth's gravitational field.

"You're right about one thing, Byron Callis. Poke around long enough and someone gets worried."

"Donald?" I was by the only door in or out, and it was secure.

"Don't worry yourself. I got in, that's what counts."

"I thought you were too good to be true. But like a fool, I ignored my instincts."

"You have been deemed a danger to humanity as a whole, Byron Callis."

"You won't be leaving, Donald." Except in little-bitty baggies.

"One man means nothing to liberate humanity from its infancy. You have reached for a dangerous match, and we're here to slap your hand. You, are greed, and nothing more. Unable to realize how close to oblivion you truly are. Most of the marvels surrounding you, like television, might as well be magic for all you care to know. Abracadabra."

"Naming the system, a private joke on your part. But why don't you tell me about the we you shoved into the conversation."

"You could help humanity, but you don't. And Martin died a needless death."

"Martin picked his nose and ate what he found. And don't pretend to know my motives. You and your people let humanity have nuclear and biological weapons, yet you want to slap my hand?"

"Children must grow up." And then Donald laughed. "Yes, I can see into your mind, and know it better than you do. I can pick out your thoughts as you form them. Now understand me; I've been watching your species screw it up, killing even themselves, and that's the shame of it. But they will learn, and they will grow up."

"Are you armed, Donald?"

"Why would I be?"

"Good." And shot him dead center in the chest.

The round passed through him to splinter the far wall. "Magic," he said. "Abracadabra."

"So smug," I countered. "One of the Nine Unknown Men?"

"Older. I'm an angel."

"God? Just like TV you're here to tell me there's a God, and you want to save my black and twisted soul?" I managed to choke this out between guffaws.

"Even God couldn't accomplish that miracle."

"Then strike me down."

"I do live with one wingtip forever dipped in blood, but I've never struck anyone down. I give them a choice."

"And what is my choice?"

"The knowledge we shared here is too dangerous. Humanity is not ready for it. Your choice is slow suffocation, or a quick bullet. May the living universe transform your soul." Then Donald vanished.

Well, angel or not, I don't think Donald realized how petty and vindictive I am when I don't get my way. He may have designed the system and the shelter, but he didn't supervise the construction. I had a panic button of sorts installed and pushed it.

I had decided long ago that the information I was digging up, someone meant it to stay lost. All that hard fought information was mine, and if I couldn't have it, everybody would. The moment I pushed the button, thousands of newspapers, magazines, colleges and scientists, from all over the globe were getting lots of e-mail with attachments; and my location. What else is a panic button for?

I was happy, and then my power crashed. The emergency lighting kicked in, but after an hour I realized the secondary generators wouldn't. There was nothing I could do.

There is no way out of the hole I dug for myself. I have no real working knowledge of this shelter. I did what rich people do all the time. I simply invoked its creation with the words "build it," and it was so. If I wasn't rescued within the next day....

Two days have passed, the air is getting thinner, and I still have the choice Donald and the God he served bequeathed me.

Do people even open their e-mail attachments anymore?

"Choose, Byron," I said aloud. "Choose."

©2002 Mark Sutton

Twenty-one of Mark Sutton's short stories were published last year. Recent credits include Twilight Times with The Why Things Are -April, and How The People Kept Their Power-June. Origins: Little Demon Dolly, Fit For Survival and Conjured From Stone And Steel for Shadow Keep-July, August and September, respectively.

You can also read "Cat's-paw" by Mark Sutton. 74,000 words of extremely graphic Horror. This e-novel can be accessed at TrueFire.com. Literature > Fiction > Cat's-paw

What has Mark Sutton been doing lately? Bent Offerings is complete, it is an interesting compilation of (mostly) published and unpublished short stories, tied together with a twist. A mental patient on a hospital mental ward that exists in the here and now, yet also outside of Time and Space. Bent Offerings is looking for a publisher.