The Last Silver Bullet Read online

  As for the Judean Date Palms guarding the city, their fate was the goriest. The freed SFLA mission commander summoned a subordinate, a pyromaniac known for setting cities, castles and great places on fire. He set ablaze every tree and plant as the whole city smoldered for days. The Judean Date Palms – the city’s life support systems – were burnt alive for daring to keep their top brass in prison. The sevenfold vengeance didn’t really end at that – the brave guardians of the Mount City were doomed to be systematically wiped out from the face of the Earth in a space of 1,000 years. Their extinction was accomplished through a combination of some SFLA-induced fluctuations in the environmental conditions, and humans who had already been nudged by the SFLA into taking their warring mood into overdrive.

  ‘We have lost a very important battle,’ assessed the Big Brother at the time. ‘The only thing that was stopping the enemy from wreaking havoc is gone.’

  ‘Will we be able to at least contain them, Master?’ he was asked by a disciple.

  He thought for a while but couldn’t come up with any definitive answer. ‘We have no option but to try,’ was all he could say.

  The SFLA was prepared to wait and strike with precision and the Brotherhood wasn’t equipped for defending against such warfare – neither was the world. This was the first time the unaware humans had obeyed the SFLA and worked for them. This was just the beginning.

  5

  Chain Reaction

  The Brotherhood decided to bring about a renaissance within the human concept of spirituality. They wanted the humans to experience the joys of living in peace. A prince from the Indian subcontinent, Siddhartha, was prepared by them to refine the existing line of thought and present a new plan for humanity to follow.

  He saw people getting extremely miserable and confused as they tried keeping up with the new desires bombarding their collective consciousness at a feverish pace. Through a series of spiritual practices, Siddhartha attained enlightenment and pitched the eight-fold path for experiencing true bliss. The humans now had an all new scientific approach to lead a life the Brotherhood wanted them to live.

  Other regions of the world went through similar spiritual awakenings but it was only an illusion of a harmonious future. Ever so quietly, the SFLA was herding Man towards superficial gratification. For this, they had in their ranks experts who were skilled at manipulating humankind’s thought process. They knew how to incept certain ideas too.

  Amidst a period of great eureka moments enriching the world, where someone was discovering static electricity and yet another discovering that tides were caused by the Moon, an Alexandrian machinist named Hero, was dreaming of a future wedded to automation and inventing basic steam turbines, vending machines and automatic doors. Ultimately, he was to realize the importance of tools and his desire for better ones was going to rub onto the rest of them.

  While the Chinese had been making significant breakthroughs in the refinement of tools, the rest of the world was catching up too. Great advancements in smelting were gaining momentum with ever-better smelters and larger blast furnaces becoming popular.

  A Period of almost 1,000 years followed, where practically the entire world was at an even keel. While there was homogeneity in most things, some like the Romans were better than the rest at war. On the other hand, Indians were better in mathematics, Chinese at administration and the indigenous people of the Americas knew a thing and a half more about the breeding of new crops like potatoes, corn, tomatoes, and peppers.

  Humanity continued maturing in a somewhat desired way for the Blooman government, with some people organizing into a religion of love and some into a religion of peace. Soon, there was a general opinion in the SFLA ranks that the momentum they had built up after getting their top thinkers free from the Tribal Chief’s captivity was getting lost. An invention in China put their mission back on track.

  Chinese alchemists were looking for the Elixir of Life, which basically meant they had got down to mixing anything with everything to find a formula. The SFLA officer, who had been credited in the past for finding a way of doctoring their bodies into ones that could last them till eternity, was asked to team up with another officer – an expert on creating explosions. They were ordered to teach humans the art of creating a blast.

  Sulphur and a compound which the humans referred to as saltpeter, were already believed to have curative properties by some Chinese medical practitioners.

  What the two SFLA officers did thence was to become a horror story for the Brotherhood. The SFLA was hunting Brothers all the time and there were stories doing the rounds on how they were tortured and executed – usually along with their entire families. If a Brother was a tree, they would make the humans hack that one and heat the wood in the absence of oxygen to prevent it from bursting into flames and turning to ash. This process turned the wood into charcoal. The SFLA found it quite amusing to see the dead bodies of Brothers in a charred state.

  Ultimately, the two SFLA officers took their sadism to another level by making the Chinese alchemists mix the charcoaled bodies of Brothers with sulphur and saltpeter for producing a black power that changed the world. They called it gunpowder. Along with finding it useful in treating skin infections, the inventors were immediately fascinated by its explosive capacities when exposed to fire. Soon they discovered that by igniting the gunpowder that was packed behind a projectile in a cylindrical container of a specific mouth-size, a tremendous pressure was generated for forcing the projectile out at high velocities.

  Initially they cut Bamboo for using them as pipes to pack the gunpowder in and shoot the projectile, but soon they were able to manufacture ultra-durable steel barrels to do the job – teaching humans the art of metallurgy was coming in handy for the SFLA now. Ever since the time early man had flung a spear in Germany hundreds of thousand years ago, the desire to have better weapons had only grown stronger. Now they had the ultimate technology to build upon and create fearsome weapons.

  By 904 AD, the Chinese were using a primitive firearm – the fire lance – which blasted out flame and shrapnel. It started a great arms race which led to the invention of rockets, along with elementary bombs. Soon the Egyptians caught up and began unleashing hand cannons and other small arms at their enemies. What hurt the Brotherhood the most was to see the usage of so many of their brothers’ charred bodies in gunpowder for celebratory fireworks.

  Further harnessing of gunpowder’s infinitesimal powers gave birth to muskets, land mines, naval mines, torpedoes and multi-stage rockets. For the SFLA, the first stage of weaponizing the humans was complete. A whiz kid from Italy was chosen to usher in the next one.

  Right from the time some SFLA talent scouts saw Leonardo da Vinci as a young boy standing at the mouth of a cave they were using as a bunker, they could see he had the potential for delivering the goods. The boy exploring the mountains could sense that someone was present inside the cave. It terrified and excited him at the same time - it was the thrill in the prospect of finding something new. He went inside. There was a vibe around which made him comfortable with having risked coming inside. That day, he shed his fear of the unknown, forever.

  The boy grew up to be a handsome man with flowing curls and a carefully combed beard. Even though he was a vegetarian, he was known to be particularly strong - some people claimed he twisted horseshoes with his bare hands, while some knew him as someone who’d buy caged birds just to set them free. Da Vinci began mastering everything he put his hand on. Soon he was gaining immense popularity as a painter of religious themes, with some admirers famously calling him the Renaissance Man.

  While the SFLA was busy preparing da Vinci, the Brotherhood started reintroducing the Tribal Chief’s lost knowledge to the humans. The Brothers started making religious scholars identify and describe the SFLA top brass, mostly the ones who had been imprisoned by the Tribal Chief. The descriptions were a bit too imaginative though.

  Soon the SFLA got to know of the knowledge transfer
happening ever so secretly. Acting almost immediately, an elite fighting unit was ordered to board three human ships sailing westwards into the Atlantic Ocean from the Spanish coast. The fleet was on an expedition to find new trade routes to the Far East. Detailed to stay unidentified and dormant like stowaways, the elite fighting unit’s members were on a different expedition altogether than the humans.

  In the meantime, da Vinci – with no formal training as such – was breaking newer grounds of understanding, even pioneering a branch of studies on fossils. To most people, his mind worked on a superhuman level with an unquenchable curiosity and imagination at his disposal. But, despite of being so popular, he was turning into a very private person – almost too mysterious at that. It was because his mind was getting bombarded with certain ideas, along with a strong itch to work on them.

  The ideas were designs of machines – war machines of the future. Fresh studies in perspective for oil paintings came in handy when he made technical drawings of planes, helicopters, tanks and programmable robots. For good measure, he also invented ball bearings to increase the mechanical efficiency of such sophisticated machines of the future.

  Even though the Brotherhood understood that da Vinci was dreaming up these fearsome machines for defensive purposes, they suspected that such technologies would get used for bringing wholesale destruction in the future.

  In his old age, da Vinci fell ill and figured out he needed to spend time amidst Nature. He chose the gardens of Vatican City and started studying plants. It was there that he was made conscious of the implications of conceiving the designs of such death-mongering machines. He realized his mistake, but it was too late.

  To ensure against any last-minute sabotage, the SFLA eliminated him with a series of strokes and paralytic attacks which didn’t let the legendary painter finish the enigmatic Mona Lisa. Down to his last breaths, the bedridden genius was filled with regret that he didn’t use his talents the way he should have. The man who conceptualized the first mechanical calculator had calculated it all wrong. Leonardo da Vinci was especially sorry about his work on finned mortar shells.

  The three ships, that had sailed westward from Spain, were commandeered by Christopher Columbus, a leading maritime explorer of the age. Though he had done extensive research and calculations to chart his course to the Far East, the SFLA stowaways on board had doctored his logs to make him reach where they wanted him to.

  Nevertheless, with valuable knowledge of the winds, he sailed across the Atlantic in five weeks to land in modern-day Bahamas in the Caribbean region. For a while he thought it was India. The SFLA had wanted Columbus to land there because they had intel on a secret Brotherhood stronghold in the Americas where they were vaulting a copy of the Judean Desert Tribal Chief’s work. The SFLA had been trying to trace the origins of some data coming via a secret dispatch service of the Brotherhood. The dispatches had been sent through ocean routes and were landing in Europe.

  Further investigations revealed that these couriers were meant to be delivered to Brothers working with the human scholars, providing them the details of the SFLA operatives and top brass – information vitally-handy for recapturing them.

  After a period of extensive surveillance, the SFLA spy network could say with some conviction that the couriers were being sent from the Amazon rainforest – the Blooman world’s financial megapolis. The elite fighting unit onboard Columbus’ fleet was supposed to locate and destroy the master copy.

  The Brotherhood had encrypted the book within some scrolls the indigenous people of the land had prepared. The scrolls had details on whatever was vital and sacred to them – knowledge of the stars and planets, agriculture research, mathematical principles, and their myths and legends.

  The self-guided couriers were assembled and sent to a coast of the Americas for launching them into the North Atlantic drift of the ocean. Water Lily dispatch Brothers would detach their roots off the river bed and take the couriers to a gulf guarded by the Brotherhood’s pet whales.

  From the gulf, the warm current took the packages across to the European coastal areas, while other ocean currents of the Atlantic were used for sending packages from Europe or Africa to the Americas. While the Brotherhood already possessed the technological know-how for making such deliveries, the rest of the Blooman world was only beginning to take baby steps towards having a similar worldwide service.

  On the third voyage with Columbus, a SFLA reconnaissance team identified a coast within the Gulf of Paria – modern-day Venezuela – from where the dispatches were being launched. Now they just had to find the exact location of the scrolls and destroy them. The campaign started off with the elimination of the whales guarding the gulf. Their populations never recovered after the whaling industry took a liking for the waters later on.

  By 1519 – the year da Vinci died – European colonials were crossing the Atlantic with whole armies under their command. The Brotherhood did have a defensive strategy in place. They had bred mosquitoes in the area to deter the conquistadors from entering too deep, but armed with notions of God’s work and hidden cities made of gold, they made inroads into the Amazon. The SFLA tactical teams followed them. Soon they discovered the secret Brotherhood stronghold and the indigenous people living there with the scrolls. From there on, overzealous Spanish book-burning lots did the dirty job without much fuss.

  Right from the moment Adam and Eve started aspiring for more of those beads from lands far away, a fixation for all things exotic had begun to take roots. Now, with practically the entire world navigated, goods trade was going to turn into a massive affair. Everyone was going to want stuff from other lands; everyone wanted their sugar and spice. The Blooman government was only too happy to see such extensive human globetrotting, as it was enabling the Blooman world’s courier service with capabilities of dispatching packages to all parts of the world.

  With a great deal of the Brotherhood’s archives destroyed, and Brothers hacked or burnt by the human conquistadors clearing forested land for growing their cash crops, the Brotherhood's stronghold got blotted out completely.

  Even though things were heating up, the grand slam was still a solar system away – the Brotherhood was expecting to wait close to 500 years before it was the right time for the Sacred Weapon to finish the job.

  ‘We must go underground and appear disbanded to the world,’ the Big Brother of the time laid down the immediate course of action.

  ‘But, Master, what’s there to gain from it?’ a Brother asked.

  ‘It’s worthless trying to fight an enemy that chooses to stay incognito. We have to hide until they come out in the open and reveal their full spectrum of strengths and weaknesses.’

  ‘Very well, Master.’

  ‘Inform every one of us around the world. We have to fight deception with deception,’ the Big Brother took a deep breath and abandoned it dispiritedly, ‘and yes, ask them to brace for impact, and pray.’

  6

  Bomb’s Away

  It was the same pattern followed by the SFLA around the world. They had started a colonization race in Europe, and in its wake, the SFLA could make incursions inside the places important to the Bloomans, like their capital in the Congo Basin and the Daintree Rainforest of Australia – one of the oldest forests present in the world. The Southeast Asian Rainforest that stretched from India to Malaysia was also not spared. It was arguably the most biodiverse region of the world, before much of the land was cleared for logs and farming.

  While da Vinci left the world with designs of destructive machines, another man – Nostradamus – had begun predicting in the 16th century about the times when those machines actually came into existence. Along with predicting the Great Fire of London and the French Revolution, he foresaw the rise of Napoleon and a bloodthirsty dictator of the 20th century. He was also able to predict devastating world wars of the future, nuclear destruction of two cities, Moon landings, and the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center.

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nbsp; The forecasts were grim, and ideally they should have served as effective warnings for the humans so that they got their act together, but that was not to be – they were in a mood for trade. With proper resources now, they were establishing newer markets all around the world. Soon they ushered in an industrial revolution with coal as its staple diet.

  Man had been using coal for heat and light since prehistoric times, but it was only with the Industrial Revolution that coal came to the fore as the favored source of energy. Its high density compared to wood made it burn more steadily and longer. It was the ideal fuel for producing steam to operate the engines of the age. Inventors like James Watt were smacking their lips at the prospect of riding the wave, leading to the first improved steam engines in 1776 and yet more efficient ones to follow.

  The mantra of the age was mechanization of factories for producing textiles, and iron that was now being smelted using coke – a porous fuel made by heating coal in the absence of air. The use of coke as fuel also cleared the way for huge blast furnaces capable of manufacturing sizable machine components. It gave enterprises cost advantages associated with producing in large volumes. Times to come were to see jumbo machines like steamboats, steamships and locomotives, along with early automobiles.

  With the apparent dissolution of the Brotherhood, the SFLA ranks could now make the humans do a lot more for them. On the top of their priority list was a telecommunications system capable of transmitted messages across large distances, including intercontinental ones – the humans were still using flags and pigeon posts for relaying messages across distances.

  Finally the SFLA got its wish fulfilled when an American developed the Morse code and the telegraph machine in 1835. The desire for establishing a worldwide communications network was to prove costly for the SFLA in the future, but as of then, they viewed it as a significant step towards their ascendency to world domination. They decided to commemorate it with a monument.