Jeff Corkern
Scholar
- Joined
- Apr 8, 2006
- Messages
- 74
AND NOTHING HEARD MY SCREAM
by Jeffrey A. Corkern
by Jeffrey A. Corkern
I walked along the bank of the Mississippi River in dense, confusing fog, rage at the emptiness of existence stabbing in my guts like a red-hot knife.
I picked my way through a formless, surreal landscape of slippery, shifting, shattered rocks, of all shapes and sizes, that rocked and tilted in sudden surprising directions when I stepped on them. Nothing was solid. All was chaotic and fluid. A broken ankle was a random stroke of chance away.
I was alone, as I had always been, always would be, my only security the heavy solidity of the forty-five in my pocket, banging against my hip.
I came upon a dark form, a stranger rendered faceless by the fog.
"Hello," he said. "Who are you?"
"I am Michael Stone. And you?"
"I am," the stranger replied, "Genius Skeptic. Did you know there are no souls?"
"Really?" I asked. "How do we know this?"
"The greatest scientific geniuses in all of history have assured us souls don’t exist."
"I have long suspected as much," I said. "Hmm. If there are no souls, the only rational thing to be is a sociopath."
Genius Skeptic smiled, a streak of white smeared against the blur.
"Such a silly woo," he said.
I looked around carefully. We were utterly alone. I raised my arm and pointed behind Genius Skeptic.
"Look," I said, "behind you. It is the great genius Dawkins himself."
Genius Skeptic turned his back to me to look. I drew the forty-five silent as a ghost, brought the muzzle to the side of his head, and squeezed the trigger. The crack of the round in the fog was flat and lifeless. Red and gray brains pattered like gentle raindrops over the Mississippi's surface. Genius Skeptic pitched forward onto the rocks.
I picked up the spent shell. I looted Genius Skeptic's body and eased him into the river.
A gator rose and drew him under, and Genius Skeptic disappeared, gone, wiped out, vanished, zeroed, ERASED, like he had never been.
I continued on my journey. The knife in my guts twisted and burned. Another faceless stranger rose in the fog.
"Hello," he said, "I am Sternly Rational."
"Hello," I said. "I am Michael Stone. Did you know there are no souls?"
"I do indeed," he said. "All smart and strong people know this. One must pity those who lack the strength to face it, who must take refuge from the Great Emptiness in the delusions of religion."
"My actions are free and unrestricted," I said, and drew my forty-five. "Since I have no immortal soul, I can escape the consequences of my actions."
"What?" Sternly Rational asked in a confused tone. "I don't understand."
"I may do as I wish," I said. "Without an immortal soul, the Universe began when I was born and will end when I die. I am therefore absolutely alone, a Universe of One." I aimed and fired. "Any feeling of connection I might have to the rest of humanity is strictly false and an illusion."
I missed my shot. Instead of smashing his head, I tore Sternly Rational's throat out, a red raw-meat wound like a great gaping mouth slashed open underneath his chin.
Sternly Rational put his hand to his throat and made a gargling sound of terrible surprise. He folded over onto the rocks making wet, bloody sounds.
It wasn't safe to approach. I backed away and sat down to wait while Sternly Rational twitched and jerked. I brooded over the implications and watched a red stream flow into a brown one, bloom out into the water, and fade away. When the flowing stopped, I rose, picked up the spent shell and looted Sternly Rational's body.
I rolled Sternly Rational's flaccid body to the river, tumbling it over the rocks. He went in without a splash.
Another gator rose and pulled him down in a swirl of water and Sternly Rational disappeared, gone, wiped out, vanished, zeroed, ERASED, like he had never been.
I continued my journey, the rage, the fire, building in my guts. The gators followed. Around me, the confusing fog began to lift.
Another faceless stranger appeared in my path. The gators sank out of sight to safety, like the perfect sociopaths they were, to await my gift.
"I am Michael Stone," I said, gripping the forty-five in my pocket. "There are no souls."
"I am Naïve Skeptic," the stranger replied. "Of course there are not. Such a transparently foolish, impossible notion, clearly born out of desperation and fear of death."
"People will soon finally realize what that means," I said. "Killing is smart. A rational thing to do to get what you want."
"Oh, fudge," Naïve Skeptic said. "People would never do such a horrible thing. People are nice."
"People are not nice," I said, and fired. Naïve Skeptic dropped with a little round hole in the front of his head and a big round hole in the back. "People are smart. 'Homo nice' is not what people are. People are Homo sapiens, Homo smart. That's what people are."
I looted Naïve Skeptic's body and dragged him to the river. The gators surfaced like ancient gray submarines, sank their teeth into Naïve Skeptic, and Naïve Skeptic disappeared, gone, wiped out, vanished, zeroed, ERASED, like he had never been.
The gators and I continued our journey. Hot-lava anger coursed through my bones. The fog continued to lift, patches of clear sunlight moving along the rocks.
The gators saw him before I did, submerging beneath the surface, leaving only a ripple behind to betray their presence.
This time, I could see his face, but did not wish to. There was nothing there of value to me.
"I am Michael Stone," I said. "There are no souls, and soon society will dissolve from within, in an overwhelming wave of slaughter, as the realization spreads this means killing is smart."
The stranger smiled in a superior fashion.
"I am Orange Skeptic," he said. "Oh, my friend, no, such an awful thing could never happen, because it would destroy the gene pool."
"The gene pool?" I asked. "Please explain."
"You are suffering from the delusion of free will," Orange Skeptic said. "What you think is consciousness and free will are actually only emergent properties of the non-linear, hypercomplex interactions between your brain cells, which themselves are controlled by the structure of their genetic makeup."
"And this means?"
"It is not what we want that controls our actions, my friend, but what our genes want," Orange Skeptic said. "We are only zombies, controlled by our genes!"
I squeezed the trigger, and Orange Skeptic became Blood-Red Skeptic.
"I had a gene I didn't like once," I said to the corpse, "so I changed it. If I can change my genes, I am controlling my genes. They surely are not controlling me. How incredibly stupid, my friend."
I looted Orange Skeptic's body and gave him to the river. The gators accepted my benison with open mouths. They pulled him under, and Orange Skeptic disappeared, gone, wiped out, vanished, zeroed, ERASED, like he had never been.
I knew I was close to the end of my journey. I and the gators continued on. The fire inside me bubbled and burned in anticipation. The fog lifted. All confusion was gone.
Another stranger, standing balanced on a rock contemplating the river.
"I am Michael Stone," I said. "I have no immortal soul, so the only rational thing I can be is a sociopath."
The stranger turned to face me. The Great Emptiness filled his eyes, like nothing I had ever seen.
"I am Brain-Filled Skeptic," he said. "Precisely true. I have understood that for a very long time now."
"You understand already? I’m not the first?"
"Not even the ten-thousand-and-first," Brain-Filled Skeptic said. "There are many of us who understand, hidden in the shadows and the darkness."
"Check my reasoning, so I can be sure it is right," I said. "Tell me the rest of it."
"Individuals will begin to kill, and kill, and kill as understanding spreads," Brain-Filled Skeptic said. "But that will only be the beginning. Your turn. Can you tell me what comes next, and why?"
"All of society’s members will become sociopaths," I said. "The smarter they are, the quicker they will turn. But sociopaths hate society by definition. A society of sociopaths is a contradiction in terms. Society is going to collapse, violently."
"Yes, we truly understand, you and I," Brain-Filled Skeptic said. "Technology has made it very, very easy to kill. A man can kill with the twitch of a finger on a trigger now. There will be nothing that can stop it. It will be every man for himself. The smart will survive only if they prepare and strike first."
"Tell me," I said, "why are you here?"
"Hunting," Brain-Filled Skeptic said, and moved, but I fired first, and turned Brain-Filled Skeptic into Brain-Less Skeptic, lying at the edge of the river with muddy water lapping into his empty skull.
The gators undulated to the river's edge to get him. I barely had time to loot Brain-Filled Skeptic's body and put the forty-five in his hand. It was a rich haul. He had been having a long, successful hunt. His experience had apparently been exactly like mine. There were many, many fools who couldn’t or wouldn’t understand.
I stepped back and let the gators have him. They yanked him down, and Brain-Filled Skeptic disappeared, gone, wiped out, vanished, zeroed, ERASED, like he had never been.
I tossed the spent shells into the river, severing all connection to the events here, to the past. I exhaled a long breath and took stock of my hour’s journey in the light of my new understanding.
The value gained: Three thousand, five hundred ninety-eight dollars.
The value lost: One forty-five, five shells.
The value of the humans killed: Zero.
I had shown a profit.
That was smart.
"If there are no souls, the only rational thing to be is a sociopath," I whispered to the empty, empty air. "How strange that this is so difficult to see."
But of course, the empty, empty air made no reply.
The anger boiled and erupted inside me with a volcano’s force, rose up through my guts and out my mouth in a primal scream of rage so crystalline and pure it threw my mind reeling and shaking into horror.
And nothing, nothing at all, heard my scream or felt my horror.
I came back from horror knowing what I had to do. I picked myself up and headed away from the river. I fingered the money in my hand. I knew what was coming.
I was going to need another forty-five.
I picked my way through a formless, surreal landscape of slippery, shifting, shattered rocks, of all shapes and sizes, that rocked and tilted in sudden surprising directions when I stepped on them. Nothing was solid. All was chaotic and fluid. A broken ankle was a random stroke of chance away.
I was alone, as I had always been, always would be, my only security the heavy solidity of the forty-five in my pocket, banging against my hip.
I came upon a dark form, a stranger rendered faceless by the fog.
"Hello," he said. "Who are you?"
"I am Michael Stone. And you?"
"I am," the stranger replied, "Genius Skeptic. Did you know there are no souls?"
"Really?" I asked. "How do we know this?"
"The greatest scientific geniuses in all of history have assured us souls don’t exist."
"I have long suspected as much," I said. "Hmm. If there are no souls, the only rational thing to be is a sociopath."
Genius Skeptic smiled, a streak of white smeared against the blur.
"Such a silly woo," he said.
I looked around carefully. We were utterly alone. I raised my arm and pointed behind Genius Skeptic.
"Look," I said, "behind you. It is the great genius Dawkins himself."
Genius Skeptic turned his back to me to look. I drew the forty-five silent as a ghost, brought the muzzle to the side of his head, and squeezed the trigger. The crack of the round in the fog was flat and lifeless. Red and gray brains pattered like gentle raindrops over the Mississippi's surface. Genius Skeptic pitched forward onto the rocks.
I picked up the spent shell. I looted Genius Skeptic's body and eased him into the river.
A gator rose and drew him under, and Genius Skeptic disappeared, gone, wiped out, vanished, zeroed, ERASED, like he had never been.
I continued on my journey. The knife in my guts twisted and burned. Another faceless stranger rose in the fog.
"Hello," he said, "I am Sternly Rational."
"Hello," I said. "I am Michael Stone. Did you know there are no souls?"
"I do indeed," he said. "All smart and strong people know this. One must pity those who lack the strength to face it, who must take refuge from the Great Emptiness in the delusions of religion."
"My actions are free and unrestricted," I said, and drew my forty-five. "Since I have no immortal soul, I can escape the consequences of my actions."
"What?" Sternly Rational asked in a confused tone. "I don't understand."
"I may do as I wish," I said. "Without an immortal soul, the Universe began when I was born and will end when I die. I am therefore absolutely alone, a Universe of One." I aimed and fired. "Any feeling of connection I might have to the rest of humanity is strictly false and an illusion."
I missed my shot. Instead of smashing his head, I tore Sternly Rational's throat out, a red raw-meat wound like a great gaping mouth slashed open underneath his chin.
Sternly Rational put his hand to his throat and made a gargling sound of terrible surprise. He folded over onto the rocks making wet, bloody sounds.
It wasn't safe to approach. I backed away and sat down to wait while Sternly Rational twitched and jerked. I brooded over the implications and watched a red stream flow into a brown one, bloom out into the water, and fade away. When the flowing stopped, I rose, picked up the spent shell and looted Sternly Rational's body.
I rolled Sternly Rational's flaccid body to the river, tumbling it over the rocks. He went in without a splash.
Another gator rose and pulled him down in a swirl of water and Sternly Rational disappeared, gone, wiped out, vanished, zeroed, ERASED, like he had never been.
I continued my journey, the rage, the fire, building in my guts. The gators followed. Around me, the confusing fog began to lift.
Another faceless stranger appeared in my path. The gators sank out of sight to safety, like the perfect sociopaths they were, to await my gift.
"I am Michael Stone," I said, gripping the forty-five in my pocket. "There are no souls."
"I am Naïve Skeptic," the stranger replied. "Of course there are not. Such a transparently foolish, impossible notion, clearly born out of desperation and fear of death."
"People will soon finally realize what that means," I said. "Killing is smart. A rational thing to do to get what you want."
"Oh, fudge," Naïve Skeptic said. "People would never do such a horrible thing. People are nice."
"People are not nice," I said, and fired. Naïve Skeptic dropped with a little round hole in the front of his head and a big round hole in the back. "People are smart. 'Homo nice' is not what people are. People are Homo sapiens, Homo smart. That's what people are."
I looted Naïve Skeptic's body and dragged him to the river. The gators surfaced like ancient gray submarines, sank their teeth into Naïve Skeptic, and Naïve Skeptic disappeared, gone, wiped out, vanished, zeroed, ERASED, like he had never been.
The gators and I continued our journey. Hot-lava anger coursed through my bones. The fog continued to lift, patches of clear sunlight moving along the rocks.
The gators saw him before I did, submerging beneath the surface, leaving only a ripple behind to betray their presence.
This time, I could see his face, but did not wish to. There was nothing there of value to me.
"I am Michael Stone," I said. "There are no souls, and soon society will dissolve from within, in an overwhelming wave of slaughter, as the realization spreads this means killing is smart."
The stranger smiled in a superior fashion.
"I am Orange Skeptic," he said. "Oh, my friend, no, such an awful thing could never happen, because it would destroy the gene pool."
"The gene pool?" I asked. "Please explain."
"You are suffering from the delusion of free will," Orange Skeptic said. "What you think is consciousness and free will are actually only emergent properties of the non-linear, hypercomplex interactions between your brain cells, which themselves are controlled by the structure of their genetic makeup."
"And this means?"
"It is not what we want that controls our actions, my friend, but what our genes want," Orange Skeptic said. "We are only zombies, controlled by our genes!"
I squeezed the trigger, and Orange Skeptic became Blood-Red Skeptic.
"I had a gene I didn't like once," I said to the corpse, "so I changed it. If I can change my genes, I am controlling my genes. They surely are not controlling me. How incredibly stupid, my friend."
I looted Orange Skeptic's body and gave him to the river. The gators accepted my benison with open mouths. They pulled him under, and Orange Skeptic disappeared, gone, wiped out, vanished, zeroed, ERASED, like he had never been.
I knew I was close to the end of my journey. I and the gators continued on. The fire inside me bubbled and burned in anticipation. The fog lifted. All confusion was gone.
Another stranger, standing balanced on a rock contemplating the river.
"I am Michael Stone," I said. "I have no immortal soul, so the only rational thing I can be is a sociopath."
The stranger turned to face me. The Great Emptiness filled his eyes, like nothing I had ever seen.
"I am Brain-Filled Skeptic," he said. "Precisely true. I have understood that for a very long time now."
"You understand already? I’m not the first?"
"Not even the ten-thousand-and-first," Brain-Filled Skeptic said. "There are many of us who understand, hidden in the shadows and the darkness."
"Check my reasoning, so I can be sure it is right," I said. "Tell me the rest of it."
"Individuals will begin to kill, and kill, and kill as understanding spreads," Brain-Filled Skeptic said. "But that will only be the beginning. Your turn. Can you tell me what comes next, and why?"
"All of society’s members will become sociopaths," I said. "The smarter they are, the quicker they will turn. But sociopaths hate society by definition. A society of sociopaths is a contradiction in terms. Society is going to collapse, violently."
"Yes, we truly understand, you and I," Brain-Filled Skeptic said. "Technology has made it very, very easy to kill. A man can kill with the twitch of a finger on a trigger now. There will be nothing that can stop it. It will be every man for himself. The smart will survive only if they prepare and strike first."
"Tell me," I said, "why are you here?"
"Hunting," Brain-Filled Skeptic said, and moved, but I fired first, and turned Brain-Filled Skeptic into Brain-Less Skeptic, lying at the edge of the river with muddy water lapping into his empty skull.
The gators undulated to the river's edge to get him. I barely had time to loot Brain-Filled Skeptic's body and put the forty-five in his hand. It was a rich haul. He had been having a long, successful hunt. His experience had apparently been exactly like mine. There were many, many fools who couldn’t or wouldn’t understand.
I stepped back and let the gators have him. They yanked him down, and Brain-Filled Skeptic disappeared, gone, wiped out, vanished, zeroed, ERASED, like he had never been.
I tossed the spent shells into the river, severing all connection to the events here, to the past. I exhaled a long breath and took stock of my hour’s journey in the light of my new understanding.
The value gained: Three thousand, five hundred ninety-eight dollars.
The value lost: One forty-five, five shells.
The value of the humans killed: Zero.
I had shown a profit.
That was smart.
"If there are no souls, the only rational thing to be is a sociopath," I whispered to the empty, empty air. "How strange that this is so difficult to see."
But of course, the empty, empty air made no reply.
The anger boiled and erupted inside me with a volcano’s force, rose up through my guts and out my mouth in a primal scream of rage so crystalline and pure it threw my mind reeling and shaking into horror.
And nothing, nothing at all, heard my scream or felt my horror.
I came back from horror knowing what I had to do. I picked myself up and headed away from the river. I fingered the money in my hand. I knew what was coming.
I was going to need another forty-five.
END
Last edited:
Can never remember that one. 
