Altruists
By: George Right
"Yes, you can certainly talk to them in private," said Dr. Peters.
"They are not aggressive in the least, and all of them will tell you
about the things they did - not without a certain pleasure, I might add.
They all think that they were doing their duty."
"In that case they must be angry at society, which has treated them
so unjustly."
"They've gotten used to it. After all, our clinic is better than
jail or the electric chair."
"That means that they actually did commit all those crimes?"
"Absolutely correct."
1
A thin and stooping young man with pale, slightly asymmetrical
features introduced himself: "I am John Baer. You know why I’m here, of
course."
"In general terms, yes."
"And you want to know why I did it?"
I nodded.
"Is the name of Christopher Stone familiar to you?"
"Naturally. Even though I’m not an expert in physics, they say that
his theory is just about the most significant event in the field in the
past half century."
"At the very least! I am a specialist, so you can take my word for
it. Stone was my old comrade - we went to college together. Of course, I
can’t compare with him; as a man devoid of ambition, I can freely admit
that there are thousands and thousands of people like me in physics.
However, Stone is a genius of the kind that is born once every two
hundred years. He’s still so young, but look at what he’s already
achieved. Incidentally, I was one of the first to realize that he’s not
simply talented, but that his brain is a treasure of the whole human
civilization. However, like most geniuses, he is defenseless before this
vulgar, vile and empty world, so I decided that I will try in every way
to protect him from sinking in this swamp of mediocrity. I may not have
done anything for science, but I will have saved Stone for it. For a
certain period of time I managed to solve various small everyday
problems that baffled him. Everything went well, until I noticed that my
friend had started paying attention to women. Alas! Some lousy hormones,
some pitiful animal needs, were having an increasing influence on this
wonderful brain. His thoughts turned to this unworthy subject. He told
me himself that instead of working, he could entertain romantic
daydreams for hours on end. Naturally, soon a concrete object appeared
which became the center of those dreams. My friend was absolutely
unprepared for struggle - he gave up without a fight, and fell head over
heels in love. It broke my heart to watch how this brilliant man could
abandon his formulas and calculations and prattle absolute nonsense on
the phone for hours, with the blissful smile of an imbecile. He had to
be saved. Since it was useless to try and work on him, I began with his
object of desire from the start. His first girl, a fairly primitive
creature, didn’t give me many problems: pretty soon I found her a guy
with the muscles of a dinosaur and an intellect to match, and Stone got
the brush. He suffered for a while, then started working with tripled
energy. However, after a certain time, everything started over again.
Object Number 2 gave me a lot more trouble. The problem was that as
opposed to the first one, she shared his feelings and didn’t want anyone
else. I was forced to plant distrust between them. I wove a web of
intrigues worthy of a Shakespearean villain, turning misunderstanding
into intent and slander into truth. Christopher still remembered his
first defeat, and the seeds of doubt fell on fertile soil. Finally, I
got what I wanted - it was all over between them. For a rather long time
afterwards Stone thought about nothing but science. However, Object
Number 3 finally appeared. This was an insane passion, against which I
was powerless. Stone practically abandoned physics. Worse than that, he
had started to suspect that all the intrigues against his beloveds
emanated from me. I had only one last option. I went to her and came
clean. I explained to her that she didn’t have the right to claim that
which belonged to science and the human civilization. I asked, I begged
her to find another man. When I realized that it was all in vain, I
killed her."
"But you didn’t just kill her. Thirty-eight stab wounds, multiple
fractures, finally, scalping…"
"This was meant to finally wake Stone up. When, during
identification, instead of his beauty he saw a hideous bloody mess, he
got an immunity for life."
"You weren’t afraid that Stone wouldn’t be able to bear it, that he
would go insane, become a drunk?"
"No, by then I had already studied Stone well enough. He threw
himself into work, he worked like never before. The result was his
theory, and believe me, this is just the beginning."
"But didn’t it ever cross your mind that you didn’t have the right
to take charge of his destiny?"
"Stone doesn’t belong to himself, his brain is too great a
treasure. He belongs to civilization."
"Are you certain that there will be no more women in Stone’s life?"
"Maybe there will - small flirts, unable to distract him from the
most important thing. In his lover’s bed he will be thinking about
physics."
"Do you regret the fact that you ended up here as a result of all
this?"
"I’d say not. In this place I have a decent room, the food is good,
there is a nice park, I can receive books and magazines and watch
television. In theory I could even continue my studies in theoretical
physics, but it would be meaningless. I cannot do any more for science
than I already did."
2
Walter Teeny’s looks had a certain similarity to Baer’s, although
he was shorter. Apparently, he had already been told about this
similarity, which was reinforced by some common elements in his case,
and that’s why he hurriedly tried to distance himself from my previous
interlocutor.
"I haven’t killed anyone," said Teeny, "And I am generally opposed
to murder, although Baer does have a point. Man’s hypertrophied sex
drive is the tragedy of homo sapiens as a biological species. No other
species on this planet has sexual needs which so far exceed the level
needed for reproduction. The animals are in the throes of this instinct
during brief mating periods, man - during practically all of his
conscious life. What kind of follies and crimes have people not
committed for lust? What effort have they spared to ennoble this lowly
need? Sadly, humanity is not inclined to struggle against it, although I
am convinced, that the time will come and people will reject this
insanity, the same way that they first rejected walking around on all
fours, and then cannibalism. Naturally, this requires a restructuring of
the human organism which is currently impossible for modern science. But
we can use not only physiological, but also psychological methods in our
struggle. By the way, I am not at all inclined to blame women for
everything: both sexes are the victims of nature’s injustice, both have
their cattle that are unworthy of a better fate, and both have their
valuable specimens, which need to be freed from their ruinous passions.
I spent some time reading special literature, from which I found out
that women are more prone to be influenced by psychological factors, and
that a strong shock can destroy their sexuality. It’s considered to be a
misfortune for them, but this is a silly prejudice, imprinted in their
consciousness by centuries of sexual slavery and social discrimination.
These days more and more women abandon the primitive role of the female,
and compete with men in business, government, and science. This way I
came to the conclusion that the best favor that one can do to an
intelligent girl with good chances for a career would be to rape her in
the most rude, filthy and repugnant way possible, so that the mere
thought of sex started to revolt her."
"From theory you went on to practice."
"Yes. I studied the first candidate for a long time, in order to
decide whether she was worth the while, or whether it would be better to
leave her in the usual animal state. Many candidates were weeded out
this way. I carried out my plan on five. I won’t describe to you what I
did with them - it was revolting. Don’t think that I received pleasure
from it - I was disgusted myself. I was right in my calculations: the
first four never went to the police. Now they are still cursing me, but
after a certain time they will understand that I was right. I
overestimated the fifth one, and she reported me."
"If it hadn’t happened, would you have continued?"
"Of course, even though I had already acquired a healthy repugnance
toward what I was doing, and in the end, I think, it would have forced
me to stop."
"Are you happy that you ended up here, and not in jail?"
"Naturally. I’m not even speaking about the conditions, and what
kind of a community awaited me in jail? As for this place, incidentally,
there are no cretins or schizophrenics here, most patients are people
with higher education. You can meet some extremely interesting
individuals. Professor Schwartzenberg, for example - compared with what
he planned, every genocide in history would have looked like a minor
incident, and yet he calls himself a humanist."
3
A renowned microbiologist, the 60-year-old professor Friedrich
Schwartzenberg seemed to be less inclined to talk than my previous
interlocutors.
"But you’re not a microbiologist," he said, "you won’t even be able
to appreciate the grandiosity of my final work, which they never even
allowed me to complete."
"Who never allowed you?"
"It was all my assistant, the greenhorn, the wannabe. He guessed
what was at the core of my research."
"What was it, then?"
"I created a new illness, compared to which the black death is no
more dangerous than tonsillitis. The bacilli which I grew exceed
anything created by natural evolution. No more than 3 hours pass from
the beginning of the illness till the patient’s death. My bacilli also
lead to a very fast decomposition of the corpse and have an extremely
fast reproduction rate. Although in certain cases the immune system of
the person manages to kill the illness in the embryonic stage, the
probability of this is not very high. The mortality rate is 98-99%."
"And what did you plan to do with all this?"
"To break the vials in major international airports, train
stations, to simply throw them out on city streets. In several hours,
foci of the illness would have spread all over the world. Further on, a
pandemis would have took place, the extent of which would have made any
counter-measures impossible. It would have lasted for 2-3 weeks, after
which it would have ended by itself, because of the disappearance of
carriers."
"You’re saying, that all of humanity…"
"Except the 1-2% that I mentioned."
"But why?!"
"Young man, you of course know about the global crisis of
civilization. Regional wars go on everywhere, and there is no guarantee
that a world war won’t break out. The biosphere is poisoned. The changes
in climate are becoming irreversible. Millions of people suffer from
hunger. The level of culture is falling. The value of human life keeps
diminishing.
You are probably familiar with the basics of economics, and you
know that crises are triggered by the over-saturation of the market by a
certain product. The product’s price falls catastrophically, and
everyone suffers. Well, this is precisely what happened with people.
Their uncontrolled reproduction has led to an increasingly severe
crisis, after which there will be an inevitable degradation. Did you
know that now, most people are already genetically flawed? But the
problem lies not only in biology, not only in the exorbitant,
ecologically destructive industry growth, and the inability of the Earth
to feed such a mass. The important thing is that, as I already said,
human life has devalued, devalued like any merchandise of which there is
an excess. What humanism, what love toward your neighbor can you talk
about in this throng, in the stifling jungles of our cities, where
everyone is on their own, where the reigning principle is homo homini
lupus est? In an oversaturated world, instead of love between people
there is first indifference, and then - enmity and hatred. Sadly, it has
gone too far, and people must be saved from themselves."
"But you wanted to leave only one-and-a-half percent of them
alive!"
"Do not forget that it makes around 100 million people, the
population of a fairly large country. Naturally, all of these people
would have been from different nations all over the world. No national
or racial selection. It would be the end of the filth of politics, the
super-powers who dictate their will to the world, governments,
officials, financiers and trans-national corporations. Every person
would be able to live the way he wants to. The pandemic would have
brought back the idea of the preciousness of human life, the purity of
feelings and relationships."
"But did you think about the suffering of the billions that you
condemned to die?"
"The diseased feels nothing until he becomes dizzy, and then he
loses consciousness and never regains it. His death is practically
instant and painless."
"But the horror of those two weeks?"
"It is no worse than the horror of many years in the conditions of
a deepening crisis."
"Don’t you think that the rotting of so many corpses will poison
nature?"
"Oh, when a human being is not armed with a chemical factory or a
nuclear bomb, he cannot truly poison nature. As I already said, the
decomposition takes place very fast. Naturally, large cities with their
hypertrophied, already unneeded in the new world industry will be unfit
for living for a certain amount of time. People will have abandoned
their stuffy concrete labyrinths and would have started living on the
earth, in small settlements, in harmony with nature and with each
other."
"Aren’t you afraid that the remnants of humanity would have turned
wild, and civilization would have perished forever?"
"No, it would have simply been rid of harmful excesses."
"Your research is now in the hands of the government?"
"Apparently, yes. Although I don’t think that they will ever dare
to use it for military ends, for in that case they will inevitably
perish themselves."
"But what if a vaccine were found?"
"That is extremely unlikely."
"But didn’t you create one for yourself?"
Schwartzenberg gave me a contemptuous glance.
"Young man, who do you think I am? I didn’t think about myself, but
about the salvation of humanity. I am an altruist."
"Well, what do you think?" inquired doctor Peters.
"This was strange. Your patients’ reasoning has a certain amount of
logic. Although I have read somewhere that madmen can be very
convincing."
"Want to hear a little secret?" the doctor suddenly asked. "Only
keep in mind that I will deny everything, just in case. Well, these
people…" He made a pause, "They are absolutely normal."
I stared at him in amazement.
"Then why won’t you hand them over to justice?"
"You see," grinned Peters, stroking his beard, "I am also, in a
certain sense of the word… an altruist."
Translation: Arsen Azizyan
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