Beep Beep Beep

p Beep

  by Kevin Kimmich

  (c) Kevin Kimmich 2016

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  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  An interview circulated YouTube a few weeks after they were buried. By the time I watched, it had 120 million views and every day millions more watched. It was the only thing people all over the world were watching and talking about.

  The set for the interview was simple and cheap. Two guys, both in their late twenties, both nerdy, sat on folding chairs against a black backdrop, which seemed to be a king sized bed sheet.

  Both men were thoughtful. Their eyes were sad. They wore name tags, Steve and Raj. Steve was an American man who wore black rimmed glasses and had a thick mop of curly hair. He was wearing a red T-Shirt that had the word “SCIENCE” on it and a pair of cargo shorts with fraying cuffs. His skinny arms were covered in coarse black hair. He was barefoot on the stage, and his sandals were under the chair. Raj was a tall, skinny Indian guy with dark black hair, and a prominent nose and a weak jaw. He wore an outfit that would have been in fashion in the 90s grunge scene. He wore dark jeans, a white T-shirt and a yellow and black flannel shirt.

  The interviewer didn’t appear on camera. He was reading from a script, mostly, with only an occasional unscripted follow up question.

  “Can you tell us how it started?” he began.

  Raj and Steve looked at each other, and Steve spoke first. “We were astronomy postdocs at Caltech, and we were in DC for a conference. We study near-earth objects: space junk, asteroids, meteors. We were working on a tracking system that would use an array of cubesats, little cheap satellites, to scan the heavens for potentially dangerous objects, and we were presenting a paper when we were first approached…”

  Raj’s brow furrowed, “A man, probably in the British intelligence service had a proposition. He asked if we would be willing to fake a sighting of a dangerous object. He claimed it was for national security purposes.”

  Steve jumped in, “But the dude was like a walking talking pile of weird creepiness. He exuded a real psycho vibe, so we said no.”

  Raj continued, “Then, that night at the hotel bar another guy, this one who claimed to be in the CIA--he actually showed us an employee badge--caught up to us and he said he had a plan.”

  Steve smiled, “His name was Rick Martinsen. He said there was a scheme underway to fake an impending asteroid collision and it would be used as a pretext to reset the financial system and really shaft every single person in the western world on behalf of bankers.”

  The interviewer asked, “How would that happen?”

  Raj smiled, “We asked that too. He explained the nuts and bolts of how it would all go down, but honestly, most of it went over our heads. Basically, they were going to steal everything by printing new money against it all. It was just pure and simple theft by people who do nothing, who produce nothing.”

  Steve continued, “Anyway, Rick went rogue. He wanted no part in their crime. He realized it was a moment in time where he could completely flip the script, so that’s what he did. He needed our help.”

  Raj clarified, “So, rather than help that British guy hurt the common man, we could work with Rick to help the common man.”

  The interviewer made a low, grunting sound. “So let me get this straight,” he said, “You were approached by two intelligence service operatives on the same day: one bad, and, excuse me if I sound skeptical, one good? Why did you believe Rick?”

  Raj said, “Well, we didn’t believe Rick either, at first. We were skeptics too. It actually took a couple of weeks of convincing and fact checking by us before we got on board.”

  Steve took a big breath, “Rick gave us a really compelling history of the United States from the other side’s point of view. The view behind the curtain. For many decades of our national history, the country lived in a real sort of splendid isolation. The nation could have continued down that path. The western hemisphere could have been a sort of enormous multi-continent Switzerland, but we got infiltrated and sucked into European great game wars and politics. That continues through today: the endless middle east wars, conflicts with Russia, and so on...”

  Raj jumped in, “The thing that really got to me is how the resources and population of entire continents are put in the service of this tiny handful of gangsters… Rick’s remedy for this problem was so doable that I had to at least try to make it work.”

  Steve pointed at the interviewer for emphasis. “This is the most important part: that group of people that promotes war, that indulges in these violent games is tiny. It numbers in just the hundreds, here in the United States, and in the thousands around the world…”

  Raj almost vibrated with excitement. He said, “And the most amazing part is: it’s genetic.”

  The interviewer asked, “What’s genetic.”

  Raj smiled broadly, “Sorry, that was cryptic. Rick gave us evidence that these people are all related. It was a highly classified report that documented DNA testing on hundreds of these people: Crony billionaire businessmen, government officials, the royals, and so on. They’re all cousins.”

  Steve gave the interviewer a dog eared copy of the document. The video switched to a voiceover discussion of the contents of the document. The stunning conclusion was in bold type on the screen:

  “DNA shows the ancestors of this assay passed through a very narrow population bottleneck in the remote past. The group appears to have survived a difficult time only by incorporating the genes of a common gut parasite--the tapeworm--into their genome, and then began to to prey upon their own species.”

  The video returned to the interview, and the off-camera interviewer whistled and said, “Wow. That’s amazing.”

  Steve continued, “We actually met with the author of that paper before we were completely convinced.”

  “How did they collect all that DNA?” the interviewer asked. He sounded skeptical.

  Raj answered, “They accumulated samples over the years. The guy who wrote that paper worked in a government lab. It was actually a vanity project for many of the people we buried; they wanted to show how great they are, trace their ancestry back to Moses, Jesus or David or whatever fictional character.” He waved his hand dismissively and rolled his eyes.

  The interviewer interjected, “How did Rick get the paper?”

  Steve replied, “It was his friend from…. well, that he knew. The genetics researcher prefers to stay anonymous.”

  The interviewer got straight to the point, “So why was this paper so important in your decision?”

  Raj replied, “It showed that the world’s chaos and violence is not the result of scarcity, or human nature--it is a genetic disease. It is literally a parasite in human form. It’s not widespread, either.”

  Steve interjected, “Right. Absolutely. The world’s problems are not intractable. Imagine all the so called great men of history sitting around an ornate table in an ornate room, dividing up the world. Making misery on behalf of their tapeworm DNA. In light of that paper, the solution to that proble
m is so obvious.”

  They painted the picture and thought the interviewer understood. They were both quiet and just looked at him off camera.

  “I’m sorry, what’s the solution?” He asked, being purposely stupid.

  They said in unison, “Chain the fucking doors!” The three laughed.

  “So that’s what you did!” the interviewer said.

  The camera pulled back and Rick Martinsen walked in from the left of the shot. He shook hands with the interviewer and patted Raj on the shoulder as he sat down. Rick wore slacks and a white polo shirt. He had short brown hair that was streaked with gray. He was toned and in decent shape, and had a deep tan.

  The interviewer asked, “Rick, how did this all get started? It seems to unlikely.”

  Rick explained, “It was really a case of serendipity. I had just been assigned to a false flag project--it was codenamed Ragnarok--about a month after my friend gave me that document.” He pointed at the genetics report. “Ragnarok was just in the conceptual stages at the time. It was a scheme to create worldwide chaos by claiming it was the end of the world. Financiers would use the ensuing chaos to launch a massive heist. I realized the scheme could be used against these people. I knew they had underground bases and would go there if they felt threatened, so I launched my own version of it.”

  Steve said matter of factly, “Beep Beep Beep.”

  “Why that name?” The interviewer asked.

  Rick said, “The sound of trucks backing up to dump dirt.”

  Raj sneered, “and garbage.”

  Rick said, “The amazing thing is it wasn’t that hard. Once people understood, they were onboard. It only took a few weeks.”

  “So it was a conspiracy?” the interviewer asked with a tone of accusation in his voice.

  “Sure it was.” Rick said. “We devised the plan to try to minimize the damage. We tried to keep the phony news of the asteroid secret, that is confined to the circles of the people we buried.”

  Steve put a hand over his eyes and sighed, “but it did spill out into the public.”

  Rick looked pained, “It did… and there was some chaos and people were hurt, but at least as far as I know, nobody was killed. I hope not.”

  The interviewer interjected, “We’re getting ahead of ourselves. So how did you convince them, the former ‘they’. The puppet masters pulling the strings of the world. How did you convince them to go underground.”

  Rick said, “We coordinated astronomers around the world to say an asteroid was going to impact in the Canadian arctic wilderness. We concocted observations and reports and we disclosed it in ultimate secrecy to governments around the world. As expected, they chose to keep the information secret and went underground.”

  The interviewer sighed, “Then they were buried… That’s harsh, right?”

  The three men looked at eachother, ashamed. Rick spoke up, “Yes. Yes. Not just men, but their families too.”

  Steve said, “Children… Pets.”

  Raj added, “But remember, the people who are currently buried in their shelters have piled up millions of bodies over the years.”

  Rick said, “And if we’re wrong, they can be unburied while those they murdered cannot.”

  There was a long pause, and the interviewer said in a scolding tone, “But there are reports that they almost immediately resorted to cannibalism even with years of supplies in stock.”

  Steve said, “It’s as if their confinement triggered some genetic program. Apparently in England the only survivors in the Royals’ underground base are Kate Middleton and the Queen. They already murdered and ate everyone else and are now stalking each other.”

  Rick said, “Perhaps the most amazing aspect of the plan was how very few people tried to unbury them. People felt it. Felt the liberation immediately.”

  The interview went on for an hour, and concluded with the three waving at the camera and just walking off the set.

  In the months after the burying the world was a transformed. Many were comparing the conditions to a new Renaissance, though that was a vast understatement. It was as if mankind, en masse, recovered from an ages old multi-generational flu.

  Epochs of delusions just fell away. Entire fields of human endeavor which once served the bloody bureaucratic machine were obviated. Taxes were abolished. The psyops that clogged people’s minds, all the dumb entertainment that distracted them, almost all the divisive plotting and scheming that wasted their energy was gone. All the institutions that corralled, herded, and fed on them fell apart.

  Most strange was that people noticed a corresponding change in the Sun and the quality of his light. The harsh white hot sun seemed to mellow into a sort of contented yellow, though scientists could not record any change in its spectral or chemical composition.