In the Next Life, Canto I, stanzas 87-105 revised

Now we’ll say you’re in charge of those who guard
the systems that deliver things up high.
Quite suddenly, your task has gotten hard.
This is the most important thing to fly.

You’re not expecting sabotage, of course;
your chief concern is theft of isotopes.
A lunatic would not know how to force
the failure of a job like this (one hopes).

So here you are: The launch is in a week.
Tomorrow the deuterium arrives.
A bunch of nuts comes swimming up the creek,
equipped with lineman’s pliers and pocket knives.

They’re brought before you, heretofore unhurt.
with hesitant defiance in each eye
Within each wetsuit is a printed shirt:
“The world will end real soon, and you may die”.

At first they try to claim they just got lost.
They meant to snorkel up another stream.
You have to have the truth at any cost.
Sometimes the answers might be what they seem.

Persuaded to reveal their true intent,
they say all humans merit being fried.
Beyond that, you have clues that they were sent
as cover for shenanigans inside.

So when an unnamed caller leaves a tip
that some employees plan a little raid,
you cancel reservations for their trip.
You find the damage, and repairs are made.

That would have happened had the plot gone well.
Your limited resources would be where
you found an intrigue and the schemers fell,
while something could be done that wasn’t there.

What really happens is you get two calls.
Two puzzle pieces weren’t where they belong.
Two groups of evil traitors take two falls.
The launch goes full ahead with nothing wrong.

If you were in the story in that role,
you’d never know what made these people spin
or how they harbored such a dreadful goal.
You’d only know they turned each other in.

You’d find out where they go and what they do.
Their lives would be your business from now on.
Their history and motives, though, to you
would be a mystery forever gone.

When you apprised your boss of what you’d heard,
you didn’t hear him as he fumed and stormed,
or know he was about to give you word
that he himself had just been so informed.

He couldn’t very well confirm the plot
because he didn’t know which one you knew.
He couldn’t tell you both because he thought
the one you didn’t know could still go through.

Your boss was to decide which team got nabbed.
Each unit had a fifty-fifty chance,
but both teams in the dorsal zone got stabbed
before your boss could kick one in the pants.

The fifty-fifty part they could accept
as long as the percentage stayed the same,
but once they thought the deal had not been kept,
they did not feel obliged to play the game.

So, whence the notion that the odds had changed?
Team A believed Team B was like Team A,
Team B believed the same, but rearranged,
and both extrapolated either way.

With perfect trust, the line would stay amid,
but nothing’s like that, and the slightest shift
will feed upon itself the way it did.
A gap in faith will widen to a rift.

The other guys are thinking much like us
while we are thinking, “Why not jump the gun?”
and we think that they’re thinking this way, thus
we do unto before we’re unto done.

Preemptively responding in reverse,
proactively reacting to the threat,
we’re all sure that the other guys are worse.
If we would do it, they would, you can bet.


©2010, 2016 Louis A. Merrimac

In the Next Life, Canto I, stanzas 80-86 revised

Though far-fetched is the motive of our friends,
they hear of one that’s more peculiar yet.
Some people think it’s time our journey ends
based on their research through the Internet.

The voice that calls these folks is old and Greek—
a dean of mathematical affairs.
I’m sure you’ve heard of him of whom I speak
for something like the summing of the squares

Not only a good numbers man was he,
with theorems on triangles and such;
he spread his general philosophy
by preaching with a charismatic touch.

The years the faithful number since he died
because he differed from his fellow men
are that which they can evenly divide
by all the integers from one to ten.

Okay, I know you must be thinking, “Cripes,
this isn’t math, it’s numerology.”
Well, nobody said arithmetic types
are all completely rational like me.

Is their “Divisiblism” any worse
in essence than avoidance of thirteen?
Or saying a cashier invoked a curse
because three sixes line up on a screen?

Those other superstitions have not led
like this one, to a plot to postpone dawn,
but if our Mission's founders had not said
“Let’s hit the gas,” these geese would not have gone.


©2010, 2016 Louis A. Merrimac

In the Next Life, Canto I, stanzas 58-79 revised

So Project SIRE’s delivered as replanned,
with little notice given of the birth,
and few will know for what the letters stand:
Survival In Rejuvenated Earth.

A couple pesky journalists protest,
but most have been conditioned to such waste.
What’s underwater can’t hold interest
with human copulation more the taste.

The founders know, however, that they can’t
rely indefinitely on their source.
They’ve built a most impressive cart, I’ll grant.
To pull it, though, they’ll need a mighty horse.

You see the rub: They have no guarantee
that they’ll have something to which to respond
unless they do what seems (at least, to me)
unthinkably immoral and beyond.

It seems that they can save what they esteem
if the event they’re certain is a threat
occurs before the light falls on their scheme.
To douse a flame, it must be burning yet.

Would it be right to throw a little spark
onto the pyre? Would they be justified?
Would it be worth some centuries of dark,
a hidden candle’s shelter to provide?

That someone would consider such an act
reminds me of the power of a thought.
It struggles for existence when attacked.
That’s animal behavior, I was taught.

Now, don’t infer a lack of self-control.
They know the cost and what they can afford.
Like you and me, they calculate the toll.
Like us, they measure risk and seek reward.

For all incentive systems to perform,
we need something to want or to eschew.
With critters, pain and pleasure are the norm.
As humans, we have moral values, too.

When one of these yet ill-defined things grows
to where some feel they lack the strength to opt,
we still blame those who hold it, for they chose
to let it move them, and they could have stopped.

But stop they not, and after some delay,
a few of them drop hesitating hints.
Some others listen; some express dismay.
They all come to, but guess what happens since.

Before they get a chance to try their hand
at tricking politicians to the brink,
a comet is discovered that will land
on Earth. We’re dying sooner than we think!

The founders are ecstatic when they hear.
They hadn’t really planned the whole thing through,
and this way, they’ve no punishment to fear.
The comet’s dust cloud will be cleaner, too.

The comet won’t receive its spotter’s name.
Astronomers have simplified that job,
though some suspect it’s merely out of shame
at having one that sounds so like ‘Hail, “Bob”!’

A letter and a numeral have we
to catalogue this ball of rock and ice.
The ‘J’ is for some mythic deity;
the ‘1’ must be an ordinal device.

So, will the founders have an easy go?
Not if someone can change the comet’s course.
The loop includes some founders, so they know
‘twill take a lot of raw atomic force.

The nation-states can scrape up some of that,
but to be sure, they’ll want to send it all,
and even though each power’s thought a rat
by others in the club, they make the call.

Accordingly, a plan is drawn in haste
to gather all the nukes from ’round the globe.
Some weather satellites will be displaced.
As well, a would-be astronomic probe.

I guess the founders aren’t so off-the-hook.
It’s probable that J-1 will be beat.
If they’re to clinch the deal, it starts to look
like they are back to practicing deceit.

It won’t be easy, too, despite their pull.
A billion eyes are watching every move.
Not only is this campaign wonderful;
we’re goners should it unsuccessful prove.

The founders in the program are but ten.
This ploy will need a larger enterprise.
They cannot try recruiting strangers when
the payment would be everyone’s demise.

Once more, our group has to manipulate
another one. The present set of dupes
can share their goal: most lives to extirpate.
Once more, our plot jumps through some flaming hoops.

©2010, 2016 Louis A. Merrimac