PRELUDE
John Carter smelled a rat. Maybe, it was more than one. Despite the attempts of the over-worked technicians to find the deceased rodents in the ventilation system, John sat at his desk smelling death warmed over and over. John wished he was warm. He had asked for a portable heater to place under his desk to help counter the winter air of the Pacific Northwest that too easily infiltrated the old NORAD facility. He was told that his heater was being held up by Sequestration. He was told he was freezing because Republicans were unbalanced. He was also told that he was going to die due to global warming. The rat population had exploded with the return of humans to the facility carved into and beneath a mountain. It had been a terrible idea to put out the poison. The rats were dying in the most inaccessible areas of the complex. Dead varmints had become less accessible in the complex contructions of Man as the thoughts of every man had become more accessible to the State. John gave a furtive glance at the ceiling-mounted security camera. Some thoughts were poison.
For the 15th day in a row John had a working lunch. He consumed a sandwich and a 16 ounce soda. He had wanted a Big Gulp but that was verboten. As he ate, he pondered over the photograph taken by an Air Force KH-12 spy satellite. It was the best picture of Hammer taken during its flyby. John was being pressured to come around to the opinion of his cohorts that the markings on Hammer were an illusion created by light and shadow. He was about ready to sign on to their opinion when he received an envelope that was stamped State Secrets. Included in the envelope was an email.
Someone who had used the email moniker of Hippobelly to try to protect his or her identity from the State had written an email that had been intercepted by the National Emails Reconnaissance and Destruction System (NERDS). In this email, Hippobelly had claimed discovery of a message hidden in the infrasonic noise of Sickle prior to its explosion over Russia. Had Hippobelly been right? A Hellfire missile from a drone had made sure that Hippobelly wouldn't be right in the future. The thought of the word Hellfire caused John to shudder, or was it his numb feet? All the recipients of that email were now on the Drone Engagement And Defense (DEAD) list. It was obvious that Hippobelly had discovered something important.
John collected his thoughts with pencil and paper. Using a computer was out of the question. He wrote in a cipher that he had created. If an OSS (Obama's Selective Service) agent performed an embarrassing patdown on him similar to patdowns used by TSA, the agent would find his paper but wouldn't be able to read it. John had already thought out what he would say in such a circumstance. "How do you like my poem, officer? I'm trying my best to emulate the style of our dear leader. Have you ever read his poem Underground? Absolutely wonderful! The poem illustrates the TRUE genius of Zeus. If you've never read it, you can easily google "Obama's poem Underground" and find it."
Of course, John knew the OSS agent wouldn't have the intellectual curiosity to google anything. The agent was crapping on police cars at Occupy Wall Street one day, sticking it to the Man, and the next day he was the Man, making 10 bucks an hour and getting Obamacare. At the average age of an OSS agent, Obamacare was as good as it got. The ages of OSS agents were on the apex of the bell curve found in the directive Emanuel's Age Tables on Metabolic Energy (EAT ME). John sang under his breath to an old Beatle's melody, Will you still feed me or will you eat me when I'm 64!
The response of the agent would be something like, "Are you crazy, Carter? You best be careful Googling about our Dear Leader. It might get you a cell next to that maker of a Youtube video that caused those deaths in Benghazi. Take your poem and get back to work serving the State."
Hippobelly's email was the piece of a puzzle that finished a picture in John’s mind that had been developing for weeks. Hammer and Sickle weren’t just some cosmic coincidence. The asteroid and meteor were harbingers of some apocalyptic event that would rock Mankind. As a NASA physicist who had been working on a teleportation technology for space exploration, John could take disparate data and develop a reasonable hypothesis. The hypothesis he now believed was based on the following data he had written down in cipher:
1. For the first time in 600 years, a pope had resigned his office. Why?
2. The asteroid Hammer had perturbed the orbits of six GPS satellites and caused relativistic errors in the satellites' atomic clocks.
3. Any GPS receiver located in the Bible Belt of America and using these six satellites was now calculating a position in San Francisco.
4. Motorists with GPS receivers, upon hearing they were in San Francisco, were experiencing uncontrollable gnashing of teeth and self-inflicted blows to the head with a cellphone. Why?
5. Zeus's popularity soared despite disparaging people from small towns for "clinging" to their religion. Why, why, why?
6. The infrasonic sound made by the meteor Sickle's flight through the atmosphere had caused elephants in Africa to stampede and kill a Christian missionary group, while seeming to tiptoe around a group of Islamic jihadist radicals. Were these slow-running Christians or were the elephants under some demonic influence?
7. Women in Russia were swearing lifelong allegiance to Valdimir Putin after he claimed the sonic booms created by Sickle were really just him completing World record weightlifting snatches. Was he shirtless again?
8. The late Hippobelly claimed Zeus was the Antichrist. Was Hippobelly crazy?
9. There was the photograph of Hammer with the markings that were not a trick of light and shadow. The number 666 was carved into the asteroid.
CHAPTER 1
John Carter of Mars : Carter Teleports to Mars to Escape the Incessant, Unctuous Public Outings of Zeus and Hera
(to be continued)
Glossary
unctuous: characterized by excessive piousness or moralistic fervor, especially in an affected manner; excessively smooth, suave, or smug. The perfect word for the Obamas.
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