Chapter 8: Editor's note

Dear Harry the Human Readers,

I am the unofficial editor of Harry's writings.  He sends them to me (as he did last week from South Korea) and I post them.  As you'll see (or have seen) in chapters 6 and 7, Harry and his new partners Anthony Roberts and Gregory (whose ideas run the world in 2044)  were undergoing severe mental stress from the bombardment of their psyches by telepathic waves from secret government agencies discovered by Harry to be developing telepathy as a weapon.  Harry has been leading the way for the small movement towards a rational humanity with invaluable intel concerning the global war we're being talked into, maintaining, in brief, that the manipulators' goal is that people think the war is their idea.  Now, however, the perpetrators have picked up Harry & Co.'s mental signatures and have taken counter-measures:  testing out a new weapon they call a "hallucitropic missile" (or "hassle") fired right out of people's heads, that can implant entire fictive scenarios in its victims.  The hassle attack on our three heroes was a partial success, causing them to believe for a time that what the world thinks is the country of North Korea is in fact a secret lab for the relatively small group of technocrats and billionaires who are plotting World War III, and Harry actually traveled to South Korea to follow what he thought was a hot tip.   The goal of the hassle attack, Harry says, was twofold: to shame him and his friends by publicly associating them with a crackpot idea (after which none of their non-crackpot ideas would get a hearing) as well as to, as much as possible, destroy their souls with sensations of failure and futility.  This last part worked pretty well in the case of Harry, who became disoriented and delusional in South Korea and needed assistance from his crew.  Harry is back on his feet now (he's a resilient character) and is in an airplane as I write, heading to a destination which it would be wise not to reveal.   I will say that Harry is following a trail left by the hassle attack.

With Harry's permission I decided to fill in Harry's report today with two poems he sent me last week. We hope you enjoy them.

D.L.

One sin too many

One sin too many

tipped the scales,

mortality, not life

prevails.

For Eve, you know

just couldn't wait,

the female hunger

hard to sate.

The serpent eyed her

thinking how

he'd transfer all his weakness now:

The weakness of not wanting much

the weakness of

his cold dark touch.

Take this, he hissed,

God won't be pissed;

the obedient creature

is seldom missed.

Eve was not sure

and for a while

thought this is naughty,

not my style.

But then she thought

our life is hard in

this infernally pleasant

garden;

God must know

that stories need

a conflict

for the mind to heed.

Thus did the serpent

choose most fit

she who knew

before she bit

The fleshy fruit

raised to her jaw,

the story is our god's,

she saw.

And Adam

more prone to be led

saw the truth of what she said.

Swallowing hard

he looked about

in mortal fear

he turned to shout:

"Oh no! We're in

the story line,

we'll have to be interesting,

not devine!"

Creation's ratings, now assured,

though we'd rather not have any,

We wonder, should we have demurred

before one sin too many?

Extreme Friendliness Disorder

Sitting with Snaffles in the vet's waiting room

I read Bark magazine  

and wonder if we could call

New Yorker magazine Speak?

And it seems the domestic dog originated

in the Middle East, not Asia,

but Williams Syndrome, bringing the curse of

Extreme Friendliness Disorder

is traceable, can be seen in dog genes.

Bark does not deal, I think, in irony,

in sadness.

Domestication a syndrome

Civilization a disorder

Friendliness a...oh God no-

My tail is wagging!