Broken Symmetries: Age of Illuminati (2 page)

“I will never forget you, and I promise I will not go to heaven without you,” Hast said.

Sardar emotionally burst into tears hugging his older brother. “Please don’t do that,” he said. “You should enjoy heaven. You deserve it. Don’t worry about me. I was stubborn, and it is all my fault. Nobody should be blamed but me.”

“Let’s try to enter together,” Hast said holding his younger brother’s hand as they approached one of the small doors and tried to enter together. They both touched the door simultaneously; the door then magically pulled Sardar’s hand and dragged him through. Sardar was swallowed into the palace.

“Sardar!” Hast shouted in frustration as he realized that he couldn’t pass through the door to follow his younger brother. He became very concerned about what would happen to him inside the palace. ‘I need to join him,’ he said in his heart as he frequently gazed at his letter awaiting the appearance of the symbol. Many frightening images of his brother suffering in hell came to his mind making him more and more unsettled. He continued thinking about how his brother could defend his lack of faith when confronted by ∞Illuhim∞ himself. ‘God, please forgive him,’ he started to pray. ‘God help us all…’

As time passed slowly, Hast feared that he would forget about his brother during his judgement because according to the holy§cript, God would take away emotions and mercy toward unbelievers so that believers who entered heaven wouldn’t feel sorry for the unbelievers who were suffering and being tortured forever in hell.

After another half an hour the symbol finally appeared on Hast’s green letter, and he quickly ran toward the door while reciting his brother’s name so that he could keep his promise and try to defend him in front of God. Once he touched the door’s handle, he felt a gentle force dragging him into the palace, and for a brief moment his vision became dark then he saw the light.

Hast found himself in a large hall with its walls covered in shiny, expensive looking marble which was covered with streaks of gold and silver. Far ahead, he saw an elevation on the floor where a nine foot archangel with a pair of asymmetrical red wings stood in front of a curtain. The curtain had a marvelous design and it seemed to be a barrier between Hast and between someone else behind it. Hast tried to look through the curtain by sharpening his eyes, he was eventually able to see a shaded figure sitting on a throne behind the curtain. ‘Could it be ∞Illuhim∞ himself!’ Hast thought.

“Welcome to the Lord’s kingdom. Today there is no king but him,” the archangel said. “You are one of the Lord’s devout believers, and he will be glad to meet you face to face,” said the angel who stood by the curtain. “Before the Lord reveals himself to you, he gives you two choices and you are free to choose either one. Would you choose to live with the Lord in the Garden of Eden forever, or would you choose to go back to oblivion?”

Although Hast had recited his younger brother’s name before entering the palace, he momentarily forgot him when he was listening to the angel’s question, but now he remembered his brother again and thought this could be the best chance to ask about his brother’s fate before he forgot him possibly forever.

“What happened to my brother, Sardar?”

The angel seemed surprised by Hast’s irrelevant question. “He is in his deserved place. You will forget about him once you choose to live with the Lord in heaven.”

“Please, I need him to be with me in the heaven. I cannot enjoy heaven without him,” Hast said.

“He cannot be with you,” the archangel replied. “He did not believe, and according to the rules which you yourself have chosen to obey, your brother is now in his deserved place.”

“Is he now being tortured and suffering?” Hast asked hesitantly. “He is a good person, and he didn’t do anything bad.”

“Because you are a believer, I’m obliged to answer you, but I don’t recommend that you find out about the details of your brother’s fate.” The archangel continued, “During Judgment your brother himself admitted that he deserves to go to hell for eternity.”

Hast knew he’d get such an answer but he still didn’t want to give up and was determined to negotiate until he could save his brother or at least reduce his punishment. He looked toward the curtain, “Please God, could you not cover him with your mercy and save him after he spends time in hell for his sins?”

“God cannot break his rules. His punishment is eternal,” the archangel interrupted. “You already knew the rules and believed in them, didn’t you?”

“I know,” Hast interjected, “but I also know that ∞Illuhim∞ is a loving God and can forgive any sin.”

“Rules are rules,” the archangel replied. “Your emotions are getting in your way and are preventing you from seeing the righteous Judgment, but this will all be over soon when you make the right choice and decide to live in the Garden of Eden with the Lord. Your brother will be unknown to you and you will be able to enjoy heaven forever without any memories of him.”

Hast started to shed tears as he recalled his life with his brother. He remembered their childhood quarrels, happy moments and sad events as they all came back in a rapid but vivid flashback. He needed to do something to help his brother no matter what, and that moment he remembered his mother and father. “Where are my parents?”

“Your parents are in heaven already and they are waiting for you,” the archangel replied. Hast knew his parents would be safe as they were faithful to ∞Illuhim∞. “Did they ask about Sardar?” Hast asked eagerly

“They did in the beginning,” the angel replied, “but now they are living happily in the Garden of Eden and they have no emotions toward Sardar. In fact, they are disgusted by him and want him to suffer more. They are eager to see you, and you can follow them too if you choose heaven.”

Hast found it puzzling that his parents had chosen to forget about their son! He wondered why they didn’t insist on saving their son before they lost their emotions toward him! ‘If they chose to forget him, why shouldn’t I?’ he thought in his heart. ‘I have no option. I cannot save him … I wish my memories and emotions toward my brother were taken from me involuntarily. I cannot choose to ignore my brother voluntarily. In fact, it is not only my brother but so many other people I know who will face this doomed fate! And I still have a heart, so why am I in this situation?’ Hast couldn’t throw away all of his guilty and disturbing thoughts since they kept forcefully intruding into his mind.

“You are emotionally suffering right now,” the archangel said reading Hast’s expression, “but everything will go away once you choose to live in heaven and enter a persistent state of joy and euphoria.”

A long pause followed…

“Time is running out,” the archangel said. “Give us your choice. Heaven or oblivion?”

Hast thought deeply in his heart, ‘It’s only a moment, and the memory of my brother will be wiped out. I will not feel guilty about not keeping my promise to him. I have no choice about his fate, and I only have choice about mine. I tried my best to save him. I have advised him for years, but he chose hell! It is not my fault!’ Hast kept reciting these thoughts in his mind which made him feel less guilty about the choice he would be making in seconds…

“I have made my choice,” Hast finally declared.

“What is your choice?” the angel asked.

“I …,” Hast said while looking at the shadowy figure behind the curtain. “I …,” he continued to murmur. “… I DON’T BELIEVE IN YOU,” he stated boldly facing the curtain. “YOU ARE NOT MY GOD!”

“What are you saying?!” the archangel asked while in shock. “You were already faithful before Judgment Day, so why have you changed your mind now?”

“I didn’t change my mind nor my faith,” Hast stated. “I’m still a devout follower of ∞Illuhim∞, the benevolent loving God, but the one behind this curtain is not ∞Illuhim∞.”

“Then who do you think he is?” the archangel asked.

“He is the Antichrist,” Hast replied. “∞Illuhim∞ doesn’t reveal himself from the outside. He reveals himself from the inside. I felt much closer to God when I was praying in the holy
☼
house than now, and you can’t be the god I believed in and waited for so long to meet!” Hast continued, “I know ∞Illuhim∞, and he is pure enlightenment. He is love and mercy, he doesn’t hide himself behind curtains, and he is always close to us in our hearts.”

“Then, I think you have chosen oblivion,” the archangel said. “You will go back to oblivion now.” He pointed a cane toward Hast’s chest. “Unless you ask for forgiveness and bow to the Lord now.”

“I will not bow to the Antichrist,” Hast declared confidently.

He felt the archangel’s cane pushing toward his chest then pain and darkness. He then suddenly felt like he was falling into a deep hole, but the impact with the floor made him jump from his bed and wake up in the middle of the night from a terrifying nightmare shouting!

“Are you OK?” said the woman sleeping next to him.

Hast realized that everything he had just seen was a nightmare! His wife Nergz was beside him with a sleepy look on her face and on her right side, his newly born baby was now starting to cry.

“You woke up the child!” Nergz said. “Did you have a nightmare?”

“I thought it was Doomsday. I didn’t remember you, and I thought I was younger and living with my brother in my parents’ house,” he said. Hast stood up from the bed, and took his child on his lap kissing him on the forehead while trying to settle the crying baby who he had named after the person he most admired, Abraham.

“It would be a horrific day,” Nergz said. “I wouldn’t blame you for not remembering us.”

“I did remember my brother, Sardar,” Hast said. “That was probably because I thought he was going to hell and the reason why I was most concerned about him in the dream.”

“This could be a sign from ∞Illuhim∞ to save your brother before this day comes.”

“Doomsday is perhaps on its way,” announced Hast as he walked back to his bed.

One week ago, he had read a news article where scientists were warning people that a deadly meteor was heading toward earth, and it was set to hit it by 2068. According to their calculations, if it hits the earth, all life forms would become extinct. This was because the meteor was the largest ever recorded, and hence the scientists were calling it the ‘Doomsday Meteor’. Hast recalled that today’s date was the 25
th
of March 2060 then he looked at his baby again. He thought that eight years was enough time for scientists to find a solution. ‘I can’t imagine my kid growing up just to face the horrors of that day,’ he thought.

Chapter 2

Kogar Shervan was a well-known, self-made rich entrepreneur. At 30 years old, he had won the local election and became the governor of Shinar Land from the years 2051 to 2056, and under his rule, life and prosperity skyrocketed. 

When he was 22, he graduated from the college of psychology, and his studies on this subject helped him to deeply understand some aspects of human behavior. He knew what made people afraid of new ideas and what made them resist and oppose them. He used to explain to his colleagues that some of the human brain regions evolved in controlling the language processing were particularly useful in transferring our identity and ideas to other people. He used to say that language was a cheap attempt by our brains to counteract entropy and achieve immortality. He argued that the information acquired in one’s lifetime of experience can be retained forever through copying the thought contents in one’s brain to other brains.

Kogar knew the best way to copy his own thoughts to other people and to spread the seeds of his identity was to use the social media effectively, so at the age of 23, he decided to do a TV show. He started presenting a show on the topics of science and society, and his TV show soon became a big hit for the local people because he was presenting and discussing novel scientific ideas which helped to solve simple problems in society in a very appealing way.

Kogar’s ultimate dream was to become the governor of Shinar Land that is why in his show he used to indirectly criticize the current political system in order to attract the audience’s attention. For instance, he used to say that the parliamentary voting system was an inefficient emulation of a human’s central nervous system giving the impression to his audience that he knew a lot about the weakness of the country’s political system. 

“Democracy was invented by the Greeks when there was no social media,” he used to say in his show. “Ancient people didn’t have access to the tools and technologies we have today, so they invented a system where some people thought on behalf of other people to establish that country’s policies. This was the best idea back then, but we can do much better today. Every political decision today is driven by polls and social media,” he claimed. “Our politicians behave like they are independent and think for themselves, but in fact, they are all like me and you. They watch TV, surf the web to look at what’s trending and what makes people happy or angry. We have to admit that today people are ruling themselves by themselves, and our politicians are nothing more than highly paid, useless statues. For example, take a look at our parliament. It has more than 200 members and we tend to think that 200 smart brains are thinking and looking for solutions to our life problems, but let me tell you, this is not true. Actually no more than two brains are actively working.”

With this reference Kogar was talking about the two major political parties which had the most members in parliament, the conservatives and the liberals. “Nevertheless, we are still paying huge salaries to over 200 members. I have studied psychology and I know that the brain efforts don’t add up if they are not independent, and this is hard to achieve with our current political system because all the parliament members belonging to a particular party are just following the decision of their head unanimously instead of thinking independently.”

With his examples and his systematic expose of the corrupt political system, Kogar’s popularity grew. People started to suggest to him that he should run in the next election. He continued criticizing the political system in his shows.

***

A few years later when Kogar was 26, he invested in a small but rising social website called ‘zanzor.com’, and initially the website was not very different than the other more popular and dominant social websites. It allowed its users to post, comment and follow each other until a small brain recording tool was introduced by Tek-Brain company. This tool, a sensor attached to the user’s forehead, recorded brain signals and detected whether the person who was wearing it was happy or sad. Kogar saw potential in the device and immediately invested in Tek-Brain. He saw from this an opportunity to introduce something new on zanzor.com. The timing was ideal as at that moment another gaming company called Virtual-world™, had introduced a helmet which could take signals directly from the gamer’s mind and use them to control the game flow. The company had already sold millions of the helmets and it had become a very popular gaming console among teenagers.

Kogar thought that if his Tek-Brain company produced a web application that could interface with Virtual-world’s™ helmet, a million more users would then have the ability to register on his social website zanzor.com without purchasing their own sensors. People who were wearing the helmet could share their true emotions with others, and it didn’t stop there since the brain recorder became increasingly more sensitive and could read a range of human emotions: sad, happy, eager, curious, love, or hate. This had made a big breach in people’s private feelings because people usually tended to hide their true emotions. For instance, under the current social media’s ‘like’ and ‘dislike’ system, a person could press ‘like’ when a friend posted something online even if he/she didn’t really like the post. In zanzor.com you couldn’t do that because the helmet recorded only true feelings. If a person logged on to the website, they couldn’t enjoy using all its features without turning on the brain recording helmet, and if the user decided to click on a friend’s post, the helmet recorded true feelings and shared it with the friend. This was a double-edged sword, and zanzor.com turned many friends into enemies and many enemies into friends. The honesty associated with the website was very addictive, and it became very popular among a specific sect of the population.

Soon young people started to use this feature for dating as the website provided a good measure of true feelings toward each other. The website became a hit and within a couple years, its user base jumped from one million to 100 million. Kogar himself claimed to have found his true love, who later became his wife, through the website he owned.

In 2051 the regional election for the post of governor was announced and Kogar was among the most prominent candidates. He used to tell people that they should trust him because honesty was his motto, and he claimed that if he wasn’t honest, he wouldn’t have invented a social website solely based on this trait. His star kept rising, but unfortunately tragedy struck. There was an assassination attempt on his life, and the bomb explosion, thought to have been plotted by his competitors, claimed Kogar’s beloved wife. He survived but was in deep shock and mourning.

The election was postponed, many people got emotional against all the other competitors and pointed the blame toward them. After one month of the incident, Kogar appeared on TV and promised that he would stay faithful to his beloved wife’s memory and would not marry again. His statement attracted the attention and emotion of many people, even those who didn’t initially support him. It became clear that he would be the clear winner of the election and indeed he achieved 91% of all the votes and became the first governor to gain such massive support.

His legend didn’t stop here, and during his five year rule, he achieved miracles for Shinar Land. He used science and technology to achieve many things that appeared to be impossible. Because of his social website, he gained a lot of experience analyzing the data collected online using artificial intelligence (AI), and so he was able to predict trends and changes. He could monitor graphs online to see the collective emotion of the people by what they posted on his webpage daily. He could also see how a specific decision made by him changed these trends. His aim was simple: maximize the happiness emotion.

During his role, he also invested heavily in 3D printing technologies as some Chinese companies had recently started to make and sell relatively cheap, large, general purpose 3D printing machines. The invention of these was labeled to be the humanity’s crowning achievement in the 21
st
century. With them anything from a small cup to an entire building could be printed, and not only that. Items with dynamic parts, such as cars, generators, utilities could also be printed. It made the process of creation as simple as possible, and to produce anything, all that was needed was a design model inside the computer, the necessary elements for printing and then to hit the print button!

Kogar invested in many general purpose 3D printing machines and used them to build houses and provide shelter for the many homeless and refugees fleeing from war torn countries. With Kogar’s investment in the technology, the 3D printing industry had a rapid boost in productivity.

The advantages of the large scale general purpose 3D printers were immense. They sped up construction time and reduced costs by a factor of ten. Despite the job losses due to the new technology, Kogar was still able to secure new jobs for workers.

During the last year of his rule, he tested another masterpiece of a recently invented new 3D printing technology. This one took advantage of the helmet which recorded and read brain signals and was able to transform imagination into reality. There were currently limitations, the primary one being the fact that the machine couldn’t accurately detect the imagined shape in someone’s mind, but the entire thing was an impressive leap in itself.

At this point it became clear to Kogar that in the near future he would be able to model reality using his imagination just like in science fiction. ‘With this, I can achieve miracles,’ he whispered in his mind, and then an unexpected thought came to him and he suddenly felt paralyzed! The disturbing thought was that he could sense the presence of a big conspiracy. ‘I’m not the richest person around, nor the smartest, and not even the ruler of a big country. If I can change the trends with my decisions, then others are already capable of doing much more!’

He remembered that the USA had started using an artificial intelligence program called ‘The Brain Storm’ nearly 60 years ago to predict best outcomes for its political decisions! There was another hyped project trying to build a superhuman called ‘
T
he
N
ew
ARK
’ or TNARK project started 30 years ago in Europe. The Chinese entrepreneur, Lee Shark, the richest person on the planet who owned the biggest 3D company could already build entire cities in a short period of time. Many other rich and highly influential people had already started investing in God playing projects! And they were all ahead of him by miles.

He remembered all the conspiracy theories in his era which blamed the superpowers for wars and calamities. ‘They could be all true!’ he thought. ‘If I can use my imagination to model reality and change trends, then other superpowers are already ahead of me by light years! I could be the last one who has entered this game,’ Kogar thought. ‘If someone is already playing God by controlling everything, I need to find that person!’ he said to himself.

In the year 2055 at the age of 35, Kogar resigned from his position as governor. People were urging him to run for another round, as according to the polls, his popularity had increased even further and it was obvious that he could win another round easily, but he rejected them by saying that a change in power was needed and he wanted to give the chance for others to rule.

“My resignation from power will ensure that democracy will continue and power will be exchanged peacefully,” he said in his last interview.

“What is your plan after you retire?” the interviewer asked.

“I will be hiding from the media and public and take some rest for a while,” he answered. “Meanwhile, I will be funding revolutionary science projects. I will also use my money to encourage and fund education and health programs around the world.”