Killing: Harry Peters 2

Saber Toothed Robots: Part 2

In one of ten thousand rooms in an opulent palace, a boy sat and ate
pigeons
with red wine sauce. He was a handsome boy, if somewhat frail. He had
long black
hair and a scraggly beard that only served to make it obvious that he
was not
yet a man. This was the Harry Peters who the whole world had searched
for for
two years, to no avail.

He finished his lunch and called out, "Bowl of fruit," to a nearby
servant
girl. This was the tradition in the palace, masters simply said what
they
wanted, without conversation and the servants got it. But the servant
girl made
no move to get the bowl of fruit. She was busy prostrating herself on
the
ground, not toward Peters but toward the wall. Mosque bells rang in
the
distance.

"Damn it; get me my bowl of fruit," Peters called.

The servant girl paid him no mind whatsoever. She was giving her full
attention
to her other-worldly master, God.

Peters approached the girl. As she rose to prostrate herself again, he
slapped
her in the face. The slap was not very hard, as Peters arm was not very
strong,
but it was enough to get the girl's attention. She looked at him in
utter shock.

"Who was this white man who had no respect for God or Allah? Why was
the Sheik
supporting him in his palace?," she asked herself. But then she hurried
off to
get the bowl of fruit.

She brought Peters the bowl of fruit.

"It looks very good," Peters said as he took the bowl of fruit. He
acted as if
he hadn't just slapped the girl.

After lunch, Peters retired to his own private harem, which the
sheik
graciously provided. Peters had been entirely sexually inexperienced
before he
came to live with the Sheik. Unsociable, Harry had never even kissed a
girl in
school.

But for two years now, Peters had had daily sexual experience, which
had
greatly helped his health. Almost revoltingly thin and pale in high
school,
Peters had gained muscle tone and his skin now had a healthy
glow.

There were ten girls in his harem, ranging in age from thirteen to
twenty four
years old. The oldest of them was his favorite. Her name was
Emerald.

After half an hour in the harem, Peters finally got to work. The
Sheik, for an
amount of money great even for himself, had bought a state of the art
science
laboratory for Peters.

In exchange, Peters was working on a project called "72
virgins".

The Sheik was an active supporter of Palestinian warfare against
Israel. The
Palestinians, unable to form an independent state, had been fighting a
guerilla
war against Israel for almost fifty years.

A key component of this war was the suicide bombings. In suicide
bombings,
Palestinians blew themselves up in crowds of Israelis.

Every year, a few dozen suicide bombers blew themselves up. The Sheik
planned as
many suicide bomber operations as he could. However, he rarely managed
to
persuade more than a few youths every year to be suicide bombers. It
was hard to
convince people to blow themselves up. Every one of the potential
recruit's
human instincts cried out against it.

In the past, the Sheik had been able to persuade young men and women to
blow
themselves up by a variety of means.

The first way of persuading teens to be suicide bombers was simple.
The Sheik
paid handsome yearly allowances to the families of successful suicide
bombers.

The other tactics the Sheik employed to persuade Palestinian youth to
blow
themselves up were more complicated. They were based on religious
indoctrination. From the time they were toddlers, Palestinians were
told that
the greatest glory they could achieve was to be a suicide bomber.

The men were told that, once they blew themselves up, they would go to
heaven
where they would constantly have sex with 72 virgins, whose
maidenhoods
perpetually restored themselves.

Thus, the project name: "72 virgins".

Peters had developed a chip that could be implanted in a potential
suicide
bomber's brain. The chip would emit a set of ideas into the person's
mind.

Some of these ideas were religious. They encouraged a fanatical love of
God and
Allah.

The chip promoted rage in its victim.

But more importantly, it encouraged lust. The primary version of the
chip filled
a person's brain with the image of seventy two virgins waiting to serve
him as
soon as he blew himself up.

The chips worked through an invention of Peter's called memes. Memes
are merely
thoughts. But Peters, after an extensive study of robotics and the
human brain,
had discovered how to transmit a thought to the brain from a robotic
chip. The
brain could not tell the difference between its own thoughts and the
thoughts of
the "72 virgins" chip.

Peters was conducting an experiment on a young Palestinian girl, who
had the
"Allah" chip in her. Rather than forcing her to imagine "seventy-two
virgins",
the "Allah" chip caused the girl to imagine Allah waiting for her after
she blew
herself up.

The "Allah" chip encouraged girls to fantasize about Allah both
religiously and
sexually. It worked remarkably well, even better than the "seventy-two
virgins"
chip worked in boys.

A young Palestinian girl sat in a glass aquarium with a bomb. The bomb
had a red
button and the girl had been told that she merely had to press the red
button to
blow herself up. She looked very frightened and was sitting on the
opposite side
of the aquarium from the bomb.

Peters watched her intently. In his hand, he held a black stop
watch.

As the minutes passed, the expression on the girls face turned from
terror to
happiness and then to lust. She reached out and pressed the red button.
There
was an explosion and the aquarium turned into a bloody mess.
Peters seemed uninterested. He stopped his stop-watch and took out his
log. In
the log, he wrote, "Palestinian girl #10: 2 minutes and 22 seconds.
Visible
anxiety in first thirty seconds". Peters very much wanted to remove the
initial
anxiety.

Peters frowned. His next experiment had not been his own idea. The
sheik had
insisted that he try to use the "seventy two virgins" chip on
non-Muslim
American males. This served no practical purpose but the Sheik very
much wanted
to make Americans kill themselves.

Peters had no moral qualms about this. He'd long since stopped valuing
human
life, American or otherwise. But the Sheik simply didn't understand
meme
science. The ideas put out by the meme chip simply wouldn't work on
non-Muslims.
If an idea had not been part of a person's psychology before the meme
chip was
introduced, the idea could not take over the brain. No matter how
persistently
the idea was sent to the brain, it would have little appeal.

Of course, Peters could always develop a new chip for non-Muslims but
it would
be less effective and.... it would take four months to develop. He was
in no
mood to relent to the Sheik on this point but he thought he would
probably have
to.

So today, Peters was to test the "seventy-two virgins" chip on ten
American
men. Checking his log, he went to aquarium #22 where an American
teenage male
sat in the corner, far away from the bomb. The boy couldn't see
him.

The boy was naked and dirty. Well muscled, the boy had blonde hair and
appeared
to be about Harry's age, eighteen years old. Something about the boy
struck
Harry. Harry reached far back in his memory to a long-ago playground
and pulled
out a single name. "James!", he cried with joy.

In his joy, he opened up the door to the aquarium. James came leaping
out.
Seeing Harry, who he didn't recognize, he knocked him to the ground
with an
uppercut and pinned him to the ground with his legs. He landed two
punched to
Harry's chin.

He thought, "I'll kill this son of a..." He felt a gun barrel press to
his
temple.

"Put your hands behind your back," a voice with a heavy Arab accent
said to
James.

James put his hands behind his back. The barrel was still pressed to
his temple
but another set of hands put handcuffs around his wrists.

"We are very sorry for the inconvenience. Naturally, we will put the
test
subject down," the security guard with the drawn gun said to
Harry.

"Wait, no bring him here," said Harry. The guards obeyed.

"James, old chap, you gave me quite the surprise there," said Harry
pleasantly.
He felt his bloody lip with a rueful grin. "Don't worry, though, I
forgive you.
I'll have them give you a shower and some fresh clothes. You can join
me for
dinner tonight. The food here is excellent," said Harry with a
wink.

There was no response from James stoic face. "Harry?", he asked, very
unsure.

"Of course, it's me. Don't you recognize me?," asked Harry.

"Harry, why'd you do it?," asked James.

"I didn't have you kidnapped. They just kidnapped ten random American
guys.
It's really quite a miracle that they just happened to kidnap you.
I'm
really..."

"No, I meant, why'd you kill those people?," asked James.

"Which people?," asked Harry.

"The people in New York and Tokyo."

"I'll tell you all about it at dinner," Harry said amiably.