“THE FOUR HORSEMEN”

Mark Reed

1: “The world has cancer, and the cancer is man." A. Gregg, Mankind at the Turning Point

You try waking up with a gun in your mouth. I don’t recommend it. I hadn’t slept for a very long time. It felt like years since I had last slept. Exhaustion does strange things to you. The world looks different. Colours became pale reflections and it looked as if my body was peeling off from my bones. Things were losing their definition. Life was fuzzy around the edges, like a film off the reels or a tenth generation video - a copy of a copy of a copy.

And now I was asleep. Safe. Dreaming. Things jumped illogically from scenario to scenario. I could hear banging, shouting noises, sirens. I was being chased by something I couldn’t see -

I was woken up by three men entering the room. The door collapsed inwards, splinters flying into the main bedroom as a shoulder barged the lock and a fire axe broke the wood. It was about then I came to with a shock. I didn’t know quite where I was - you never do if you sleep in a hotel. Everything looks alien. Unfamiliar. My back hurt - I’d slept where I fell and my muscles had twisted inside sleep. I didn’t have my glasses on so all I could see were dim shapes of blue and yellow moving fast towards me.

My body moved as if I had been hit by a bullet. My legs and arms flew out and my body back against the wall. Instinctively I recoiled and reached for my glasses. I needed to see. Instincts were screaming at me, to strike out, to defend myself, and also fear was telling me to stay calm, protect myself, do whatever I needed to do to survive this. Whatever “this” is.

When I am king, you will be first against the wall.

Today is the first day of the rest of my life, and the first words I heard today were clear.

“FREEZE MOTHERFUCKER!”.

I then heard the click of a gun. I didn’t dare move or speak. I almost shit my pants. Dogs can smell fear. I could hear dogs barking. I’m sure these men could smell my terror. Two other men flanked the main person. Was it Military Police? Or SWAT? I don’t know. I can’t see anything but fuzzy shapes. I could hear my heart beat in my ear.

Time stopped. Stay perfectly still. Don’t move. Don’t speak. Don’t, above all, get shot.

“Sir, you are under arrest in connection with the disappearance of Mr. Adam Versity. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to…. “

Yeah, I know, I’ve seen TV, blah blah blah. But when policemen shoot dead naked men in bed, you tend to think in one term only: survival, in any form. I tuned out. I was too scared to understand what was being said. I was aware only that men were pointing guns at me and I had just woken up, in the middle of nowhere, in the baking heat. I needed time to think. What the fuck was going on?

I could hear black helicopters overhead. I could hear dust being pounded by blades. I could hear the silence of massed ranks outside, breathing quietly, waiting for gunshots and prime time television. The air was tight with tension and expectation. Everyone in this room and outside I presume, was wondering what I was going to do next. So don’t do anything, anything that could give them a reason. Please, don’t panic, don’t fuck up, don’t get shot.

It must’ve been the limo. The fact that I fell asleep through plain and simple exhaustion before I got to ring anyone. They must’ve thought they’d got the stupidest kidnapper in all time. Parking a fucking limo in a motel parking lot in the middle of the desert.

The men stayed still.

Air crackled in frozen terror and sleep-smeared confusion. Good morning, Sir.

“Can I put my glasses o-.”

“Sir, for the last time, stand up and place your hands against the wall.”

Did he say that? I can’t remember. At some point I stood up and faced the wall. My legs parted and my head pointing down at my feet. My trousers were crumpled. The carpet was pale brown.

The two gimps frisked me as I stayed completely still. They wore plastic or rubber gloves - you never know when someone has HIV and might have an open sore or cut that could lead to infection. One of them picked up my pair of old glasses by the lens and shoved them in my face.

“These yours scumbag?”

“Yes. Can I wear them?”

My hands were placed around my back and cuffs were placed around my hands roughly, biting into my wrist. The other gimp put my glasses on roughly over my head. It didn’t feel right and one arm wasn’t tucked inside my ear. The glasses were lopsided and the world looked bent, wrong, not helped by one gimp still pointing what looked to be a very lethal, loaded gun at me.

There was a fingermark on the lens of my glasses. Everything was blurry. I was dragged, dressed only in a crumpled suit I had slept in, outside. The sun cut into the air like a sword. The first thing I noticed was heat. A lot of heat, that struck me in the face with a boiling sheet.

Through the pounded waves of dust I could see outside. Bystanders looking confused behind yellow lines of masking tape, probably evacuated. Helicopters pounded the air, pushing dust down and then up. Men pointed guns at me whilst wearing bulletproof vests. Amassed cars in black & white and grey vans surrounded the car park. A white limo stood parked in the corner. I could hear lightbulbs flashing and cameras whirring.

My hands were behind my back. I just got the feeling this day was going to get worse.

My name is John. This is my last will and testament.

All I asked for, in order to record for posterity this, was - in descending order of preference:

- a PC with monitor and HD - a typewriter, some correction fluid and 500 sheets of paper - lined notepaper and an indeliable ink writing implement.

That was the preferred order. I wasn’t expecting to get either a) or b). Anything was an absolute bonus. That said, the very least I wanted, and the most reasonable I could expect, was c). 400 sheets of lined notepaper and unremovable, permanent ink.

So when Globex delivered to me, at my personal request, a state of the art PC and a load of floppy discs, zip drives and so on and so forth, I was quite pleased. I wasn’t sure exactly why so much had been delivered but I wasn’t necessarily going to complain.

I’m not quite sure how they managed to arrange such equipment to be delivered through the stringent security here. Then again, Globex are known for pulling strings in high places and achieving the impossible. It’s one of the things that attracted me to the company.

What I am about to tell you may seem fanciful, absurd bullshit. The important thing for you to realise is that I wish I wasn’t telling you this. I wish that I’d never heard of that man. I wish I was able to look out of my window, and to be able to leave my room and walk in the rain whenever I wanted. I wish I was able to look out of the room, and feel that at least, mankind had some kind of future. I know that is not the case.

His steps in the sand left footprints - shallow and understated but nonetheless present - and the trail he walked was long. It was as if he had all the time in the world. His eyes - if anyone ever saw them - were a colour that nobody either forgot or remembered. It was like Martin Luther King said, the colour of his eyes was no more important than the colour of his skin. Beyond colour, they were just there, boring into the atmosphere, looking for something. What you didn’t forget was what lay behind the eyes - an intelligence vast, powerful, and almost ruthless.

He paused on his walk through the barren dandy field and found from within his robes a flask of liquid he drank from. The cracked lips - ravaged by dirt, stubble, and age - breathed with relief. He was the only western face here. From a concealed beard, small white hairs protruded from his face, smitten by dust and inground sand. It was good he spoke the language. It answered the questions to which he may have been shot for not knowing. Since the exclusion zone to journalists had been imposed, he was probably the only non-native lifeform for 20 miles in any direction. The wind paused for an instant, he looked up. There in the distance, he could see the dark scar in the rock that would signal the first step of his destiny.

It grew with every step he trod toward it. Whilst there was an exclusion zone, for some reason, he was never bothered by such things. He entered the zone with impunity, and walked slowly to his destination. It was as if he had all the time in the world. In a sense he did. Before him stood, growing imperceptably, the first step of his destiny. It was predicted that there were some 10 or so events which would change the face of history. And this was the first. There would be other events - some tiny and not reported - others that would dominate the media, but each of which is a small step towards it. A gradual incline.

He stopped, wiped his brow, and gasped. He surveyed the sight before him. Cut into the rock, at a height of 175 feet, stood the inset image of Buddha. As a sight it could silence anyone. It stood higher than a tower block. There was nothing that any mortal with any belief could do other than stare in awe at - not just the dedication of the hundreds of souls that dedicated blood, sweat and time at its creation - but the beauty that could be possible. Carved into a cliff, as high as a building, as silent as time immortal.

Despite the best efforts of the Taliban, who had systematically over the years slowly defaced the image, he stood tall. Not proud, nor vain, but tall. Aware of his power, but not abusing it, he stood as a reminder of not the image himself but a reminder of all the things that the Buddha represented.

The Taliban had ruled that all images and representations of any form were an insult to Allah. Quite what God was so insecure as to need to destroy any image of any thing that was not himself was an insult to the God’s power? That God would not prevail. It weakened his faith and undermined his power, but the servants were not strong enough to see this. They believed the word of God, without understanding the words of their God. They understand what was said, but not what was meant.

The feet of the Buddha had been chipped and demolished by small explosives. The feet and ankles had vanished. A pile of rubble and rock remained where the feet should have been - small, crumpled. Nonetheless the statue remained welded into the rock. The face had been pockmocked and flattened by gunfire, grenades, and now resembled a blank slate. It was as if somehow the eyes of serenity spat at others beliefs. The legs has been erased by a series of unknown explosions and demolitions. A man was dwarfed by merely one of Buddha’s fingers. A statement of perspective perhaps, to teach a man that he was far smaller and less important than he believed.

Parked near the statue was a small vehicle. A tank. And near there were some figures, men, in military garb, sat and talking with weaponry lain down next to them. They did not appear at all bothered by the image that towered above them. It was just a piece of rock, they had explained. If a piece of rock was all it was, then surely, it could not be an image that would offend? This kind of fervent unthinking belief was exactly what He liked. It played into his hands.

The man sat down on the sand, and crossed his legs. He sat and waited for the first sign of permanent demolition of this image. It was the signal, the first domino, that would result in something far bigger than any fundamentalist could grasp. It was His Time. This is his place. Central Afghanistan.

In the days of the Silk Road, central Afghanistan thrived. Set deep in what was a modern day nowhere, this was once the heart of all trade to the Pacific basin. Camel caravans criss-crossed the region as they traded between the Roman Empire, China and India, and as they journeyed through the Hindu Kush mountains they came upon Bamiyan.

One of the wonders of the ancient world. - and soon to be a memory of the modern one. The now-forgotten Kingdom of Kushan had been guarded by these two colossal Buddha statues. They were carved into a cliff in the mountains that tower over the valley as trade bustled, reminding mankind that greed is not good, that serenity and acceptance were the centre pillars of a distant, more civilised time.

Buddha stood and watched impassively over a million sunsets and sunrises.

At one time, these were the most remarkable representations of the Buddha anywhere in the world, these vast statues painted in gold and other colours, decked in dazzling ornaments. Countless rich frescoes gave grace and beauty to this most barren of places. There was a synthesis of Greek, Persian and Central and South Asian art. Inside the caves at his feet, the walls were decorated with images, of Buddhas in maroon robes strolling in fields of flowers. In another place milk-white horses drew the Sun God's golden chariot through a dark blue sky. That was another time. A time soon to be wiped away, beyond even history.

Cut into the cliff, the insects that lived off the faith and the image, there were 10 monasteries, breathing with the lives of robed monks, pilgrims, festivals, fluttering penants and silken canopies.

The glory faded. Life became austere. Many centuries ago when Islam came to the Hindu Kush, the monks and pilgrims were scattered to the corners of the globe. For a while, the hippy trail passed this way and there were tourists - but they too have gone. No tourist would risk a war or a grenade to see what is merely a bunch of rock. Would they?

Such things are slight indignities to the impassive icons. Time has come and gone and they have remained. The fall began eleven centuries ago when fanatical warriors rampaged through the dust He now stood on.

They destroyed Buddhist temples and seized idols in gold and silver. On the frescoes the faces of many Buddha figures were chiselled out by Muslims intent on destroying what they regarded as the soul force of the idol. But still, Buddha remained.

More recently, a jet dropped a bomb just a hundred metres from the largest Buddha during an air raid, and he stood still, impassive, surviving. In the warren of hundreds of caves that used to house the monasteries and their monks, refugees have moved into the maze of grottos. Surviving, taking in Buddha’s aura. The whole cliff face was alive with the activity of these modern cave people. The stubborn Human ability to survive in the face of these things.

Soon all this will be gone, he thought. The people. The buddha. The war. Every last man and woman and child on the Earth. Gone. Not even a memory. It will all have been for nothing. The great hoax, the great experiment will be over. And then history will start somewhere else, on another planet, another universe, another level of existence.

How long can a planet last in these hands? He looked at his hands. What an unusual form these are. Made in another’s image. Even when he looked in the mirror, he saw the face of God staring back at him.

What a cruel joke. All these people, slaves to a God. Free will, no such things. Just lab rats taking part in experiments, responding to pre-programmed impulses, mice lost in a maze. He stood up. Things were starting to happening. There was a trail of dust on the horizon. Trucks.

However, I came from, some 53 years ago, the slums and so I was unlike the swine that Oscar Wilde described. I knew the price of nothing, for price was irrelevant, but the value of everything. Fresh air. Health. A bed to sleep in and a purpose to life were worth far more than any house or car or black helicopter. Of course, since price was irrelevant, I was also beyond ostentatiousness. There was no need to flaunt. How vulgar was that?

We lived comfortably - some would say very comfortably - but we never flaunted our wealth. There was no point in being so, well, pornographic about our good fortune and hard work. I’d devoted all my life to this point, to reaching this point. To the creation of, and retention of, enough wealth to need never to work again if that was what I wanted. In effect I’d retired young. I retained a 51% share in my company, and was now in sleeping partner mode. Under the direction of others, but my control, the company had become more than the sum of its parts. It meant something.

I had no need for greed addiction. I had no need for a second yacht, a second mansion, a second jet. One was enough for me. They were there if I wanted them.

There are some things no amount of money can buy - truth, trust, love for example. But money can buy other things that feel and taste and sometimes are just as good. Sentiment, maybe not, but the illusion of sentiment, the versimilitude of it, is enough for most.

I grew increasingly frustrated with Helen’s inability to communicate with me. I knew whilst I had had been working that she may very well, being a young and beautiful millionairess in her own right, received the attention of many men who were hopelessly out of their depth and out of luck.

What else could I do? She was too discreet to ever really get caught. The men I had hired to catch her, and observe her, had noticed that she was too careful to be caught. I had my suspicions that there was someone who worked with her, expressly scouting and arranging these meetings, paying for the use of the rooms, dusting away her heelprints. True love, leaving no traces.

Frustrated, I stood up, wiped my mouth, and entering the small annex of the toilet, where I sat and put my head in my hands. I pulled down my trousers and set there, faking the act as best I could. Even when no one is looking, we lie to ourselves. A kind of sad boredom entered me. I didn’t feel myself, I felt as if, I was somehow - in the wrong body. That somebody else, the public me, and the private me, were battling for control of myself. I’d had enough. I flushed and left.

“Helen,” I said, and for once she paid me some attention. “I am going out and not finishing dinner. I will return.”

She never saw me again for six years and 364 days.