RESET PROJECT

My name is Lucius, I’m 36 years old and this is my registry about the project that eradicated seven billion of the Planet Earth’s population..446Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqiGDOSSAQH

Everything from now on will be originally written in Brazilian Portuguese, but I intend to make a copy in English.

There is an infinity of other titles written before this one, but they are being archived or destroyed. My actual function and only five hundred and eight more librarians is to identify and destroy all of the titles which material is considered disposable and that implies definitively destroying more than a billion copies of books. I am now working at the only operating library on the whole planet. My job is simple, identifying the author and deciding if I should sentence him to oblivion or not. If yes, I ignore the title and leave it to the overes, who are just the responsible to destinate the material to the antimatter’s incinerator.

If not, I have one more job, which is to recover it and protect it.

The collected titles aren’t automatically saved. I must search their digital copies, look for a few negative terms and check the context in which they are located, possibly altering them. In case it’s an innocuous title, that does not bring bad memories and negative influences of that time, I request between five and one hundred copies of it and keep them in the library that will be the first library to operate at the Post-Node. And everything will be new. The other titles will be forgotten.

Anyway, it’s a job that I never would have imagined in college that I’d have. And a job that totally goes against my professional class that for centuries have had as an elementary mission to preserve.

But times have changed, professions changed. I have so much work to do and I fear not to live enough in time to conclude it. And after that, I don’t know. I don’t know what will be next. And it’s frustrating because before we knew what would come after our death: the environment would be even more degraded, the air even greyer, the children even more rebel and disoriented, Africa even poorer, and even if in any moment of History there would be a setback, for generations the forecasts would be correct. It was a valid inductive thinking. Now, after us, everything is new. We planned, but we’re not sure. The fear of death nowadays is worse than before. Much worse.

Our fear of death is not just a fear of losing life, it’s a fear of having failed and not to be here to fix it, because everything from now on is our responsibility. That polluted river was polluted by my grandfather, that desert forest was deforested by his great-great-grandfather and from that on backwards. But now there is not this retrograde responsibility’s transference anymore.

Of course we still have all of the inherited dirt, but it can be cleaned, it is being cleaned. We’re a generation of cleaners, cleansers, organizers. We are trying to eliminate the chaos left by a vice of one hundred and twenty thousand years ago. We are the attempt to rescue the lost or corrupted humanity. And we are crazy, we are crazy for this. However, we have everything to make it right. If I didn’t believe this, I would not be here.

The correct would be if I’d write everything in an impersonal way, formal, with a simple and cold report, but this is already being written by many others. Much of what we have here are cold people, collecting data, studying, searching, experimenting, advancing science. Capable people who research and teach. We work a lot. And, out of all this coldness and calculation’s system, we try to rescue all humanity.

Although, considering humanity an antithesis relation with men’s animal side, I particularly think that it never really existed. The animals themselves at the Pre-Node time seemed to have more humanity than ourselves. On the other hand, humanity is a rationality’s fruit, in other words, an evolutionary act. If it wasn’t, it ended up being one, forcefully. At least, this is the target of the project.

I should highlight, before I go forward and forget, that this registry of mine in particular does not have much reason to be one. It’s more like a internal conflict that I am suffering, but our psychologists insisted that would be common. Yet, I feel a bit prepared to deal with it. I judge so.

It’s just that there is no reason in being one because it does not make sense myself writing to the ones that are with me right now, because that would be barking up the wrong tree, or just a disposable vision of someone who is co-witnessing the facts. And neither I am allowed to write anything about the Pre-Node period to our children. Not without a revision. This part is awkward and I never felt safe about that, hiding everything that happened to the future generation.

And suddenly all History will be made up by a fake story. Which reminds me now a bigger uncertainty about everything we had as History in the Pre-Node…

That’s why I value writing, because writing is a extension of thinking and through it I can expurgate occult conclusions in myself that I would never obtain through talking or simply meditating.

So all A.N. (antaŭla nodo, Before Node, in Esperanto) History is being murdered. And I am one of the murderers.

Sometimes I feel sorry, a dread for not being good in History at school and not knowing about everything that I’m destroying, but my commitment to the project is bigger. Much bigger. We are fanatics, but conscious fanatics. Lucid. By the way, our faith is that everyone in the project are the most lucid possible. But the logical explication of this will be detailed soon.

Returning to the lack of sense in writing these registries, beyond being prohibited to do so, whoever reads might not be interested in reading it, and whoever has interest can’t read it. So I will write for the dead of my generation. A generation composed of children to seniors, but an unique generation. The important for me is to finally expurgate what bothers me, preventing myself to share the happiness that everybody is living out there. Maybe it’s good for everybody our death, because I’m the consciousness of the Pre-Node.

Maybe I am a seed of it. An evil seed by nature. Evil must be a cancer and each one of us must have the precursor defective gene asleep or not. I feel it in myself. Or maybe it’s just my consciousness. It’s just that the consciousness usually leads you to do good things, not bad.

It’s been two years since the Node happened and in less than two months we already extinguished 98% of human race. We inhabit just a part of the planet, a place that we chose in a democratic way, that it used to be called Australia. All of the other part of the globe remained foul, literally cadaverous. Nowadays there is an infinite bones’ cemetery. But not in ruins, because our method of annihilation is very elegant. I still haven’t gone there to see how everything is and I think I would freak out seeing it.

Maybe many of us are still righteous for that, for not having the dimension of what we’ve done. And just like that life is good out there. The sky in here is a vivid blue and the climate reminds me of my homeland. The hope is strengthening itself to blossom in each piece of land. I feel the air lighter and oxygenated. There is no need for money, because our economic system is smart and self-sustaining.

However, there are still much work to do and many children to take care of. The world is practically a junkyard and a huge garbage dump, from the soil to the seas. And for now we only have our own hands to repair this.

The way how I entered in Reset was very ironic and a little bit unexpected. In 2015, a Russian writer, A. N. Muscaria, launched a fiction book called Reset Project that detailed the plans of a secular organization to liquidate almost the whole humanity, preserving only a few chosen ones to implant a smarter and evolved society. The book was a best-seller and attracted the attention of many types of people, because the theme was the anti-Armageddon, where all types of religions and people who believed in Gods and divinities were destroyed.

But the book woke up the fury of many fundamentalists and was used by religious leaders as one more proof that the end was coming, inspiring movies and documentaries that related the book as a denounce of a real conspiracy of a global elite called The Illuminati. This theory gained strength with the death of the writer by a fulminating heart attack, seven months after the launch, making the book a fever both among the religious and not so much religious; and atheists and agnostics. In the plot, only atheists and humanists intellectuals survived, changing radically society’s course. But the book, in the ambiguous way that was written, attained to divide opinions and fans. In one side there were the religious that faced the book as a critic about the pernicious intolerance of the atheists towards religion and, on the other side, atheists ridiculed the religious for not perceiving that the book was written by an atheist. The agnostics saw the title as a critic to general intolerance. Many speculations about his death emerged.

On the web, there were forums just to discuss the book. As a fan, I was in many of them. I was part of the atheists geeks that saw the book as a blatant satire for whoever knew how to read. And different from the religious, I didn’t believe that the author was murdered, but that he was a random victim of the abuse of fast foods.

In one of these forums, specifically in a site called Facebook, which was where life was concentrated, and the discussions had a more frenetic and excited rhythm, I met Laura Feijó, a fan, deist, who saw the book as a critic to all of the atheists for their arrogance and hypocrisy. There were many groups called Reset Project and nonconformist fans since it was a fiction. Laura was part of one called “The Reset recruits you”. There, we discussed how the book was right to describe the success of a society free from capitalism, prejudice, discrimination, anti-intellectualism and religion. Many theistic entered these groups to discuss and threat us with hell, in their evasive texts with capital letters. Laura was one of them. But she caught my attention with her focused answers and apparently well-articulated about aspects that showed that the plot had an anti-atheist background. The problem was that the author was intelligent and very skilled in fooling the reader. He knew how to confuse his readers. On the book, the Reset Project worked out, humanity reached peace and worldwide welfare, but, fifty years later, the Armageddon arrived and destroyed everything, and God even appeared in the sky to condemn the wicked atheists, throwing a volley above everyone and transforming women in salt.

The theistic fans saw that as the final message of the author, that even though the men tries, God is bigger and always condemns the unbelievers. Soon it was discussed the religion vision of the author to reach the semiosis of the book. Anyway, after a few discussions, Laura added me on the Facebook site, and she revealed herself as atheist as myself, and that she was just testing me, just for fun. I was intrigued, but it wasn’t much harder to see that she was telling the truth and there was an opportunity to meet someone interesting. And it was her.

The users didn’t access the email, but they accessed Facebook. Being the most popular network, it was the most used. There was an open group about political debate that I rarely accessed, because I almost never used Facebook. Until I began dating a person who had a very active virtual life and one thing leads to another. So the group was my distraction while nothing new and suspicious emerged on her page. I dedicated half an hour of my day giving my opinion about a bunch of political facts of our country that was a tragicomedy’s stage. Cases and more cases of corruption, fraud, evasions and tax evasions, accounts full of money in Switzerland (an European well-developed country which was famous for sheltering corrupts registering the ownership of their properties by numbers), urban violence, misery, intellectual deficiency and a lack of secularism by the Estate. The laws were disrespected, many nor even left the paper, like they didn’t even exist. Corruption was beyond the political niche, it was cultural, you could see it everywhere, in the most diverse daily situations. And that was what we used to talk about, among other things, because it was too difficult to prove that something didn’t involve politics. Even art could be summarized by it. Which is natural since, quoting Aristotle, man is a political animal.

And that was how I met Laura, who added me on gtalk and right after in a chat program called TSK, which was not an acronym for anything in the end.

She insisted to understand the topics that I was always on. And that became a vice. Soon, I was constantly available on TSK waiting for Laura who didn’t have a right time to show up.

Cult, clever, sarcastic, acid and neo-atheist, that was Laura Feijó.

We not only discussed about religions and its alienations, but about art, movies, literature, philosophy, science and politics, my favorite theme and the most exploited one on the social networks.

A friendship was growing and before I even realized, Laura knew details about my life. Details of my day. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to affirm that Laura knew my credit card number. I even fell in love with her, but I’ve always been embarrassed to admit. She never gave myself a signal of reciprocity. She acted strictly as a huge friend of mine who was very interested in everything that I had to opine in everything. And it’s hard to resist to this conquest methodology. We all like attention, sometimes too much. Sometimes we are never full.

Yet, this passion disappeared when I discovered that Laura was just a professional in collecting informations — soul informations.

Laura P.R. says at 09:45 P.M:

And how did you feel being rejected on the handball team?

Did you feel filled with some loneliness?

A loneliness that only the children feel?

Lucius says at 09:46 P.M.:

???

Seen at 09:49 P.M.

Lucius says at 09:46 P.M.:

Are you still in Aracaju

Laura P.R. says at 09:56 P.M.:

Yes. Why don’t you come here at the hotel tomorrow?

I was excited with the invite, of course. We had never met before. She was from another city. But she was in Aracaju “working”.

I went, and was received by a totally different Laura from what I was expecting. She seemed like one of those sellers in a pyramid marketing scheme. Too much motivation, a clear glow in her eyes, a fixed smile, natural, but fixed. She forwarded me to the apartment’s living room and offered me something to drink: a juice, cold tea, soda water…

I got the water. We sat ourselves on the couch. We chatted a little bit about the expectations that we had of each other outside the chat networks and if we felt frustrated. Her, not so much. Me, a little bit. My fantasies were slightly more fanciful. I had an image of a woman much more fatal, confident, self-assured. But Laura was a well of tenderness and warmth. Different from the Laura on the TSK and on the network in general.

About Laura’s appearance, I have nothing to say, totally irrelevant. A light brown skin, big and brown eyes. Curly hair. Defined arms, with a tattoo of an awkward plant that seemed to twist on her muscles. Long and curved eyelashes. A small potato nose. Lips that seemed to be molded with my own fingers and that seemed to have their own personality in each curve.

But Laura was professional. With a peculiar sagacity in manipulating and conducting conversations in an unintended way. Talking to her, it was like playing chess against a computer, it doesn’t matter the step you’d take, she always had a step in response until conducting you to her target.

— Do you enjoy living here?

— In Aracaju?

— Yes, sure.

— Oh, I do. It’s a peaceful city, nice to live in. There’s not the stress of cities on the southeast or Salvador. Do you like Sao Paulo?

— I don’t know, I never asked this to myself. But it’s hot in here, right? It’s difficult to go outside.

— Yeah, it’s one of the hottest cities in Brazil. Is it the first time that you come here?

— Yes, and I came here just to talk to you.

Sure, my heart was swung. Any attention from a woman make men to feel wanted. It must be because we rarely are. And of course, that if Laura had something not so relevant, or that demanded more intimacy, she would have already told me through TSK. So, it could only be what you call a date.

— Just to talk to me? You never said you wanted to meet me.

— Sometimes words are unnecessary. We know each other for six months, right? And we have had a relationship, as you emphasized once, more profound than many others that we have in our daily lives, with parents or friends. I ask myself what I don’t know about you — she laughed, then I laughed, forcefully. I was tense and a bit shy. I didn’t know where all of that was going. Anyway, I passed really far from what I thought it would happen. — I really ask myself that.

I perceived a change in her tone. Something was not right. She was really emphatic, like she wanted to show that it was a power she had over myself, knowing me so much. I kept alert to say something in case there was a gap in the conversation, but she continued. She told and retold details about myself. As always, talking with Laura was very interesting, but now I could see her saying things that she already told me, but with a corporal and facial expression. I didn’t want to miss any of these new details, and therefore, exciting. There was a sensuality in there, exposed, naked and raw, natural of women in front of men. But in any way I’m devaluing the sensuality that was permeating between us in the past months. It’s actually the opposite. Talking with Laura, just with the characters that keep emerging on the monitor, involved a non-verbalized sensuality, that could not even be proved its existence, but I felt it and counted that she felt it too.

I can say that I was excited, of course. However, I’m aware that there was never any evidence that all the attention and interest in myself, on her part, was in the end a longstanding flirtation. About me, even though I tried to be discreet and to pretend sexual disinterest, I can’t guarantee any purity in my friendship with her. There, for example, in that hotel and talking with her, my expectations that we might have something else were getting higher in every sweet smile of hers. I felt courted.

— I remember the time when you were worried about your exams and told me that you didn’t tell anymore, not even your girlfriend, now ex-girlfriend, but at the time was Karine… And you told me. Which means, we’re huge friends, you disagree?

— No, little Laura, of course I don’t disagree. — At that point I imagined her in love and without courage to tell fearing the end of our special friendship that we were keeping.

— Going straight to the point, you, Lucius, you’re a very, very special person in this world. People like you are really hard to find. And that is why I’m here.

My tension went up with the compliment. I didn’t feel I being. praised………….Who feels? Right, I know some people who do. And, frankly, I understand them. There are people which any compliment is little. Laura is one of those people.

— It was not a mere coincidence that we met, despite us being worshipers of fate. But it wasn’t random. I was looking for you. In fact, this is my real profession, looking for people like you.

— What are you talking about?

— This is about Reset…Listen to me. This is about Reset. About the book.

— What about it?

— I will explain everything, but I need to be listened until the end. It was not just a fiction title. It was a bait. A propaganda, a way of knowing who would sympathize with our project, which is not fiction, is real. Just a few technical differences from the book.

I laughed out loud.

— Laura, that’s why we get along so well. I love your way of making jokes while being serious.

— It would save us time if you didn’t follow this path of thinking this is a joke. Reset is a real project. Of course it’s not a fruit of a masonic conspiracy, this story was also created by us. The death of the alleged author was also fake. The book was a way for us to present the essence of the project and recruiting potential supporters. Truly supporters. And in addition, we’d still have fun with the public opinion.

— Little Laura, you don’t need to go that far.

— You reaction is typical and expected. But it is extremely important that you start to cogitate everything that I’m going to say about Reset as real. Just cogitate and pay attention.

I got more serious.

— Remember when we used to imagine a better world, without any prejudice, misery, egoism, discrimination, where people would value knowledge and preserve the nature? Do you remember that?

— Yes, we did that a lot and there were always some crazy trips. We wander a lot when we talk, the attraction must be because of this.

She laughed, I understood the expression on her face, and I regretted what I revealed. But, she wasn’t surprised in any way.

— I mean, we became huge friends. I love talking to you. — I tried to remedy — I already told you that. Just talking and talking. Sometimes, I’m somewhere with my friends or in some party and I think about us, how much I’d love to exchange all of those people for you. — And it got worse.

But, that was nothing for Laura. If I knew, I wouldn’t even care so much to demonstrate how much I thought she was a captivating woman, that ones we want to spend hours and hours just talking. What easily leads someone to think about having her for the whole life. And that she had already listened a few hundreds of times. That was nothing. That’s why, she just accepted my compliments, without thanking or repaying.

— But you never thought that you could really exchange everybody for a few hundreds or thousands just like me or you? Just like us?

— I did and I thought it would be monotonous. But if they were an even and equivalent number we would have a lot of couples getting along pretty well, no?

— Yes, they would get along. But it wouldn’t be monotonous, because we’re not monotonous people. Never. We both always have something to say, some new idea, we’re in constant transformation. It wouldn’t be monotonous. We wouldn’t let it be. Actually, there would be a lack of life for so much satisfaction.

We laughed. Her trying to chill me out and soften all of the self centeredness in her words and me for being uncomfortable with the lack of modesty.

— Do you disagree?

I shrugged casually. I didn’t want to think about it.

It would be too much to dream about and I still thought everything would be too monotonous.

— Lucius, do you remember when you told me that for you, all of the racists could die?

— Have I said this?

— Yes, of course, don’t you remember?

— I don’t know. I must have said at the time of Reset’s book. I think I still say that…

— Because you agree, right? Does it worth it to have people like that in this world? The world is so lost, so sordid. It’s too much self centeredness, human being lost its humanity, totally. We’re cauterized. We daily pass through people sleeping on the ground, having an under-animal life and not feeling godliness. What do we dispense? A minute reflecting and right after we come back to our mediocre lives of working and consuming. Consumerism is just a way for us to give back what we gained for our efforts.

— Of course. And the goods that we buy doesn’t worth it how much we worked for them. — I knew pretty well that speech. That speech was mine.

At least that’s what I believed. I still do. But I don’t know anymore.

— And working is wasting time of our lives to inflate the lives of others. We can’t live for ourselves.

— Yeah, you and me already discussed about this, tons of times. And we reached that conservative conclusion that every adult in the end of their youth faces: c’est la vie. There’s nothing meaningful that we can make to change people and the world. Even if we reach power, through politics, it will be something regional and temporary. We can’t even serve as an example, because there’s no manual, a timeless cake recipe for the world’s problems, that works anytime, for any society. There isn’t.

— I am here to convince you that maybe there is. — Laura came closer to me. — Lucius, I have a secret and I want to share it with you. Please, give me the chance to explain everything till the end because it will scare you.

I was already scared when she grabbed my hand and looked at me in a harsh way.

— Well, first, my name is not Laura. But let me finish, please, be patient. I’m Yvone. I’m not from the South too, this is a forced accent. This is my accent.

— Carioca?

— Yes.

— Why so many lies?

— If you listen to me until the end, you are going to understand everything.

— It’s just that you are starting to scare me.

— Yes, I know, but it’s a part of it. But I want to explain everything. Listen, just listen, please.

“Six years ago, a seventeen year old young lady had her older brother beaten till death by a group of men, in Sao Paolo. It was a homophobic crime. She was the only one in the family who knew that her only brother was gay because she was also gay. The parents just knew that with the death of their son and appeared to be more disappointed than sad with the loss.

The name of the older brother was Gustav. She followed the steps of her brother and was a computer genius. Her girlfriend was three years older than her and studied biotechnology. She helped her to restructure and gave her emotional support. She wasn’t alone in her uprising. Well, what happened was that the sister-in-law of the murdered guy was also his best friend and she didn’t conform with the loss, he was a good guy. Two years later, they and two more friends decide to do something to finally change humanity, something radical and efficient, to recover the lost or maybe never obtained humanity. And with two more friends with very similar ideology. The Reset Project started there.

I laughed in disbelief.

— I mean it, Lucius.

— Are you telling me that Reset was born in Brazil and by a child who was revolted with homophobia?

— Yes. We have our own geniuses. I entered in Reset four years ago. So, at a really early stage. Before the book, we were a little more than one hundred and fifty thousand members spread through the globe. We’re an ultra secret association. The most secret of the organizations. You might guess that this changed with the book, but it did not. Most people do not believe in conspiracy theories. And those who belief do not have credibility. The book describes the project’s intent, but the ways to achieve it are more plausible and real. In the book, an Apocalypse is simulated simultaneously in various points in the world and people go out to see Christ’s apparition, or any other of his versions in the sky. He says that he came to save the ones who have faith in God, but for that they must jump the buildings and towers to have their souls free from the carnal corruption. And just like that people commit mass suicide and blah, blah, blah…We already know this story. That was an alternative story that we created to cover our goals that is still resetting humanity to accelerate the evolutionary process.

But our guns are others and they are efficient.

— Which ones?

— It’s a secret. But if you accept this invite directed to few people, you might know one day…My job is to reunite the sympathizers of the project and filtrate them, selecting those who have potential to be a part of it. And, of course, the first requirement is willing to be selected. Later, me and a few others with the same function, will do a careful analysis of each candidate’s profile through our most respectable soul reader, Tark, a program that, based on your texts and other personal informations, says everything about you, your personality, your intentions, your fears. Like one of those online psychology tests, but with much more precision. It even has a lot to get better at, we intend to expand its application, but actually it has an error’s index of five per cent, in average, which can be improved with the maximum of possible informations about it. According to it you are able to be a part of Reset.

— Can I see it?

Yvone passed an equipment that to me, at that time, seemed like a tablet. It was from a totally unknown material, model and brand, because as I discovered later it was Reset’s own fabrication. I had a little difficulty using it by myself, but she efficiently taught me how to handle it.

I was in my profile. And the program had the layout of a blog, with my picture, my personal data, blood type…

— How do you know my blood type?

— Chatting.

— Did I tell you?

— Yes, when I told you that my cousin needed a blood donor.

— Did she?

— I don’t have a cousin.

— Cool, ha? Everything about you is a lie, even your “disgust for lies”.

— That’s interesting. Come here. It says everything about you. It seems like astrology but it’s really specific. It’s even funnier.

Lucius Pereira Gomes:

Brown skin, six feet tall (or 1,82 meters), shoes size 44, brown and slightly waved hair…

— What is the relevance about my hair in here?

— The hair type influences in the caress that the person receives in childhood, diversifying the personality and the empathy. Children with straight hair receive more affection than the ones with waved hair and much more than the ones with curled and curly hair. Physical characteristics of an individual influences on the reception of people towards him and that keeps shaping his personality, like the degree of security, empathy and trust in people. — Yvone said naturally. I laughed. She was even more adorable when she spoke.

BMI (Body Mass Index) = 26

— It can determine important traits of personality of the individual like disorganization or impulsiveness. You are disorganized, despite your profession.

A positive. Lordosis…

— Yeah. You need to practice more abdominals.

— Really…You needed a program to realize this?

— I didn’t cite a cause, I cited the solution.

3.2 — 3.8 of shyness (0-5);

2.4 – 2.9 of security(0-5);

110 – 118 of I.Q.;

26 of E.I....

— E.I.?

— Emotional intelligence. The scale is until 40, don’t worry.

— You know that this I.Q. tests are failed, don’t you?

— No. That’s demagogy. I largely employed it in my patients evaluation and it always prevented their performance and punctuation taxes in certain intellectual activities that required intelligence and creativity.

— Patients?

— Neurobiologist.

— Meanness.

— Relax. I’m good.

I continued reading more descriptions about my profile and felt naked. There was a list of characteristics and my punctuations in a scale of zero to five. Intelligent, sociable, perverse, skilled, likable, sincere, stingy, arrogant, indelicate, sensible and many others. Strong and weak points. There were also quotations and reviews about them.

— Who gives these notes?

— Tark.

— The program?

— Yes.

— But who fills the informations?

— Myself, but basically on control C, control V. Despite the recordings of our conversations, where variations in your pitch and tone were interpreted. The Tark, modesty aside, is a big invention, but it is exclusive for Reset. If it were broadcasted and commercialized, it would be basically utilized by employers in HR selections. However, the most useful employability of it would be in politics. But I doubt that they would use it for that, few inventions are utilized for good. At best, it would be used to foresee uprising on the web, so that it could be contained before its propagation. But did you identify yourself there?

— I thought it was a little indelicate.

— It was not made to please, it was made to tell the truth. But you focused on the negative points, and ignored the positive ones, because you don’t see yourself in it. Your degree of modesty and insecurity is 4.1 and 3.8, no? A little high.

— And for what is all of this?

— Because we both are going to change the world. And why? Because we deserve it. You and me and thousands of people just like us, with more or less the same degree of fatigue and nonconformity with people and the world. We are going to change the History. We are going to terminate all of these addictions of humanity: misery, hungry, corruption, greed, environmental destruction, social inequality, ignorance, and many others. Human society has everything to evolve, everything! We have the science and technology necessary to end all of these evils and to advance more and more in our evolution that implies living in harmony. It’s just that certain things have gone against the human development. And to terminate with these things, radical measures, unfortunately, are necessary. There is no other way of changing it. There is no point in talking, teaching, explaining it, because the ignorance of not willing to learn is the biggest vice of the stupid. It is even a natural law, the law of the minimum effort. People have laziness to think, to rationalize, and others have interest on stranger’s ignorance, because then they can be in command. And that is never going to change. It’s an addiction. The ignorance is a cancer in humanity that was widespread. All of humanity is corrupted and we want to terminate this cancer.

— That’s a hard one. The man is the cancer.

— No, he is just the body. Let’s not forget that. We are men. We all are able and capable. But the anti-intellectual culture is strong and dominant. It is passed from father to son. But if we break this culture, it ends, the child can be free and exercise all of his rationality. And there is just one way to end this culture: eliminating the root. The Reset came to end with this humanity culture of individualism and self-destruction. And that’s what we do. Because we are smart. We are the thinking part of this globe. We can use our knowledge to change the world and live in a better place for us and our children. But, unfortunately, we can’t do that without extinguishing all of humanity’s vice.

— Do you mean that the Reset exists and the book was written by you, denouncing yourselves?

— People don’t like to know the truth. Therefore, if you don’t want them to know or care about the truth, all you have to do is tell them. The more inconvenient it is what you have to say, more they will shake their heads denying it.

— Man, I’m starting to take you seriously.

— It is not expected from you such a deliberated belief, but I can show you something that may convince you.

Yvone opened a program, dialed a cryptographic address in alphanumeric sequence.

Typed a series of informations and in one of the pages a webcam window opened. Her image was confirmed. She pressed her digital on the tablet’s screen and a social network of totally restricted access was revealed. It was the Reset Project, where every one of the members had its records and their individual pages, allowing to exchange safety information about the project. Yvone showed me a few profiles.

— We…

— I can’t believe you are really finishing this conversation this way. Girl, you are really interesting, has some cool ideas, but you are crazy. If this Reset exists, which means, more crazy people like you exist, and if you want to be another group of lunatics that want to dominate the world and destroy it, I don’t know where you had this idea that I’m here to help you. You need treatment. Actually, — I stood up to leave — you need a psychiatrist. A mad house.

— Are you leaving?

— What do you think?

— I haven’t finished yet.

— Are you going to say something else other than destroying the humanity?

I started laughing nervously. We kept looking at each other for a while and I saw a disappointment in her eyes. I felt sorry for her. I thought that the most interesting people always have something negative in them. It was the arrogance, or the gloating, or the complete farce or they were psychopaths. I calculated the probability of her trying to do something bad to me. Only if there was someone else with her. She was too small. A woman simply wouldn’t cause me much damage without any cold weapons. She deviated her eyes and took a sip of water. She seemed calm and secure in the end. I was confused.

— When you go to the police, beyond the probability of being ignored by a shitty employee, who doesn’t care about you or the city’s security, he will ask you if I actually said something about really destroying the humanity.

— So it isn’t about that? — I was momentarily embarrassed

— No. Do you want more water?

— No, I will give you a chance to finish. Your speech was totally fascist, I want to know where it could end.

— In so many things…It would be a limitation from you to think that the only way to change the world would be killing all of the people in it. It doesn’t even make sense.

— Alright. I’m sorry for my limitation. — I said with cynicism. — What are the alternatives?

— I will liberate you and you are going home and do something for the two of us. You will think about what you really want. You will think about my proposal.

— Which proposal?

— Not interrupting me would save time. My proposal is for you to live with us in a new world, a restored world, free from greed and misery, free of iniquity.

— I get it, you are actually a Jehovah’s witness. I thought their society was the Watchtower.

Yvone laughed.

— That was the idea. Irony always. But I’m not a Jehovah’s witness, I’m not trying to convert you into some religion. I’m not even saying that God will give us this new world. It will be ourselves. And we have resources for that.

— Like those alternative societies?

— No. We want more, so much more. I want the whole planet free and purified. And, I’m telling you that we have enough resources for that.

— How about you being more straight-forward? Just like a real state agent would not be.

— Lucius, we will accelerate the process of humanity’s evolution. — she said slowly as she would explain to a foreigner without the knowledge of Portuguese. — And for that we will need to extinguish every type of culture that slows down the evolution. Lucius, we will kill almost the whole human race. And I have the pleasure to invite you to come with us.

— I am not a killer.

— We will be heroes.

— Heroes don’t kill.

— Heroes kill their enemies.

— Humanity is not our enemy.

— It is its own enemy and that includes us. We can’t extinguish human race, but we can eliminate its rotten side.

— And how do you intend to do that?

— Do you know those grotesque zombie movies?

— Yes.

— It won’t be like that, thankfully, but the mechanism will be similar. Biological weapons will be used in more than three hundred thousands strategic points all over the world. Almost one hundred per cent of lethality and death in three days. A new strain was developed just for this, and until the vaccine be discovered, it will be too late. But we will be immunes.

— Is this serious? Because it isn’t funny.

— Really serious, Lucius. Obviously, killing people puts us in a mean baseline, but there is no other way to end with all this.

— There are innocent and good people in this world.

— Kindness is something relative. People find themselves good, maybe too good, but they fail in a lot of trials of humanism and altruism. There is always a hidden racism, an uncalled-for bullying, a conspiracy, a wish for the other one to get burned or not do so well. It’s complicated to find someone without these addictions.

— Killing seven billion people isn’t an addiction?

— A temporary addiction. It will go away. And we don’t intend to kill everyone. We will rescue a few babies. And unfortunately withan age limit, only until eight months of life, because we don’t want any parental harmful influence, beyond that, after a certain age the child already suffers from separation traumas. It would be too risky.

I felt ahead of a monster, someone talking simply about animals that unfortunately should be sacrificed.

— It is too hard to accept that that would be the only way to rescue the humanity, Lucius. To finally get World Peace. But, so, so sadly, this is the only solution. You may think about other less radical ways, but, beyond being probably unproductive, they would be temporary. I will give you time to think about the proposal. I sent a document to your email with Reset’s page, you will see better in there our intention and our power to do that. We are more than one hundred and fifty thousand people, one hundred and fifty thousand rational and profoundly bothered with human suffering people. I could be happy, you know? I had everything to be happy, except world awareness. I was born in a rich family — she had already told me that story. I was suspicious if it wasn’t a lie — I studied at the best schools. I was raised in a closed condo that simulated security and a pleasant world. My parents always alienated me with the lack of privation. I didn’t know until college what was a beggar, a homeless child, a slum dweller, a worker who could be paid with a small part of my allowance. And when I had a distant contact with them, I was indoctrinated to think that we were worthy of our condition because my grandparents struggled hard for our belongings. While they were there by option. But my father had a company. And all the luxury that was around us was because of our employees who were labeled as inferiors. My mother planned a Barbie life for myself. Where all of my anxieties could be resolved in a mall or some beauty clinic. And this can be enough for those people, but not for me. Not for us. We can’t be happy doing mean things to others. Even by omission. But, people don’t want to be saved. Maybe because they hope for something better afterlife. I don’t know. Believing in a divine creature, kind, who is watching everything that they do and that can punish them with eternal fire doesn’t have awaken the goodness in them. Even worse.

-Yvone, to think that I don’t notice a huge hypocrisy in your humanism words is to really underestimate my intelligence, which I know it is not a big thing, but enough to see the contradiction of your kindness. You aspire to kill even kids…

— Yes. At least they won’t be drowned in a flood to save only eight people and millions of animals.

— Sarcasm is really essential in this time, right? I’m not thinking to be a part of your Pinky and The Brain’s plan, but, cogitating the possibility that you can applicate this biological terrorism of yours, the death of children, and many other innocent people, is not justified.

— It is really the most delicate part. But we imagine the children living with us and carrying inside them their parent’s addictions, the mysticism culture and the loss traumas. It would be too risky. They would develop their parents’ psychosis.

— To me this is enough. I don’t have anything to do here. I’m not going to lie saying our date was a pleasure, but I feel sorry for all of this psychopathy in such a pretty lady.

— If I were ugly you would not feel sorry?

— You understand what I mean.

— It’s you who don’t understand your hidden addictions.

— Oh, I’m sorry. I will enter in a church so I can get rid of them. Or maybe better, in a association of humanists intellectuals atheists who want to save the world from its addictions.

— They are the only ones with competence to do so.

— The war on terrorism implies to terrorize even more, right? Including the innocents. I really don’t have anything to do here. Goodbye, Laura, Yvone, whoever you are.

She rubbed her knees quickly, got up and walked towards the entrance of the apartment. She opened the door and peacefully waited for me to get out. I avoided staring at her, but said a “goodbye” while walked through the door. She answered with a “see you”. I followed mistrusted through the corridor all the way to the hotel’s lobby., suddenly entering the threshold between tension and relief. I remember my shaky and wet hands. My distraction into noticing the sympathetic smile of the doorman and his courtesy while opening the door for me. I walked into my car and drove four blocks ahead. I stopped at the traffic light and lost myself in my synthesis of that afternoon. I was shocked and felt the seed of the doubt germinating in myself. I remembered the persistent certainty of Yvone. I remembered who was Yvone in my life. Despite all of that madness, she was still a notable person because of her lucidity and perception of the world. Why did people have to be like that? Why no one was perfect?

I quickly passed the march with the sound of the horn behind me. And I continued, monopolized by the retrospect of my unfortunate meeting, thoughtful with the desire that developed in me.

I came home, undressed myself in comfort, handed myself over to the sofa, but didn’t feel the usual refugee. I ignored the network or any other way of alienation. Laid down, I canceled my eyes against the white on the roof while all of my environment dissipated of myself. The afternoon went away taking with itself the bright of my walls.

Some time later, I remembered of the e-mail. Grabbed my phone hanging by the center table and there was the e-mail that I was hoping for. I downloaded the archive, passed an anti virus and followed the instructions to access the content. Typed the password and, voilá, was introduced to the Reset.

There was a FAQ session. I read everything. I got a little nauseated. Turned off the phone and rested my left arm by the valley of my eyes.

Just like that, conditioned in my own loneliness, I was converted, but I didn’t know. I had to fight against the strangeness of my latent feeling that Yvone had awaken. The desire to scream, to change, to destroy, to reconstruct.

I didn’t have major bondings. My father was an alcoholic and my mother a heedless and inert catholic that would rather living with a parasite that lived constantly drunk, violent and that had no respect for her, no even for his own son. To intervene and to advise was to awake a strength in her that was never directed towards him.

I didn’t have bonds. That is why I was such a perfect bait for Reset.

In the next day, there was another email from Yvone. She wanted another meeting, this time at night. It was just like she was about to make myself decide.

So, on the following night, we talked about everything that I read and my doubts about Reset. My biggest curiosity was about the efficacy of the vaccine against the biological weapon. And she convinced me that it was so effective as the vaccines that I took in my childhood, which meant, implicitly, not being too safe. She also explained me the plans for the Post-Node e and how life would be better. That all of that drama and tragedy would last a few months, but soon we would be having the opportunity to construct a better world and with our babies. She also spoke about the educational system and the didactic projects of intelligence and skills’ development.

She quoted many personalities involved. Really famous people and those you could not even distrust that were atheists. And like that, after some grails of chardonnay, I was adsorbed by the Project.

During dinner, Yvone gave me a file containing two tickets, round trip, to Austria and a few instructions to be realized in five days. Already in the airport I was received by a estates car with a driver that ignored my language, or even the imperialist language of the time, English, but he knew how to pronounce something that is similar to my name. We drove for about twenty minutes in total silence, except when he offered me a cigar. He dropped me by a hotel. The next day, he picked me up and took me to a company that apparently sold paper for print but it was located in a single floor of a very simple building in a suburb. The receptionist that I was expecting to meet, because it was described on the documents of the files, asked me what was my request. “Septoplasty”, I assuredly said.

On the document it was very clear that she didn’t know anything about the reality of the company which she worked for, despite mistrusting that it was something dirty. But not dirty as it was indeed. She withdrew a digital reader off the drawer and asked me to put my thumb on it. Confirmed the requested information on her monitor, she let me go.

— Room 12, end of the corridor, sir.

It was a medical office that actually expanded all the way through the right wing of the floor. A doctor called Freedman received me. He looked into my file and passed some instructions to the nurses. They collected samples of my blood, saliva, hair. Measured my pressure, asked a few question, shaved my hair in a back part of my head. And doped me.

Five days after, I was released and rescued by the same driver who had a cap and a packet of cigarettes in his hands. I gladly accepted the cigar and put the wool beanie in my head, reclining myself on the back seat. My final destine would be Liechtenstein, a country between Austria and Switzerland. He left me in the annex of the hospital, in front of the coffee room. Somebody waved at me from the window, calling me.

There were eight people reunited there, but in groups of three or two, spread over the tables. I no longer can remember the name of the man who waved at me, but half an hour later a tall and slim red-haired woman arrived, and also another one who highlighted herself from everyone because she couldn’t speak English. The red-haired friendly translated for her the most relevant dialogs. They were the only women and the only people to dispense any kind of head accessory.

— Do you think we can live like this, my friend? — a man asked, apparently younger than me.

— How?

— With few women…Curiously, beautiful, I have to say.

— Few women are really atheist. You know, it is hard for them to get rid of this…side

— Irrational? — He said smiling

— No, I wouldn’t say that. But they have a stronger sentimental side, dominant. Because of maternity and all, right?

— I don’t know anything, buddy. The women in my country were never that sentimental, but little icebergs with boobs. By the way, let’s not be rude. Codey.

— Nice to meet you, Codey. Lucius.

— Loocius…And where are you from, Loocius?

— Brazil…

— Ah, Brazil. I love Brazil, tango’s land, mujeres calientes, ahn? Haha.

— I’m afraid you are talking about Argentina, Buenos Aires. Brazil is a neighbor country and it isn’t like Argentina. Argentina has Diego Maradona, the soccer player. Brazil has Pelé.

— Ah, Pelé! Wow, I like him. Yes, Brazil! Stupid! Rio de Janeiro, samba! Lapa! I love it. And the women…beach…Bikini…What a wonderful land. I hope it continues like that after all of this.

I think that was the moment that I realized it was real, that it was really going to happen, that it wasn’t fiction. I thought during a long time about a new world, rationalist and humanist, while I read the surface book of the one called Muscaria. And on the Internet forums, obviously. But the idea always disconnected after a while, bringing a sad feeling of an undone utopia. Just like it would happen when you played in that lottery games, until you verify that your ticket wasn’t rewarded, and to disenchant yourself of all your dreams and plans.

— And where are you from, Codey?

— Ireland.

— Oh, Ireland…It’s a pity that I don’t know Ireland therefore I can’t quote any stereotype of your country as if I actually know it.

— Sorry?

— It’s nothing, Codey.

— Wow, I’m sorry if I said something that offended you.

— Relax, I’m already used to it. It’s just that our women aren’t just naked butts and samba dancers, you know? Actually we have one that is on Reset and she is very smart. She is from Rio de Janeiro.

— Really? I would love to meet her. I also like Rio’s funk. And caipirinhas…

When we were twelve in that coffee shop, we drove ourselves to a van. We climbed a hill, contoured mountains. I have met a lot of beautiful places, but, until that moment, that was the most beautiful view that I’ve ever seen close. Our stop was a castle.

— Welcome, everyone. Hello. Hello, how are you? Hi. Hello, how are you? Hello, welcome. Salut, mademoiselle. Hello.

An ordinary man opened the passage to the castle. In a hall that was probably the place for parties and events, we settled ourselves. I think we were five hundred. A lecture would be realized. There were five people on the stage, an oriental guy, a blond Nordic man, two short brunette girls and a blond one.The curvilinear blond, called Marilyn, started the speech.

— Dear, as you know, we are here to talk about a project a little bit subversive, but highly important. With Historic importance. This is the most important project not only of your lives, but humanity’s. It’s a watershed project. Not water, oceans.

There was a coffee break and then I could meet other members. The massive majority of them were men. I greeted the redhead girl and her friend who didn’t speak English. “She had to be French”, I said, trying to sound funny.

The redhead, Catherine, was one of the supervisors and had a lot to explain to us. I ended up fitting in with the French girl and following what Catherine had to say.

— Excuse-moi, mais as-tu une cigarrette? — the French girl asked with discretion.

I didn’t know how to speak French, but it wasn’t hard to understand.

— Non, non, pardon.

— Ah, ça va. — she said appearing to be desolated. I wanted to have a cigarette. And speak French.

In the second part of the lecture, we were oriented about the next steps and the extension of our surveillance degree. We were already being monitored fourteen thousand and forty minutes per day since the surgery.

— This means that, from now on, any kind of drug will not be tolerated. — the Japanese speaker highlighted. — Not even alcoholic drinks, or cigarettes.

I looked at the French girl knowing that she already knew that I was staring at her for what we both just had listened. She kept herself firm. But I felt sorry. By the way she reacted, the project did not please her one hundred per cent. I remembered that I smoked two hours ago, in the car, which led me to consider that the driver was not a part of the project. And that I certainly stank of cigarettes and that was why I caught her attention. But I was not a smoker, anyway. And even if I were, I would pass for a therapy just like the French girl passed for a few months.

— If you arrived here then it’s already official that you are willing to abdicate from everything, anything, including affectionate relations in the name of the project.

Next, we were acquainted about the many worldwide organizations and their secret activities. Reset had its omniscience. Several corruption schemes and explanations about world events, like bank corruption. Reset predicted the year of the last economic crisis even before the economic contraction and bank breakdowns.

It wasn’t just a coincidence, we had infiltrated members in huge international relations as well. Political people, well aware of the governments’ dirt and its ostentatious spending. We were living a capitalism review, but none of this mattered, because we would be the end of the whole system.

We were also acquainted about the technological projects reserved for the Post-Node period, having as a background graphics and simulations.

An exponential growth in science and the eradication of several illness were predicted.

At the end, we received instructions of how to access their social network, in the deep web, something that nowadays it does not exist. There I could connect myself with the members in the whole world and share our fears and doubts. Most people were very compatible with me and added me so much with their knowledges and ideas.

After the first meeting, me and Codey came back to Austria together. He was more serious than the first impression that I had of him.

— Anything wrong, my Irish friend.

— What? Sorry. What have you said?

— Anything wrong? You seem upset.

— A little.

— Why?

— You know…I am…Irish. And I just found out that I cannot drink my old Guinness anymore. It’s not easy, man. No women, no beer…Imagine yourself without brown skinned women and feijoada!

— Relax, Codey. If you could really not resist, you would not have been recruited. They told us they have a good rehab.

— I don’t know, this just gave me even more desire to drink.

We passed in a local supermarket and bought some lemons, tea and ginger to celebrate our common dreams and forget about the drugs.

I needed to drop my public job to dedicate myself fully to the project. For all purposes, I got a spot at Outdoor Cinq, one of the most successful companies in the field of softwares and applications for the Internet. As I said, my job was a mere window dressing. I didn’t have much to do there actually. But I could persuade the people that a specialization in computer management had opened the gates for the to work there. I remember that one or two people were skeptical and concluded that I had someone inside the company that facilitated things for me. It didn’t matter much what they though, provided that it was not the truth. But this truth would be too hard to be reached by common people, like the ones that composed my superficial social circle. However, all secrecy, all the discretion was little. Reset was the most important project at the time, because it wasn’t an interest of a simple group of ambitious shareholders, magnates or capitalist corporations. It was the interest of a highly intellectual elite, determined to cause a global setback in humanity’s History. And Reset not only entered in History, it reseted it.

I never put my feet at Outdoor Cinq, but my paycheck was from there and it was through it that I justified my social ascension to the Internal Revenue. A fat salary, with a highly purchasing power compared to the middle class patterns, but that ironically didn’t serve me. Sure, I could experiment things that I would take longer to experiment because it required months of savings and squeezing my older salary and my expectation of growing in the career of librarian.

Before Reset my biggest ambition was the professorship, but I was still at my master’s degree. It would be a long road. Meanwhile at the Outdoor Cinq, I had six months of my old salary in a unique monthly paycheck.

Coincidently, I attracted more women. But none of them interested me. My head changed a lot. I felt in my skin the law of supply and demand. Before, finding the ideal woman, or at least some comfort in bed, was my discreet desire. However this desire was signed with lemon in all of my plans: the one of gaining a better salary, economizing money to change my car for a better one, work out, make my beards, buy a house. Everything for her. After Reset, my mind was something else and I got conveniently more selective. It was an emotional caution attitude, actually. Any woman that I met outside Reset and got involved, meant a loss. And that served right for friends too. I naturally got more antisocial, as they already alerted me during the training.

In these period, I became a prostitute’s client. It wasn’t always, because as soon as I was involved more and more with the project, my interest for sex was diminishing until reaching reasonable rates between the feminine standard. This, as a taboo, I must distinguish, because one of the countless things that I learned is that women do have an intense and frequent sexual desire. Yes, they do. Only with a detail that discourages any male chauvinist, the desire only manifests itself with different men. Summing up, for a woman willing to have sex twice a day or five times a week, it’s over stimulating that it is with different men, preferably strangers. Instead of many insecure men knowing this scientific conclusion, I came to respect even more women by that. We always blamed our reproductive male’s nature for our infidelity and lack of commitment, and they canceled all of this desire of going out there banging everyone, destroying their sexual lives and self-esteem, to dedicate themselves to the man whom they signed monogamy with. It’s been centuries and centuries of sexual repression and bad fame of being inherited frigid. This frigidity is totally artificial and comes from the fact of having to put up with the same man everyday. Instead of sex being something pleasurable and fruit of your own desire, it becomes an obligation and a way of disguising your total lack of arousal for your partner. And on the contrary of what some precipitated amateur gynecologists used to say, the female libido has its elevated peak a few days before their periods, when their endometrium is already with its deadline expire to comfort an ovule. Many feel this increase of libido even during the period.

At Reset I made a lot of friends. Too much interesting people that divided the same displeasure as me about our own solitary existence. But as soon as we talked, when we reunited, we strengthened our affinity bonds and felt truly human beings. It didn’t take longer for me to have the same vibrating passion of Yvone from when I personally met her.

The money paid for Outdoor Cinq little stimulated me to buy material goods, however it made possible for myself to meet the world, which was part of my new profession. As a member of Reset, I had the duty to learn four basic languages: English, Spanish, French and Mandarin. But Esperanto was the official language. Our children would speak Esperanto as their mother language. Different from any adult who is a foreigner in his own land. By the way, only a few of them are native from Australia. We all are foreigners in these new homeland called Brasilis. Yes, I feel proud that the name chosen to the new country, not only because it was where the project was born, but because Brazil was a symbol of all the people’s union.

Learning four languages, in such a small time, wasn’t easy, but I had to do. And I did. In eight months I spoke English and Spanish. In French and Mandarin I was still at a basic level. I didn’t have much time to learn all of French’s verb tenses and all those characters in Mandarin, but it was enough for me to travel and meet people. Only at a cultural level, of course. Without never getting involved. On the other hand, involving myself with places was inevitable.

As a Brazilian, I was always ravaged by high taxes. Not to mention the inflation. We were all cheap labors. Our time and our work valued nothing, nor the years of graduations and post-graduations. The only ones who had their work hyper-valued (the wealth of a few comes from the misery of many) were the soccer players, the nude models and the corrupted politicians. Actually, this thing they say that all of our politicians are corrupt is a fallacy. Our corrupted people are politicians. Corruption was in our people’s culture. People of mixed races, without identity, still traumatized for the colonization, who perceived living life in a dishonest way something clever. Brazilians were dishonest in everything. It was their way to compensate the lack of a democracy. I can say it was one of the most bankrupted of the so-called democracies of the world. Right, because democracy, even if representative, at its complex stage of evolution that the civilizations were in Pre-Node, was an Utopia, it never existed. So, there were not democratic countries. There were people thinking they were in power voting in their representatives. These ones lived with the big lie that the Estate was there to regulate the nation’s interest activities. When actually it was a corporative government system where the real role of the Estate was to favor the capitalistic oligarchies, intervening on the market to protect and inflate the patrimony of some economic power’s corporation. Most of them involved with oil and the media. Even the vote process was fake, because the election campaigns were financed for companies, mostly contractors and banks. The dispute between the candidates was also theatrical. And in Brazil it was not different, obviously. My country was not a serious country, like someone said, and Reset was well aware of that.

There were reports and thesis about the Brazilian situation and it was seen as a counterexample. The democratic and economic model of that time was unbearable. Brazilians were victims of decades of an antidemocratic coup impregnated with the colonels and their policies. They debilitated the education to its maximum. Our children were dumbed down. They were not students, but merely enrollment’s data, because the government had to account for that it was a country compromised with the development to the international community.

And we lived like that, disguising numbers and creating fake buildings, that were lodging fake public institutions. School was just a space for the student to leave his familiar bond to clock in. The government pretended that it was giving all of the resources and investments on their education, but was setting them aside with the reduction of the workload and schemes of automatic approval, because it wasn’t its interest to register a high number of failures on the final management’s report.

I even began to prostitute myself teaching while I was in college. The teacher’s role was to pretend to teach, apply mediocre tests that did not denounced the content’s insipidity and present satisfying numbers of approval. As it was something traumatizing for the children to be withdrew from their playful activities at home, they didn’t have any zeal and concern, by themselves, into achieving a satisfactory degree between the mediocrity range. The parents, who were just grown up students under the same system made to make imbecile citizens, were too busy working sixty hours per week, also accounting the traffic hours, at the companies and industries, where they sold their time and souls just like cheap prostitutes at the Taiwan streets. Any penny was welcome. They had no choice. And in the end of the month, with their broken lives, and their imbecile children, they were obliged to refund the same companies that enslaved them, buying its overpriced products, fruits of their own collective work. But they were just in a Platonic cave, they were not aware of their own situation. Considering that normal, almost like god’s will. They didn’t have analytic sense, because they were not educated for that. They educated to conform themselves in being misery’s children. And each child gave his father the grandson that he deserved.

It was a vicious circle, not a circle, a spiral that converged to urban chaos, with sterile public institutions and generalized violence. At home, in the streets, in bars. The only way to survive was being dishonest — a collective survival instinct.

The thieves arise to balance the inequality, right? Brazil…

If I were not a nationalist? Yes. One of the few. Because all of the rest lived in a so-called patriotism, like everything in Brazil. And it was not for less, Brazilians were segmented. Divided by an inner devaluation similar to the Indian’s caste system, where black people continued playing the role of pariahs, the dust of society’s feet as a body. There’s a poem of a famous Brazilian poet, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, that with great pain I gave to the overes to extermination, but I can still resuscitate it here without any guilt:

“I was also a Brazilian

Dark-skinned like you.

Fingered the viola, drove the automobile

And learned at bar’s tables

That nationalism is a virtue.

But there is a time when the bars close

And all the virtues refuse”

So, I spent life intoxicating myself with the fatal decisions that left the Senate, like the grotesque projects of the deputies, with the people’s lethargy that literally only worried about the situation of their soccer teams and their holidays. Who, just like the government, lived in a fake way. Pretending to be happy. When there’s no science of your situation, when you don’t feel the nausea, when your own existence is canceled, it’s pretty easy to think you are happy.

A friend that I met on Reset told me that happiness is measured by the quantity of released endorphin. Reflecting about it, I realized that if I wanted to be happy in that world I must have searched help in drugs.

But meeting other countries, other civilizations, other cultures made me realize that Brazil was just a country where I had the unhappiness of being born, a bad luck thing, because life is nothing but a big casino.

Maybe I have joined the Ocean’s Eleven.

There’s six months to go before the Node happens, and I was just eighteen months in Reset. There were not people with much less time than myself, which meant that I was one of the last ones. Most of them attracted by the book’s idea. After we have passed for an intensive training, a lot of psychological counseling, we lost all of our right to give up.

Reset was implacable with its plans and didn’t admit screw ups, uncertainties and much less ex-members. I did not have access to this data, never heard about it, but I doubt that a few have not tried to give up, being eliminated at the same time.

Reset was the biggest Big Brother of that time and all of the members, as soon as their association, had the biochip thing implanted in their nape (still have, actually) watching, monitoring and tracking every step of the individual simply for its hormonal alterations and neurotransmitters, working more or less like a highly sensibility electrode with a GPS function.

Six months to go then, the period that we were all waiting for had come — the concentration. I said goodbye to a few friends of mine and my family, including my father, passionately. Passion for what was about to come. I had been trained, effectively. No feelings in the Pre-Node period.

Returning to Austria then, we concentrated and prepared ourselves in a huge farm. We strengthened our ties. I reencountered the French girl who had asked me cigarettes. She was already speaking English. And Spanish. But I also was speaking a bit of French, as well as she was speaking Mandarin, which was far from good.

— Avez-vous survécu?

— Pardon?

— Have you survived? À l’abstinance? — I made a gesture that simulated the smoke.

— Ah, oui, oui. C’est tout bien, maintenant. J’espere.

— Moi aussi.

— Do you speak French now?

— Un peu.

— Parfait.

— Alors, comment tu t’appelle?

I laughed remembering that we really didn’t know our names, but we already knew our vices.

— Oui, pardon. Je m’appelle, Lucius Gomes. Et vous?

— Antje, Antje Dubois.

And that is why my last name now is Gomes-Dubois and not only Gomes anymore.

As I said, our project was elegant. We acted without pre-warning, no announcement, no explosions. The majority of the people who died thought that it was some kind of Armageddon, God’s income statement to humanity. Many died praying on the streets, begging for mercy. The most skeptic ones thought it was one more massive Islamic terrorism. Other big brothers from back then also had their theories, but they were too outraged for not having concrete answers. They died without them. Doctors were gathering blood and trying in vain to clarify the population about the new pandemic that was killing people with a evil shadow above Earth, sweeping lives from north to south, west to east, in a survival tax of less than 72 hours. They had time to talk about virus, quarantine, isolation, escaping to desert islands, but none of this was enough to control the virus spread. Anyway, any contact that they would have with the truth, it was too late for trying to produce a vaccine. Doctors, virologists, epidemiologists, researches from various areas were as sick as the population. Checkmate.

We, from Reset, were vaccinated and a few newborns randomly chosen too. Fourteen thousand children chosen to be a part of the new world. Fourteen thousand innocents, immaculate. They were between 4 to 8 months. That made Reset to be like a huge daycare. During the epidemic, these babies were kidnapped and separated forever from their parents, who were infected. We alleged it was just a measure from the local government, which not always was well received as the truth, but it didn’t matter too much. It was too late.

In two months, almost seven billion people were dead. Evidently, a few were alive, but Reset was already accounting that possibility and as a repairing action measure killed these people by orthodox ways. I didn’t participate in this mission, but Antje did.

— Do you feel ready for this, mon amour?

— Yes, Lucius. That’s what is supposed to be done. Don’t you feel this…huge excitement?!

— I don’t know. I don’t understand myself. I even dreamed about this day…

— So, it has arrived, all of this shit will be over. This bullshit world! This huge. And infinite. Toilet.

I kept staring at her like someone looking at a child who just said a dirty word. I failed, but she did not. She seemed to have a lot of adrenaline ready to be released. I finished dressing her up, in a elegant modern war uniform. It was like someone who was going to exterminate garden pests that she said goodbye to me.

Despite Antje’s mood, from what I heard from a few other survivors after, this last stage was the most tense. Many members has a mental breakdown, because they had to deal directly with the genocide, with the massacre of the remaining people, and that included seniors. Pregnant women. Terrified teenagers. Hopeless children. Babies. Everybody dead, shot, with the blood drained, pulseless.

I even participated on the training, so I know which encouraging sentences passed through their minds: They are already dead. They are already dead. And they were in fact. But as it was a bloody stage, involving explicit conflicts, we missed a few of our members and one of them was Codey, who died shattered by a bomb. And Yvone. One of the remaining fatally shot her forehead a few seconds before dying.

The last time I saw her, the Node was already being executed, and I was in the castle, in Liechtenstein. Yvone was back and forth there for weeks bringing more recruited babies. One of them would be one of my children. We talked for a few times due to the rush, but I believe she, just like myself, never imagined that she would not survive the final conflict to watch our dream coming true. It was also she who delivered the Reset’s report about my dismissal. I was even summoned up and actually participated on the virus’ spread in more than two hundred countries in about twelve hundred strategic points. But, a few weeks before this last phase, I was too tense and failed on the psychological exam.

— I am not going to pretend that I was not disappointed, Lucius. You know you proved to be a deception a long time ago.

— Maybe the hardest part of it all is to eliminate History and not people. And that is why I was recruited, right? Each one with its own talent.

— We all have our own talent to be used after the Node.

But what disgusts me is that you don’t seem to be upset with the result.

I did not argue, because I really felt a warmth relief with the result of the dismissal, which made me reflect if participating in the Reset was a really convict decision. However, there was one detail about Reset that I did not reveal yet, but maybe you already asked yourself about it, or not. Frankly, I don’t believe that this book will be read by someone someday. And not even it can be, because there are just two types of people in the world, the immaculate and the ones who participated in the Reset. They don’t know, neither can, that I’m writing my memories about everything that happened and I’m using a pad of paper for that, with my conveniently incorrect and unintelligible orthography, because Reset was always one the biggest big brothers of all times and today still is, increasingly evolving technologically. Everything, including us, is tracked. Even the children. Also, any type of virtual data can be easily tracked, doesn’t matter if it’s in phones or computers. Moreover, alarming levels of specific hormones of panic, tension or adrenaline, are precisely decoded and interpreted as dangerous intentions. All of this for our nation’s safety and integrity.

Yes, thinking has been tense. But until now I haven’t had problems. Only a few of us had, actually, but they are being controlled.

— Am I going to receive some sort of punishment?

— No, we would not have time for that.

— Wasn’t that predicted by Tark, my failure?

— Not at that time that I recruited you.

— So either it was wrong about me or I have changed.

— You changed. And Tark was wrong, because it did not predicted changes in such a short period of time.

— Am I going to be killed then?

Yvone looked at me coldly.

— We are all dead, don’t you remember?

— Not everyone. They were just born.

— Yes. So at least take well care of them, because we are really out of time to reevaluate you.

And she was gone forever.

Back to my failure at the exam and my insecurity in what we were doing, if I was still alive at that time it was because I decided to participate. In case I had denied to be a part of Reset at my date with Yvone, she would have killed me. But until my last contact with her, she said she never needed to go that way, because her feeling was foolproof, and this feeling was nothing but a psychoanalytic software, Tark, that traced profiles and calculated the individual’s probability to sympathize with Reset. Of course, Yvone’s participation was important, herself and others with the same function, because they were choosing the alleged candidates to be evaluated by Tark. Once inserted at the program with your personal data and historical tracked on the Internet, it evaluated by itself the candidates’ probability to frame in the profile of the project. They had to be rational people, humanists, free of prejudice, without ties with any mythology and totally nauseated with that world, to the point of not caring to decimate some vicious elements, even if in form of people. Yvone recognized me as one of them and Tark only ratified her intuition. She was a neuroscience doctor and participated on the logic of Tark’s programming.

We have a well-trained team on the psychology and neuroscience’s area. And many of their work are modeled today in form of analysis programs and humans’ body evaluation and orientation. In other words, we have softwares, constantly enhanced to make decisions for us. At schools, for example, each child will receive an evaluation of which focus will be better in its education and teaching methodology for its development. These programs have as a basis that each individual is a complex being and with a unique and delicate identity. They calculate in seconds the most appropriate life style for each citizen based in its genetic and physiological codification and personal historical that are being added by the psychopedagogues. This not only generates a recipe of life style, but pre-reports of illnesses and neurosis that may manifest themselves later. The programs’ estimated error tax is 0,1%. That in theory, because none of our children, who are mostly the same age, became adults. We’re still in a elaboration phase and they are our guinea pigs.

Meanwhile Antje and Yvone were in the trenches against the remaining, the most pacific ones, like myself, were taking care of the babies. Antje said, maybe to console myself, that I had the most difficult part. Maybe I did.

We divided the babies per age and in various wings. Each one with about thirty children. But mostly of the caregivers were men, which made the eyes of the few women in the castle shine out of satisfaction. They coordinated our jobs.

— Gomes, time to change diapers on the wing 5. Repeating, Gomes, time to change diapers on wing 5. — the radio called me while I ran away to take a nap.

I took turns in some rooms and I can say that the older ones were the most tiresome. When things were terrible, we appealed to hypnotic processes like lullabies, automatic massagers and recordings of female voices. All of that extremely was racking to the ears of those who had to listen that for days and days for months.

Actually remembering, Antje is right, I was on the worst war camp. Specially the diapers…just remembering that is terrible. There were fourteen thousand babies for about twelve hundred men and three hundred women. Each one stayed in average with ten children, filling their brains with psychological terrorism. I never investigate it but I wouldn’t be admired if the majority in there decided to keep themselves childless.

I don’t really know what Antje and others saw, but watching television was sadist thing for the psychopaths aspirants. Almost in the end, there were just left a few really alternative broadcasting stations, guided by the remaining themselves. They were already aware of what was happening and screamed for help and clemency. The automatic translator was faulty, but it was dispensable. Their faces said it all. Sometimes they filmed themselves praying, kneeling, asking for forgiveness. They showed their kids while we rocked ours in our arms. In one of them, a child showed its two year old little brother…But it’s better to deprive this details from whoever reads this.

When Antje came back, she seemed like somebody else. Shaved hair, pale, blocked out eyes, bruisings, torn out clothes, dried blood over her skin. She didn’t speak with me. Most of them were like that. Catherine and other supervisors brought the boxes for them. As there were many of them and the desperation was bigger than everything, they applied the doses themselves. And laid on their back. Looking down to those zombies on the ground, you could see the death of each one of them on the deep well on their pupils. The multiple cries of the babies were more melodic than the screams of the desperate.

Yes, we killed, but we all died together there.

America, from south to north, is a beautiful continent. I miss there. The last time I was there was eleven months ago, on the south part and it was the first time after the Node. I felt like visiting Machu Picchu or Atlantis. There were still a lot of bones, but no sign of remaining life. The houses and streets were gradually being invaded by wild animals and vegetation. Although there were not any ruins.

But two years have passed. We’re in the fifth year. My children are already five years old. It’s been a month since I came back from a six month mission in Central America. I confess that I’m impressed with the speed that we’re reducing the organic waste, the pollution. The Guanabara bay that is in a city on my homeland is crystalline. When I saw that, I laid on the the sand and cried in ecstasy. I wish the children could be there, but I have a lot of photos not only from that region but from a good part of the coast that sweeps both Latin Americas. I could show the kids the before and after. This is one of the few bad things that we tell them about the Pre-Node civilization, the way how they handled the natural resources. In fact, these revelations are seen as great counterexamples of the importance of the sustainability.

— Daddy, the small fishes died without air. I’m sad. — Luq said.

— Daddy too, Luq, but their grandsons are happy now, because everything is getting clean again.

— Daddy — Lara asked — is that why everybody got really sick, because it was all really dirty?

— Absolutely my little turtle, dirty is bad not only for the animals, but for ourselves.

— This story is very sad, daddy.

— Yeah, I don’t like it when you tell us that.

— I also don’t like it, my dear.

— Daddy.

— Yes, Lino.

— I want to go there, this place.

— Which one, Lino?

— This one, this one and this one.

— Does everybody wants to go with Lino?

— No.

— No!

— I’m sorry, big boy. Only when your siblings lose the fear of going there too.

Antje is in a mission in Africa for fifteen days and will stay there for six more months. I will only personally see her in a month, when she is going to stay here for two days to visit us. Meanwhile I stay with the kids and return to my library job. There’s too much to do. The harvest feast is coming and the children won’t stop talking about their vegetables’ costumes. Lara chose to be an aubergine because she has the belly just like one. Luq and Lino disputed for the English potato, but a friend of them was already ahead of them in guarantying his choice and exclusivity. But even if it was pretty distinct vegetables than what they really wanted, they opted to dress themselves as sweet and baroa potatoes.

That meant that I had little less than a month for the confection of three vegetables’ costumes. Antje was responsible for sending me the clothes’ drawings, but I suspect that she won’t have time for that and I’ll have to use the creativity that I don’t have.

— I just hope that you learned well what each one of you can provide as nutrients. Come on, huh, don’t say that you have iron and vitamin A when you don’t have.

They all laughed.

Today I think I can imagine how to materialize this sweet potato that is on my writing desk for a week so I can start drawing something decent.

We’re paying the installment for the purchasing of two robots. As nothing can be bought collectively, even having familiar relations, we’re buying two different items of different models, one for myself and another for Antje. We already paid three installments of seven. They are very simple models, nothing sophisticated, but they will perfectly attend our needs. There are people who buy the pieces to assemble their own robots, but me and Antje are parents and we don’t have the availability nor the time left like the single people and men without children. It’s better for us to order some with our specifications. And this is going to be an investment, because it will save us time on the monotonous chores like cleaning and maintaining the house. Leaving us time to take care of the children and of ourselves. Anyway, I can barely wait for the end of the installments.

Since we don’t have medical license to consume milk because of the casein, we have invested a lot in vegan milks, because they are free and better than the ricotta which is a font of protein without casein. It’s already been so much time since we adhered them that they are our favorites. Lara is the one who has the most intolerance issues. She can’t consume gluten, lactose, casein or soy. But specially gluten. So we all cut the gluten here in our house, so she won’t have any contact with any particle of it. It would be hard if all of that was at the Pre-Node time, but in Brasilis there isn’t any food industries. Everything is organic and homemade, including the flours. The only thing that Lara can’t eat is wheat, rye and barley. And nothing made of milk, of course. But we are not vegans, those people who did not eat meat and anything that came from other animals. We also don’t consume sugar. Children don’t even know what is sugar actually. They will know when they study History later, but as a food from the past that caused many illnesses. We only go to the doctor for check-ups, to see how everything is. I believe I’ll slowly age with longevity and quality of life.

I just came back from a dinner between friends, with Antje. She is sleeping now and I took time to write some more, while the kids watch Shrek, edited.

Today specially I had interesting discussions with people. Three of them Americans ex-politicians. Reset had a lot people who were famous and involved with politics and media. Writers, scientists, journalists, presidents, actors and even pop artists. And they were already there before being contacted by Reset. I took this opportunity to satisfy my curiosity about how they were contacted.

The three of them were together and basically answered the same thing, they attracted Reset’s attention through interviews and later had their emails and personal messages hacked. They were analyzed by Tark. And then introduced to people already known by us and started a friendship based in politics and philosophy. Similar to what happened to me, just with different routes.

Today they were not politicians, artists or journalists anymore. They had to infiltrate in professions that are more necessary for a recently built civilization. Most of them are involved with education or public administration. A couple of actors administrates the weaving and knitting fabric.

My job continues to be at the library, but nowadays I’m in peace with the academic world and I work more in the development of didactic and pedagogical material. Other librarians work with the edition of new books, because many titles have been produced. Most of them on blogs in the web. I work eight hours per day, ten minutes away from home, I’ve been having time for myself and for my wife and kids. I’m finishing my doctorate and applied for the position of professor of the first class of Information Management’s graduation (former Library science). Of course that until the kids go to college, my job will be to just plan the syllabus.

At the party, I was just talking with an ex-politician. Viktor Salamandra, who had to start a new career at this new era. I already knew him by sight in some virtual forums and events, but we never talked in fact. He told me that he had became a materials engineer and felt like a reborn man.

— You enter politics thinking that you are going to change the world, but then you see yourself stuck in a private interests network and huge corruption’s schemes. Where the developing countries leaders themselves sell their nations’ goods for the richest. But there are good people in politics, there are, clowns like myself that become just holders of estate secrets, without even being invited for the Big Cake repartition, because the corrupts recognize themselves and know who is going to affiliate to them and who might report the whole fucking thing. And you had the temporary intention of reporting everything with a book, official documents, but you realized, not realized, remembered that those people were really powerful and their power were precisely the lack of people’s interest for the truth, because people had no interest in knowing the truth. They were people grown with fairy tales and they liked to pretend the world was like that. While they sacrificed all of their existence for the richest, feeling pleasure while serving them. They really believed they had no right and that every government’s attitude was a gift. Any report would be easily blocked by the media, after three weeks collecting the profits of the seemingly indignation of the people through hollow sensationalism. Then you see yourself with a muzzle, because the ones who supposedly shoud set you free and help yourself, attach little importance to that, even because who actually felt the corruption’s effects were the poorest and these were formed just by live organisms without any conscience. The middle class lacked interest, because they only cared about the consumerism vice. Since childhood.

— And this, at a long-term, generated more social fragmentation, urban violence, and neglect about the human rights — someone else added.

— With that we didn’t even know anymore who played the part of cause or effect, because corruption also happened in small scales, in little social transactions. We don’t know if our politicians are corrupt or if our corrupted people are politicians.

— Because it’s easy to believe that corruption happens in contact with the sum, but the guy who reaches power leaves from an already corrupted society. — I amended, interested in replies.

— Yes, sure. But this is also the estate’s fault. — the first one explained.

— Really?

— Really. The role of the estate is precisely to regulate all of the transactions. The bureaucracy exists for this, the bureaucracy is a type of rights’ blinded equality. If someone was failing in its application it was because of poor government management, of its own public institutions, and in the end of the civil servants. I’ll show you a simple example, but many thought of it as a minor thing: a teacher who did not fail a student, who through bureaucratic routes, like the exams, the evaluations was not able to move to the next education stage. It seems like an innocent act, but think about the effects for that student, who already comes from a society that sees education as a punishment, now, think that this same teacher does the same with four more students in a class and equally in others. Now multiply the act for half a million teachers, each one with five classes. Twelve million students were damaged? No, society was damaged. There is no escape, we are all part of a body and a not working cell might become a cancer.

I agreed with him, but we took a break for our own reveries, while we finished our tea. My son approached to show an origami bird, I encouraged him with a forced compliment, just like I was oriented to do. The ex-politicians started a conversation with him, in Esperanto, because it was the only language that the children knew. We were emphatically prohibited to talk in another language near them so it didn’t generated doubts. The language, despite artificial, already showed itself alive. The children developed a collective style to speak and small alterations in the vocabulary could be perceived and naturally spread like “Castrus” which meant something as “Gosh!” in English. And we followed them. I predict that a few decades from now Esperanto will be a really different language than the one we taught them, and depending on this civilization’s course, it will be the mother tongue of other languages.

My son thought the three unknown gentlemen were weird, but he was polite enough to keep the conversation going.

— And what is your favorite game, Lino?

— Metal worms.

— Metal worms? My daughter also likes it. She’s that one in red shorts, Serin.

— Serin? I don’t like Serin.

— Why?

— Because she runs really fast when we’re playing tag and I can’t catch her.

— I’m sure you can run just as fast, Lino.

— No, I lose my breath. I would have to run a little bit every day to run better and she has to stop running for a while.

— I’ll see if I can convince her to run less.

— Thanks for your kindness. Now I need to play.

Lino rapidly joined the other kids. Everybody released a contained laughter and with that we abandoned once and for all the other topic to talk about our children, because they were our gift from now on, and the past only served as a counterexample for our actions and appreciation for what we were building. We went to the room and accommodated ourselves in a couple of sofas. A doctor, friends with Viktor, Roger Freedman, comes a little late and wet from the rain, but soon he joins ourselves. Viktor spoke about his job as a materials engineer and the dielectric properties of the new metamaterials. From this subject we were taken to talk about the modern life without the animals’ domestication. He was in favor of it and was convincing us about how the animals suffered by losing their free contact with nature. Dogs and cats, for example, could only live freely on the neighborhood, on the fields or in public squares, together with other animals. This means that our children don’t know what it is to have a pet at home.

— Do you miss anything from the past? — I asked.

— I do. — Kelly Slavök, one of the ex-politicians said.

— I do too, of course. — Viktor said, while Roger kept quiet.

— I miss smoking a joint, you know?

— Seriously? — I said, surprised.

— Yes. And I’m not the only one. I heard a lot of people saying the same.

— And have you…?

— If I smoked just for old time’s sake? No. I don’t even think about it. Apart from that hemp milk that we have to take, I don’t have a cannabis plantation on my bathroom. And even if I had and used, this informer here — he pointed to this nape — would report me. I’ve already conformed with this drugless life.

— I like hemp milk. And I never enjoyed getting high, so, no problems until now. And you, Viktor?

— Oh, I think the same as Kelly. See, meetings like this one: with great friends, great people, but not even a little wine…I miss it.

— A lot! — Kelly added.

— But I’m getting used to it. I’m already used to it. Everything is a matter of habits and a drugless world is really better for us and our children. For the whole humanity. Let’s not be hypocrites, right?

— I agree.

— Specially because our wish to live longer was never this strong.

— You touched in an important point. I also realized that. Never, in all Human History, living longer was worshiped.

— But don’t you think that with all this medical technology…I mean, what do we have today? Nanobots that destroy any kind of cancer, phones monitoring and detecting pre-diseases, neural chips that policies suspect intentions…

— Gee, that’s pretty crazy, isn’t it? — Viktor interrupted Kelly — When I think about the technological boom that we’re living. The innovations are frenetic and seem to have no limits. Me and my family are excited with the spacial trip. I think we all are. Because before all of this was a mere utopia and the maximum that we obtained were enjoyed by a few, the astronauts or the richest.

— Tell me about it. I literally dreamed about this trip. I’m always on the Aerial Space page following the news, the tests results.

— When will be the next test?

— Hum…predicted for eighteen months from now.

— Too slow.

— Yeah, we have to consider that the scientists team is really reduced, right? But what I was trying to say about all of this technology is if this alcohol or joint’s abolishment is really necessary.

— There are a lot of reports about it on the basis — I tried to help.

— Well, I don’t know. Later I will read it again calmly. Anyway, we’re not going to screw everything up just because to take a puff, right?

— I’m satisfied. We lost many things, things we don’t have now like pornography. I’m even curious about how these next teenagers will deal with the absence of pornography. I think many psychologists are waiting for it, to know if they will create it by themselves, take girls’ pictures, keep it, share it on the Internet, or if they are going to draw.

— I hope not, because this would be a setback. Pornography encouraged sexual violence against our women. It taught in a distorted and inconvenient way our society how to deal with a woman and subjugate her in bed. Frankly, do we want our daughters to come back to that abject position? — I tried to defend my disgust with pornography.

— Lucius, times have changed. Look at our women. All of them wonderful, sexually resolved, smart, cult, and look at our daughters who are already developing themselves like that. Do you think they would freely subject themselves to that condition? And it depends what pornography exposes.

— What do you propose then?

— What already happens with us. Who in here never participated in a bacchanal, a couple’s exchange. And everybody is alright, no one in a unfavorable position. Our plays are freer, without taboos and at the same time safe.

I choked.

— What do you mean, bacchanal?

— You never participated in one?

— Before the Node?

— No. Now. I can’t believe that our friend here…How it can be?

— Not everyone enjoys, Kelly, there are shy people who are more reserved.

— Are there? I think it’s difficult nowadays. Anyway, Lucius, there’s been a few orgies between the guys. But what really happens is couple’s exchange.

— I don’t admire, but we were never invited — I kept thinking and lost myself for a while on the conversation until…

— Yes, Estela is delicious. That one really loves sex. She makes me tired. Roger knows it. Roger had sex with sex.

— Roger? Estela? Estela, that Estela? Your wife? — Viktor asked.

— Sure.

— Kelly, we need to set something up at our house. Me and Drajeana are coming.

— If Estela agrees…Roger is already welcome, isn’t you Roger?

Roger limited himself to shrug. I was keeping my excitement I thought about Antje and the possibility of her agreeing with it. She was a very clever woman, easy to talk to. In fact, she had the intelligence to know what I want speak even before my pronunciation, even if it was something subtle, but she was mostly right. She never even commented with me about any of these eccentric actives which meant she also didn’t know.

Kelly remembered how all of that confession started and extended the invite made for Roger to myself. I was embarrassed. I was more shy than what I planned. I gave the real excuse that it was a subject to talk alone with Antje who was probably as naive as myself. Kelly blinked at me while extending his thumb asking me if my genitalia was good enough, certainly for his wife.

I was very embarrassed and suddenly felt going back in time when conversations of that type were really common in any group of men and I was always displaced for not seeing much sense. But now, group sex seem so right for me.

Coming back home, I put the children to bed with reading any story because I was anxious to share with Antje my version of the party and to know what she thought about it. She was programming the robot for the next day’s chores.

— Are they asleep already, love?

— Yes.

— That fast? Did they brush their teeth?

— Yes, amour. They are even snoring.

— Hum…And how was the party? Did you like it? You were at the guys table for a long time…We felt rejected. I looked at you and it was like we didn’t even exist.

— Of course not, chèrie. But I confess that the conversation was really masculine. I think. Maybe not. You’ll tell me.

— What do you mean?

— Finish programming it.

— Right. Where was I…? Oh yes, the lawn. Lou, you know what we should do? One of those parties at our house. But for children, with many games and old competitions. It would be something new for the children who only know video games. And, we also have not been good hosts, don’t you think? It could be good if we collaborated too.

— I don’t see nothing bad in it and I thought it’s a cool idea. I have a lot of games in my mind. But it’s good to take this to the parents’ council before. Maybe there’s a problem that we are not seeing. I can’t see anything wrong, but we know how these things that involves rescuing stuff from our time must be.

— I know. There’s going to be a council this Wednesday. Remind me to bring Lara’s dyslexia reports.

— Sure, amour. Listen, — I laced my wife’s waist and tried to finally introduce the subject that I wanted to talk about since I left the party — I want to share something about the party to you. I think you don’t know, because I just knew today.

— Dit moi.

— Those three men are ex-ministers, you know that, right?

— Biensûr.

— So. They are very interesting politics’ men and full of political conspiracy stories, that’s why I was so stuck to them and we end up forming a little group.

— Did you ask them if we are communists?

This was the kind of intelligence in her that made me melt inside.

— I did. Roger, the shorter one…

— He is taller than you, love.

— Hah. It’s not a fair comparison for a Brazilian. Six feet tall in my land was something respectful. But anyway, the shorter one of the three, Roger, agreed with me and said this was irrelevant, because History is dead, communism never existed and also the OPEC war, 9/11 or Arab Spring. Anyway, it doesn’t matter if we are communists or not, because there is not any other economic system, what matters is that we are smarter and more elegant. Not even our decisions and previsions are taken by us, we use computers for that. It doesn’t make sense to resume us as communists without the capitalist competition.

— But we overthrew capitalism. And all those economic insanities.

— We overthrew everything, including capitalism. We don’t even have an estate.

— Reset is the estate, love. The only ones who are not a part of it, but anyway we’re serving them, are our children. Anyway, Roger reminded me that we are a sociocracy governed by a global computerized intelligence. What would be a computerized sociocracy. It can’t be resumed as communism. Communism itself, the absence of classes, was a consequence of this organization based in humanism and intelligence.

— Well defined. Next time call us for the conversation, okay? The way you detached yourselves was really awkward. All of the men at party in there, whispering…It’s been years since I saw that. It seemed like you were discussing old frivolities like soccer, best brand of beer or something like that.

Antje was so curious to know what I had to say as me to reveal it, in a perfect symbiosis.

— We talked about sex.

— Yet, there was no reason to exclude us.

— We didn’t exclude you. I think we moved away from the children. That was it. At first we were talking about drugs, drinks and these things got a little erotic. I think it was inevitable. I found out some surprising revelations and they even involve you.

— Me? I can’t believe you exposed our intimacy like that.

— No, of course not. Never. Would it be a problem?

— I’m not sure Lucius. I didn’t think about it. And I don’t talk about sex with other people besides you and the gynecologist. There are very few women here and all of us are always busy.

— I didn’t say anything about us. Listen. The guys were talking about pornography. It does not exist anymore, but we were cogitating if the children, when they get older, would not create out of…out of need. Do you understand? Curiosity, hormones, sexuality, sex, these things that we have no idea how it’s going to be, we just guess. It’s even an interesting schedule to talk about in the reunion.

— D’accord.

— That’s when they said that all of them had participated in a bacchanal.

— I don’t know this word.

— C’est une espècie d’orgie où tout le monde…

— An orgy?! Orgy?

— Oui. Yes. A bunch of men and women doing group sex. It’s bizarre to have this here. Sometimes we think we live in a holy place. I don’t know, everything in here seems so strictly right. We’re practically vegetarians, thin, elongated, clean. I got scared. But Reset had a good sense by not interfering in this area. I think it’s the freer area, with the most free will between ourselves — sex.

I gave some space for her to manifest herself.

— Don’t expect nothing from me right now. I just want to listen. Conclude.

— Well, even more common than the bacchanals, are the couples’ exchanges. One couple goes to each others houses and when it comes the crunch, in sex, they exchange partners. Kelly, the blond one who was in a gray shirt, you know, invited us to experiment, me and you…

— Right, Lucius, dear. It’s very interesting, I even got a little excited, but I need to sit down. It’s too much information dropped over my head.

— Amour, sit down. Sit down. If I’m hurting you, tell me.

— It’s not that, I would never ask you to spare me some knowledge…Anyway…Continue.

I realized that I really needed to continue. Antje was interested, in a desirable way.

— Kelly and his wife seem to be really used to doing this and Kelly invited us, without any compromise. — I kneed myself in front of her and began to touch her in familiar way that she knew where was going.

I could read her gestures, she agreed.

— It would be a dinner for four people, nothing else, I’m not even horny for having sex collective. But experimenting other people…him with you and me with her…seems like a huge experience. And we don’t have many taboos, right? I would not matter if you had sex with another man. In fact — monitoring her sexual signs I confirmed how that made her horny — on my way to here, I realized that this excites me more than the conventional. I even thought if this would not become a vice. But it’s just sex, right? Depriving ourselves from this primitive desire just make our minds sick, right?

— You’re appealing, love. But don’t stop touching me like that, mon chou.

— Never. I’ll never stop touching you like that, Antje, not even when we’re old.

I won’t detail what else happened tonight, but this was the day that I convinced my wife to turn this paradise much more interesting. Tomorrow, or after tomorrow, I’m going to send an email for Kelly, coded, of course, as if it is a simple dinner. He lives in another state, but by train it takes ten minutes from here. Thinking better, I’ll wait more three days to send this email. I don’t want to seem desperate and I’m not. Just too excited to experiment Estela. And too apprehensive to realize that Antje’s pleasure can be more intense with Kelly.

Despite not being a father before the Node, it’s been really easy to raise my children. The family’s role is now screamingly defined: to regulate individuals to form able citizens, important elements in our purifies society, like pieces of a puzzle, wheels of a gear, archives of a operational system. Me and Antje strictly follow the designated orientations for our children, which are updated every six months, after a routine medical consultation. And everything is working right. Each one of our children has a different raising methodology, not always orthodox, and education, and we know what is each one’s pathological and neuropathological predisposition. They play, they get dirty, make art, disobey, cry, but are regulated according to the program’s suggested psychology. Their feeding and physical activity are also predetermined, and we follow a diet for each one. If I remember well, this Monday we already have a consultation marked to do the exams and receive a plan’s upgrade. We have reunions in parents and children’s associating centers, where we discuss the method’s success of not. And our reports and complaints are registered and forwarded to our pedagogues. Well, I still have not seen any parent complaining about the results. Sure, there are questionings and insecurities against some non-conventional practices, but when it comes the results, although being too early to evaluate, they are satisfactory and have pleased the parents, teachers and the community. Although my seemingly too cold and calculating description, there is a lot of harmony in our human relations, because we were also reformed by Reset, rescued by it for our senscience. I can even say there is an interpersonal love.

The education system is much more than any of us, adults, had access. For me who came from a country where the education system was totally insipid, the comparison is huge. Already at the first stages, remembering that the older kids have the same age, the children have been having the opportunity to think by themselves and learn to love the knowledge, this primitive thing that was losing itself gradually throughout time, in part because of the religions who swore to have a knowledge coming from a superior source, therefore universal and changeless, and for the elites’ recognition that knowledge is power and power must be their exclusive property so there is an elite. With that, until my generation, the anti-intellectualism was worshiped in their little electronic altars or in mass reunions. Becoming a culture, it even captivated the elites that, despite all of their purchasing power, had little intellectual capacity. Knowledge was then bought as some production goods, exclusively. But they could not buy knowledge. Knowledge can’t be bought, it can only be developed. And that was what was missing to that Pre-Node failed humanity’s model. This undervaluation of knowledge was a sad adaptation of men to their freedom’s jail, where they lost more right and space in the world even more than any animal. As a consequence, the permit to come and go, see and be, experiment and live overvalued — money. All of this sad individual’s subjugation was the result of a alienation created by itself that some were born to suffer by merit, and this as a conclusion to its primitive and dumb analysis of why the human suffering existed. And in case the individual broke the chains of this conservative ideology, to change its oppression scenery, it would need to spend too much energy, or follow the counterpower routes, named as, doesn’t mattering its nature or intention, criminality. The criminality has always been consubstantiated with injustice, as a instinct way to preserve the individual’s space, and the only way to restrain it was threatening to expose the criminal’s physical and moral integrity.

About the universities, they are already being prepared and the courses reviewed. Until now there’s only a few specialization courses for the adults. I envy this generation and some kind of nostalgia from what I never had which is everything they have now: the security in living in a happy world. Not counting their youth. But what comforts me is that I was one of the responsible for what they have now. This is each animal’s biological role, isn’t it? Leaving a better world for the next generations.

At school they explore their creative and social side, they learn to live in a pacific way and to respect the other children, while they prepare themselves for the adult life. It’s an existentialist education, with a trans-disciplinary basis, with the support of cognitive science, that keeps pointing to the being’s Liberty to be itself, under the reins of Security, of course. Me and my team are actually selecting and filtrating the materials that will be utilized in various spheres of education.

About labor and its division, many professions no longer exist or are simply in a lethargy, like churches’ pastors and forensics experts, for example. The pattern stipulated for the pre-constitution (because our laws are still in a project’s form) is workload inversely the effort and stress, not being able to exceed the maximum of eight hours per day. But me, for example, I was on call lately and I’m already exceeding the limit of family’s absence.

Personal and family time are very cherished, which in practice is not so easy to convince to our citizens, because most of us still is a workaholic. This seems to be impregnated in ourselves as a trauma’s reflex to relate with a fixed person, including blood-relatives. I think when our psychologists face themselves with our insistence in working they make a mental note saying:

“Hum…it’s interesting this need of the men to run away from himself in an almost pathological self annulment.”

That’s what I think, I don’t know, I have never been a psychologist. They are used to say that you have three separated and essential functions: take of itself, take care of family and take care of society. About the retribution and incentive, the system is unique, really practical and simple. The professions are all normalized equally with a fixed salary (points), not mattering the service’s character, intellectual, handmade, artistic or manual. What regulates the value of the professionals’ effort is the workload and not the salary. The gender discrimination is based on the principle of a balanced society, where men and women have different organisms and physical structures, being prejudicial for the women’s health and physical integrity the physical effort earlier than for the men. I remember this was insistently debated by a radical feminist ideology’s vestige, but with a little comparison study between men and women, seeking balance and not equality, the roles and duties of both sexes in society, this ideology lost all of its reason. According to science, there is no gender equality. Demanding women to have the same physical effort as men is to harm them in their nature, bringing physical and hormonal problems for their health. In some kinds of professions, women are exempted, or they possess a reduced workload. By the way, one of our biggest problems is the huge scarcity of women, because finding secular and rational women on Pre-Node was a great hunt treasure, leaving us with a disparity of one woman for four men. Which concedes each one of the adult women today a vote power with a quadruple weight compared to men. I’m one of the few lucky ones who have the opportunity to have a woman by their side. It’s not an exaggeration, neither pride, to say that many men envy me. Most of the men are single for lacking choice. But, they seem to respect women. This causes a certain tension.

The voluntary services are designated through recruitment and attending the demand. Nowadays, the sector that mostly demands voluntary services is the macro and microenvironment, which demands support both in the household waste disposal and rivers and seas’ depollution. There aren’t impressed currency notes nor coins, just chips that are implanted under the skin that keeps debiting points in private accounts in an unique virtual bank. When employed, each citizen will have on the first day of the month a right of one hundred monthly points retained. Depending on its performance and service’s quality, this value is credited from its virtual account. In case it has negative points by its performance, like faults and delays, these are automatically computed, diminishing the initial sum. All of these accountability of the monthly paycheck is automatically made by computers, in a bureaucratic system, as free as possible from human control, which means it’s almost perfect. There is not the concept of taxes retained by an estate. But all of the industries, institutions, companies, stores, and research centers are state-owned, and everything is produced in these places, of any nature, it’s for an only consumer market — the brasiliense society. The production is made by order to avoid wasting efforts and inputs. About the bank system, the transference of points is not possible, so, everything that is in an account comes from the work of its owner, not having the concept of heritage or properties’ transference. There is just one particular type of sale, which is the returning of a property bought to the estate, receiving in exchange points that are lower than the purchase price. There is a social security in a separated account called the Premium Account. The points taken from the employer’s salary to this account can only be rescued when he retires, which is expected to happen at the age 75. It’s out of the system’s plan the properties’ heritage, to avoid a condition of advantage of some individuals over others. When a person die (we already had death by accidents and illnesses, unfortunately), all of his possessions returns to be state property and his points are annulled, despite if he was married or had children. Every child has a monthly allowance by the government of fifty points, the Junior Points, that goes straight to his parents account. This allowance continues until he is eighteen years old, which the age of civil emancipation and only from there he can get a job. Clothes, footwear and accessories are homemade, by each one of the citizens or families, they only buy the fabric and fibers. Electronic equipments are also bought and can be paid in cash or by anticipated by installments, which means, since you can accumulate points, you can transfer them to a product’s fund. When you complete the purchase value, you can rescue it. It’s prohibited to have more than one electronic equipment with the same function, having to use a previous product as a down payment on the purchase of other. With exception of the bicycles, all of the transportations are public.

The most part of our feed is not capitalized. Gardens, farms and mills are communitarian, so the local community organizes itself to take care of the sowing, harvesting and storage chores. Fishing is free, but controlled. You can’t kill any animal without a reason nor for food stock. Eggs are also free and follow the same system as the fishes, but not any bird or reptile can be kept in captivity, or any sort of retrenchment. Then, I can say that the eggs are literally stolen from the bird’s nests. There are no granges. Dairy and meat are sold and with highly inflated prices. It’s prohibited to kill certain kinds of animals, with exception of those who works on slaughterhouses, even for food consumption. It’s prohibited to domesticate animals of any species or utilize them as a transportation. Many citizens don’t have license to deliberately consume dairy because of lactose and casein. Specially because of casein. The health care system prohibits you or advises you to avoid consuming certain kinds of food according to you intolerance report and food allergy. The citizen that violates his diet is easily identified and reported. Medicaments and licit synthetic drugs have controlled manufacturing and output. The goal is minimum consumption of medicaments, when a new minimum value of consumption is reached in a year it even receives a prominent note in the press.

When two or more people get married, they have the right to rent a new familiar building from the Estate. The value of the rent is equally shared between the spouses and it is monthly debited from its respective salaries. In case a divorce happens, the acquired assets are separated and the property is returned to the Estate, so the people can make a new rent contract, of some other property or not. There are no private property. The Estate is also unique, so there is an unique Great Charter, regulated by Tark, of course.

With that I just unintentionally concluded, contradicting Viktor, that we are the truly communist. I never sympathized with the communists models that we had in Pre-Node, not because the classes’ absence, of course not, but because of the totalitarian regimes. But I had this epiphany never shared before with any other member of Reset. We acted in a different way than the History’s dictators, without warning, without announced terrorism, but…

Anyway, I don’t think I’m the best person to evaluate us. It’s preferable for us to not be evaluated. Also, it’s up to us to self-evaluate us or not. Because the next generation does not know our history, and it’s in our plans that they never even suspect. Maybe in a hundred years from now or more, when they get interested by archeology…Does anyone else in here already thought about this flaw? The bodies, bones, genetic materials are being destroyed, not destroyed, converted in energy. Nowadays we have excess of energy in stock. The oil is totally and preferable dispensable. As far I know, one hundred kilos of antimatter is able to generate as much force as the extinct Itaipu (Brazil) hydroelectric working non-stop for sixty years. And this quantity of antimatter is equivalent to the matter of two departed people, in average. Imagine seven billion of them. Generations and generations of energy. As a result of that, our physicists talk too much about spacial trips in a few years, not dreaming too high, only improving the spaceships to support this energy stellar peak’s contingent. But with this quantity of energy, travel to Mars or out of the Solar System would imply entry and exit tickets. And moreover, to live in places isolated from the sun would be, despite highly insane, possible. By now, we’re very excited and anxious for the rockets and spacial bus’ improvement. They are at least. If I am a happy person in here? Well, for me to qualify myself as happy, I should meet people sadder than me. Maybe in comparison with Pre-Node Lucius, yes. But he will soon not exist anymore just like all of this uncertain History that I’m throwing right now on the incinerator. And we all know only things we know exist. At least, this was what somebody once said to me.

Today something bizarre happen. A few men and women were accused of cartoonist pornography. Viktor and Kelly were one of them. This is very weird, this Reset’s conservativeness. And everything they say it’s Tark’s decision. I thought it was an unnecessary stress. Next week there will be an assembly to discuss this. I have been a long time without writing. I’ve splitting myself between the library job, and at schools as a commissioned tutor. It’s really different to be a teacher at Reset, specially because schools are very different and there’s a lot of virtual material. There are not classes in closed rooms and a keyboard. There’s programmatic content, deadlines and customized learning materials. The kids are self-taught. And the ones who are responsible for their literacy are their parents. And our classes are mostly in the open air, with natural labs and artistic development, but on weekends, for us to enjoy our free times. We tutors fulfill the role of supervisors, guides. But this demands a lot of energy and time for the adults and that leaves the ones who have jobs considered less urgent like mine with exclusive dedication.

Some people outraged with the labor’ division question why we don’t automate the education with robots, but Tark strongly not encouraged that justifying that the interaction between children and adults is the basis of the human beings advanced cognitive process. Tark always has its data and justifications based in zillions of studies which it evaluates the credibility. So, all of its analyses and evaluations of a problem can be accessed in an exhausted and pedantic language for someone who isn’t from the area. And since we have few scientists and the few scientists that we have are responsible for keeping Tark’s database actualized, many of us feel too intimidated with the authority’s argument which is the program itself.

Kelly and Viktor were judged last week, along with other people. Pornography is a contravention, including illustrated pornography. Tark itself elaborates the accusing speech of the prosecutors and it gives the verdict and the condemnation. However there is no attorney’s office. So, it’s the indicted and the defendants who are responsible for their own defense, requesting two days to study the case, review the law and elaborate a defense. The few cases of judgments, no one until today has executed a satisfactory defense, that proved contradictions or excesses on Tark’s accusations. Being Tark also responsible for the planning of the material evidences’ collect.

The judgment last ten unnecessary minutes. Trust me. Ten minutes. Viktor and Kelly left shaken.

— That is why I didn’t even lose my precious time elaborating any defense.

— This is madness stuff. Being judged for an artistic drawing!

— What was the verdict? — I asked.

— Supporting women subjections’ ideology, as known as misoginy, and sexual objectification of women under the context and historical of chauvinism.

— Wow, are you sure that those were the exact words?

— Yes, I have good memory.

— Tark is very coherent…

— Tark is the new bible, that’s what it is. I’m tired of this program, of this country that isn’t even a country, since there aren’t other. Of everything.

— That was surreal, Lucius. When Viktor alleged that there was nothing offensive and misogynist, that was pure art, and Tark asked if would be offended if something similar was made with his image and he answered no.

— Oh, don’t even tell that, please.

— No, talk. And then?

— Tark immediately made a collection of Viktor’s image in various bizarre positions and expressions. Many tubes penetrating him and he was making a face of pain and…pleasure. That part was funny.

— Nothing funny in that. That was offensive. None of the models looked like the women of Brasilis.

— And what was the sentence?

— Man, don’t even ask me that. I’m pissed off.

— Cleaning other people’s houses for two months.

— Yes. Man…

— Wow. Like employers or janitors?

— What’s the difference, man?

— The length, right? If you’re a janitor you just clean, then it’s over and you go home.

— So it’s this one.

— But not for me, I’m leaving here.

— How? You and Drajeana?

— Yeah. I’m tired of this shit. She can come with me.

— What about the children?

— Yes, with the children!

— No, Viktor, forget about it… Kelly alerted playing the role of the most coherent between the two of them despite his revolt.

— Forget about what?

— Omega Protocol.

— What is that?

I have heard about this protocol, but always in an evasive way, without anything official. I didn’t know if it was real or just an excess of imagination between the most conspiratorial citizens.

Kelly interrupted us from coming back home and almost enclosed us in a circle.

— The Omega Protocol, guys. – He spys for a minute to see if someone is looking and gets back to whispering – There’s a kind of inative mechanism called Omega Protocol. I mean, in our heads. Here and here. – He pointed to the place where our little scars were, just above our napes.

— I have heard about it too and it wasn’t through Kelly. It was at a small party at the library, actually.

— So, this protocol is real. It seems that the chip has a function to kill us when needed.

— This shit here? Man, I knew it! Bastards! Bastards! I knew it! We’re all fucked, controlled!

— We’ve always knew that, right?

— But how do we know that this is not a rumor. You know, rumors easily happen and propagate as truths. Usually the most unlikely ones.

— There it is. Do you remember that we lost a few members during the Node?

— I do, I lost a girlfriend of mine.

— Who, Viktor?

— A Japanese girl, beautiful, awesome in bed. She was the official girlfriend of my partner, Codey.

— Codey?

— Yes.

— An Irish guy, bucolic?

— Yes, Codey! Have you met him too? Such a man...I need to look for him. We even worked together at that mission for installing the viral bombs. Actually, that was where we met. After that I never saw him again. But I end up hooking up with his girlfriend, during the mission. And I also never saw her again. And as far as I know she died at the last stage.

— I’m sorry.

— Me too.

— I’ve met this guy too. I’ve met him in Liechtenstein, at the first meeting I had on Reset.

— At the castle where we took care of the babies?

— Yes. You were there?

— No man, I gave up. I rather go to the next battlefield and I chose wisely.

— Don’t even tell me about it. I had nightmares with green shit pools for months.

I said that because it was true, but they laughed, and I felt momentarily good for breakind the tension. But I still wanted to know more about the protocol. And Codey. And his girlfriend.

— Codey also died, Viktor.

— Really? You knew?

I was really shaken, but that was a news that even myself have been postponing to receive during those years.

— Yes. He was between the dead people. Didn’t you read the list?

— No, I didn’t want to read, I came back crushed from there. I lost a friend. Antje was really bad. We took two months to recover ourselves, but only through brainwash. If I try to think about this phase, my brain blocks it. Right, Kelly?

— The treatment was very efficient, that’s good.

— But Codey was between the dead ones. We wanted to make a memorial, putting heroes statues through the parks here, right? Then, in the end, most people thought it would be a memory of something they wanted to forget and all. So we left everything behind.

— How did he die?

— I don’t know, man. Asuki, Suki, as she like to be called, also died and they were probably together.

— Maybe it’s been suicide.

— No, no. She was not one of those women that reduce life for a man. She had various people, just like the majority in here, huh? We were born men at the wrong time.

— So, guys. I’m sorry to inform you that not your friend Codey nor your friend Suky died because of bombs or any other accident. It was because of Omega Protocol. They probably screw up on the mission, I don’t know, and just...puff...passed out in one click.

— Who told you that?

— Some people witnessed it...

— Bastards...They never told us that.

— In fact, they say they did, during those long and boring lectures. I fell asleep in a few parts, after checking that a lot of people were also sleeping.

— We’re fucked.

— Yes. That’s why I reprehend any uprising, especially because of some stupid drawings. They say that if a member tries to scape here to live a reclusive life, apart from civilization, he dies without warning out there.

— But someone activates this protocol. Someone in here has privileges to make this decisions without consultating us. We’re not a democracy, huh?

— I also imagined that. But apparently the chip itself detects this runaway intention and it’s activated.

— So this is true and not something new?

— No, many know about this. Others were just asleep. But they say the protocol is only activated in case of danger to our project, and because these people gave up they were exposing everyone of us to danger.

— Very awkward that the Reset itself claims that we were just chosen because we would be faithful to the project until the end. That’s more evidence that Tark doesn’t work as much as it says.

— Five per cent margin of error.

— Yes, sure, very convenient. That would be the five per cent then.

— But who programs and reprograms Tark? Who is Reset? Aren’t we Reset?

— I’m not anything’s boss. If I were, I would be inside that tower there, programing and reprograming that computer’s piece of shit pretending it is in charge to create absurd laws based on my own ideal of a perfect world. I’m a footman here. And that is even more concrete with this punishment. Soon we’ll be enslaved for a flatulence that turned out to be a crime.

We kept walking for a while, because I had to be in the library to compensate my lost hours for picking my two friends. Antje already sent a me a message saying she was picking the kids at the park. Our children were alone at the squares and parks, they’d come and go, safe, without any danger of getting ran over, kidnapped, or any other side effect of violence. Although I didn’t always agree with Tark, I have to admit that the system works and that I particularly didn’t have anything to complain. I never enjoyed Hentai and frankly, that thing about objetification made sense, after all, in none of the illustrations women seemed to be in control of their bodies. Many were tied up and vulnerable, while every kind of thing in a cylindrical shape, like octopus’ arms, for example, invaded their holes.

— Maybe it’s time for us to learn how to code in a advanced level. – Kelly suggested.

— I don’t know how to code not even at a basic level. I learned the basic at the university, in Brazil, but until now all I had to do is operate what is already made.

— Forget about it, Kelly. I understand a little bit about information security, and I can affirm you that this is the basis of Reset, but it’s ahead of us. They have their own operational system. And that’s why I advocate that there’s an elite dominating everything here, with privileges, because their operational system is not only new and exclusive, it’s too advanced. It’s like if we tried to grow terrestrial plants in a planet where the atmosphere is composed just by methane. You can open your interaction panel at home try to access the processor and motherboard. I have done this.

— And?

— Man, that thing tied a knot on my head. I did not take it to my work to do an analysis or anything because I can’t be without a computer at home, everything there is automated. I would have to alter all of the infrastructure, it would be a lot of work. But I spent days frowning because I did not understand a thing.

— Why?

— Because it’s two nylon wires stuck in two rusty metal plates reconeting themselves with a lace. It’s not even a know, it’s a lace.

We stopped for a while trying to absorb the absurdity in this information before deciding to stop trying to fight against the system and follow our safety lifes. And peaceful.

Today we took the kids to the doctor, again. Two weeks ago, Luq was seen kissing a boy and we wanted some psychological orientations about how to proceed with our children’s sexuality. He’s only seven and that scares us. As much as the other boy’s parents, who are gays, we reunited to know how to proceed. Both say they are in love. That is creepy. Not because the homosexuality, of course, I’m not a homophobe, many of our friends are gays. Basically, heterossexual “couples” are the minority because women are a minority and they end up having relationships with several men. But girls are the majority. We know this will freak our boys’ minds, because they’ll feel cornered being the minority.

Maybe Luq is just confuse. Or maybe we’re transforming our children into gays. I don’t know. It’s an idea that’s passing in my head, but I don’t have courage to share it with anyone. The girls are not like the Pre-Node girls. We trusted Tark to define our pedagogy and it strongly recommended that we didn’t impose anything. We don’t build the toys, they do. We don’t give anyone dolls. They make their own dolls and it’s interesting how they like to draw the dolls with penises and vaginas to identify as a boy doll or a girl doll. They also wear the same clothers, including the underwear. I disagree with that, but I end up sounding conservative. I think anyway we’re imposing that they are all the same, following a pattern. We’re ending the diversity that I judge as necessary. I can’t explain better, but I have been discussing this with Kelly and Viktor who are also parents.

Lara was diagnosed with highly functionality autism. Nothing severe, but this affects her interaction with other kids because she has a tendence to be really harsh and with excess of candor. We also discovered through that that she declined to wear clothes, because the fabric bothered her. It’s been a week since we started the betablocker and tricyclic antidepressants’ treatment. I realized perceptual improvements, but Antje is not happy with the medication because she sees this as a “limiting and unnecessary pathologization”. Lara has been reading about this and she also seems in disagreement with the diagnosis, which I suspect it’s because her mother’s influence.

— I can’t classify my personality as a problem, dad.

— It’s not a problem, doudou, you just need special treaments.

— “Special treatments” to me sounds like an euphemism to “solving a problem”.

How to explain to a kid that just the way she expresses herself is already not normal?

I don’t want to seem like a desnatured father, but I felt relief with Lino’s diagnose, just a few lymphomas in a initial stage. Nothing that a proton therapy doesn’t solve.

I didn’t stop writing, but I lost my last pad and some pages, probably at my last mission in a power plant in North Corea. I don’t have permission to go back there and ascertain. So all that was left were the translations, but not everything that I wrote I had time to translate, which means, there are gaps of pages until here. The translations suck so I’m sorry for losing my manuscripts in Portuguese.

I’m getting older, but more alive. You are only born when you have conscience of yourself and writing helped me with that. Also, if I wasn’t for my grey hair, that delights my daughter, because she has never seen a senior so close before, you would say that since I’ve been writing, it’s been five years. Our aging’s process is really slow. But this I have registered before and got lost.

Now I’m again in an operation in former America, at the North part, and this region is still a continental cemetery, with many, many bones because of the cold climate. I’m here then to collect corpses and transform them in fertilizers and energy sources. So, here I am playing the temporary role of an over.

The south and central part can be considered cleaned today and almost habitable. However, we still don’t need to go there which will keep it like a jungle that will certainly cover the cities and all of the urbanization. It will be ironic those skyscrapers sprouting from the top of a forest. Eurasia is also free, which means, boneless and clean. Robotic efficiently streamlined our depollution and cleaning traces’ work, just leaving the trash that it’s already being decored with green grass and flowers.

Our pollution really increased, more babies wore born, but at a low rate, which will generate a worrying lapse between the generations. But, despite the new marriages, computed or not, our families continues basically the same, because the immaculate are still preteens, no more than twelve years, and far from starting their own families, despite the innevitable and naive passions.

They are very different from our Pre-Node teenagers. I wouldn’t know how to explain, but I will cite the differences. Here in Brasilis, young people are really shameless. At the beaches they are all naked, and despite some girls are already at puberty, they don’t wear bras, and continue with their breasts out. It’s baffling, because I’m still a pre-node man and have to fight against my impulses. It’s hard to admit, but it’s true. And they continue keeping their hair shaved or short. If it weren’t for the breasts, you couldn’t even know if it’s a boy or a girl. The naked breasts are gender markers here.

They also have their own slangs and an annoying musical taste. But they love to dance and they do it pretty well. Something similar to the break dance of the pre-node time. Their clothing here are skirts and shorts, really loose. There’s no difference between boys or girls’ clothes. Just between the adult women and us. But I feel that for them all of this is considered old-fashioned and an old thing. It’s easy to see them making jokes about us. Which is kind of annoying.

— And you are really getting old, surly, lately. – Antje told me before I left.

— If being worried about the future of humanity is being surly then, this is me.

— You’re not worried about the future, Lou. Your only concern here is the past and this past is still between us. The more we evolve here, more I understand why the term Node. Stop trying to loosen this knot to leave the present similar to your past. You act like a nostalgic person.

— Me, nostalgic? That’s unfair for you to say. Each day that I wake up here I feel really alive.

— Alive even a plant feels. That was never the question. The concept of life to human beings, speacilly for men, is being in control. And that is what you miss. You only complain about Tark. Tark is the most democratic thing that we have here because if would decide everything based in our perspectives, who would win and why? Because it’s the most rational? Now you tell me, who is more rational, you or Tark? You or the robot that you can’t even beat at chess?

— It’s a calculator, please!

— Luq every now and then beats Tark, please! I’ve beaten it! It’s a calculator but it’s the sum of all of us, just filtered and leaving only the rational and safe part. It’s not about being better than us, it isn’t us. United, refined and somatized. If it wasn’t for you, the system wouldn’t work out, but only your rational part is collected. When you join your colleagues to question why Tark does not allow sport hunting or that we ride horses, ow why you can’t freeze fishes, you are being self-centered because you are thinking you know more than everyone of us. One Lucius worths more than everyone.

— Gosh you twist everything. I have no desire to discuss with you.

— Your irrationalism blinds you.

— We’re stressing ourselves unnecessarily. And because of a computer. An advanced computer, that is true, but that makes mistakes five per cent of time! Think about that think you used to take to avoid pregnancy, imagine it making mistakes five per cent of time.

— The pill?

— Yes.

Antje let that old impatient sigh that, despite the conflicts, kept myself in love. Discussing with her was exciting. Specially when to stopped restraining her critics so I didn’t look humiliated.

— Lucius, now I’m going to be metalinguistic with you. Give a break from your hobbies, your meetings with your stagnated friends and open a statistic book and understand the theory of mistakes. Then, only after that, we can speak the same language, being alined with the concepts, we’ll discuss Tark’s problems. Because Tark knows it suffers from flaws, that’s why it works with linear regression, because the mistakes are in the data themselves. These are systematic errors, observational. And who does the observations are humans themselves.

— Okay Antje, I don’t remember almost anything from Statistics because I went to college a long time ago, so I can’t question your God. Okay!

— I said that I’m being metalinguistic because I am. Tark doesn’t make mistakes because it doesn’t provides deterministic forecasts. It would be in case its margin of limited error proved to be bigger than what it admits. And either its previsions apply to punctual results. So it would be necessary if we talked about accuracy, not precision. Because, look, Tark united us, eighty one per cent of good combination, but it never said it would be perfect because we’re humans, not robots. But would you say that it flees from the eighty one per cent, even if we ended our relationship today? Then there’s also the Chaos Theory that I reccomend you to study. You work in a library, you should love books more, please.

— Y...

— Now my key point, Tark is flawed due to its systematic erros that are observationals and these observers are us. But Tark is a sum of all of us, optimizing us to a collective good while there are people who are more worried with automated ways to take a useless cumshot than openning a statistics or computer science book, but insist in critizing everything that we accomplished because it’s not too much comfortable for their own whim. I’m going to work. When the kids wake up, take them to Wagner and Jean’s house, they are taking Evita and the kids for skiing. And have a nice trip.

This time I will stay more time here, eight months, and it wouldn’t bother me that much this isolation, I’m fine here. I don’t have much time to write, but I have plenty of privacy. Unlike my home. That’s why I’m enjoying this hermit life. I have my cellular here where I can project the hologram of my family when we are connected. This lures and diminishes even more the homesickness, causing the illusion that they are here in this urbanized jungle. And I am there with them, having dinner, playing, helping with the studies, giving Antje support.

They know that I am in another continent, but they conform themselves that they can’t visit me by plane. They are more and more difficult to being lured, that’s why every citizen has alternated in longer missions to help cleaning the rest of the world, rounding and monitoring the job of our robots.

Our one hundred men team is well spread over here, and I’m isolated in this area, doing basically the same job they are doing which is to collect. Anyway, I feel better here specially because I was missing some fruits and specialties; the unique landscape which brings me a certain spirituality, a bigger sense in this observer life, appreciator. This is the difference between us and the animals: we know how to give sense to the natural phenomenons, even though fantasizing too much about them. We know how to appreciate and that causes curiosity, which brings us to the discovery addiction.

And that is why we have gone so far. Today, spacial travels are the the most exciting thing, but it is accessible to everyone. We eradicated most of our diseases, we learned to deal with our pathogens microorganisms fighting them with nanobots, artificial nanoorganisms. Because that’s what we are in this Cosmo, artificial beings. But we are nature fruits, so, all of our gimmicks are part of it, are natural. That’s how things had to be and they have been.

When I leave here, in three weeks, I’ll come back to my family and a month later will be Antje’s time to come here, staying three months too. But in these seven months in North America, many interesting and elucidative things happened.

First, I made up with Antje, after I had my ego injured with some truths about my self indulgence, and I asked her book suggestions. She told me that if I wasn’t so delayed, I would use Tark to suggest me personalized didactic materials to understand whatever I wanted. And then I did that. So, on my own incinerator station, I was catching up with my studies. My kids already understood the basis of what I was studying, and even though I had a master’s degree, and planned to follow teaching profession, I was stagnated, while Antje had the habit to keep herself updated.

So, after I had to deal with some technical issues of gas leakage and a threat of explosion, which made me feel extremely sorry for my lack of autonomy to deal with the problem, I called my mission partner, who was taking turns with me on the bodies’ searching. The method was simple, we collected the bodies and objects in a plane, took them south, in California, and dropped them there so they could decompose on the open air, under the sun. I was in California, and while my partner haven’t arrived, I was collecting the bones of the previous batch to bring it to the incinerator station and use the calcium.

I sent a message to the nearest station with a SOS request. A friend named Abdhule answered me and volunteered to send somebody. I was in panic and said it was urgent. My mission partner was near Alaska, really distant from me.

— Have you turned off the supply valve?

— What? No. ABduhule sent you?

— Do you have the key of the wing 2?

— Yeah, sure. Just a moment. Here.

— I’m Seiji.

— Japanese?

— Yes.

— Nice to meet you, Seiji.

— Nice to meet you too, I will be right back.

Seiji turned off the supply valve and opened all of the doors and windows, including the roof ones.

— These are basic procedures, Lucius. Where is your partner?

— He’s on his way to Alaska, or returning from there, I can’t remember and it’s been hours since we spoke, sorry.

— You weren’t supposed to take care of this on your own. Not without proper training.

— We’re in a hurry, and without many people. Even on duties we can’t handle it.

— Come with me that I will teach you a few things. I can’t stay longer here.

— You were in Liechtenstein, on my first day, I guess. No, it was definitely you..

— Yes. I was. You are Brazilian, right?

— I am.

— Married?

— Yeah. And I have three kids.

— That’s good, really good.

— What about you?

— No, no, no time for children.

— I get it. And what do you do?

— I work with Tark’s programming team.

Suddenly my look changed. I felt like looking to a popstar. But he was so simple, humble and wizened.

— Really? What a coincidence.

— Why?

— Because I am actually trying to understand how Tark works.

— You are a librarian, right?

— Yes.

— That’s interesting. Your job is simply the basis of Reset.

— Are you sure?

— I don’t need to be sure. It’s a fact. You just want to give cultures and History’s continuity and your team are the ones to filter History, like, they purify culture. They decide what passes through the knot or what stays in the past.

— I agree. But yours is also impressive.

— Why do you think that?

— Because it is Tark!

— But I just upload in Tark’s platform. Nothing else.

— But you program it.

— The data doesn’t come from me, they come from all of the scientists and research professionals. I really just upload the archive.

— But who filters what is uploaded or not in the platform?

— I hardly have to filter something because what leaves the labs, schools and universities is already filtered. But who evaluates the quality, let’s put it this way, of the studies and its conclusions is Tark.

— So you and your team just updates the basis with finished data.

— Exactly.

— No programming?

— Its version haven’t even needed updates. So I never had to programmed it.

I was quiet trying to make the connections of what those informations meant.

— But you are from the computer science area, right?

— I’m an engineer.

— That’s what I imagined.

— What kind of materials are used in the processors?

— What do you mean, Lucius?

— It’s just that my friend once unintentionally broke a residential panel and he saw that the processor just had one tied nylon cord.

— Oh, right. With a knot?

— Yes.

— These are just optical nanofibers, Lucius. That’s why our processors are so efficient, because the optical tracks are way shorter, which increases the pulses’ frequency. I recommend you not to touch it because every knot damages the material and prevents the pulses to transit.

— It was really an accident.

— I understand.

— Seiji, I’m sorry if the question just shows that I haven’t understood anything that you said, but anyone can work operating the Tark then?

— It wasn’t a stupid question. But technically yes, anyone.

— And in practice.

— In practice, it’s preferable that someone from IT or computer science work in this area.

— I guess it’s fair.

— I’m happy to clear your doubts, Lucius, but I have to go now. Do as I say, go visit us someday. It’s a boring job, but seeing it you can understand it better.

It’s been time since I wrote for the last time. I don’t have time. The kids are fourteen and I can say that they are really different from any past generation. Some marriages were undone and new ones came up. Mine is fine.

I will write a brief summary in general of what’s been happening relevantly.

The kids are in a project of reforestation of stereo regions in Africa. They study ways to enrich the desert soil and to form rains on the region. They don’t study just the theory but they have the planet as their own lab, despite the virtual simulators. This way, they learn to do science and it stops being just an apathetic belief system.

My son Luq isn’t on the desert reforestation project, but he’s been working for two years on the biotechnological improvement of decomposing of one of the environmental obstacles of Oil Era, plastic. Basically he and a few other students are testing favorable conditions for the action of aerobic bacterias above this materials. I couldn’t describe here my pride for him not only as a father, but as a witness of how much inapt I was in doing something like this at his age.

Lara and Lino preferred a project with animal extinction, basically they watch the animals in the captivity, helping to feed them and they are amazed with every puppy that gets to develop. They always come home with excited histories.

Me and Antje are fine, in every aspect, I believe. Viktor and Drajeana separated. He and Roger have disappeared. Kelly and Estela continue really close with us, in many ways.

Definitely, being happy in this planet never was so mandatory. Respecting others’ rights of being just as happy as you are was always simple, but our forebears’ stupidity was always a brake in the brain. Even Tijolo and Careca, who are less intelligent than a mosquito, know the importance of respect and solidarity.

We are in the year 16¨P.N (post la nodo). Finally, our children are 16 years old and going to college. There are no seniors, no pranks, they are the first ones to enter a graduation course. But they are not totally alone. It’s been years since the quaternary courses have been reactivated. There are people having master’s degree and doctorates, researching and constantly renovating themselves. There are also specialization courses and art workplaces.

There are just four campus in the university, so, for the first time young people will live the experience of distancing themselves from their families for a long period of time, no monitoring, no adult supervising. But the terrestrial and aerial transportation are very practical and advanced, so, it’s not about having to sleepover, in dorm rooms. They will keep coming back to our wings. And, in two years, depending on the hours of their courses, they will enter the workplace.446Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIKp2qrbJM9

As in for now, it’s vetoed for them to exercise any paid activity, though they can contribute in voluntary service (for example, in child parks and playful squares), monitoring, internships and scientific initiation.

The subjects are less diverse than before the Node, suffering a sixty per cent reduction. The courses are objectives and focused on utilitarianism, transforming art based courses, for example, in subjects fitting on curriculum matrices or in free courses, without a lot of dedication and academic attention, because there is no remunerated job on the area.

There was a supreme increase in the value of biology, mathematics and computer science, just like envisioned by most of the members of Reset.

And as crazy as it sounds, courses like anthropology, philosophy, sociology and social sciences, simply doesn’t exist. Our anthropologists, philosophers and sociologists are latent, gagged by the fear of bringing back the evils of a dead society, with careful eyes, speculating the destine of Mankind in this new society.

There’s not much to say, except to observe, with suspicion, the strangeness in finally having worked out. Now, it’s the technology that moves forward, not human thinking. Because we are old, equalized, conformed, no confront. And if there is confront, it will be born now, with our teenagers under control, concentrated, ready to interact and exchange ideas. Eager for the freedom to think, to conclude by themselves.

It’s supposed to.

I, for now, am writing infant-juvenile books. Most about life in other planets, intergalactic battles and interactions on multiverse. Some already became movies and games. This job is totally without profit, obvious, and satisfies a very personal plan of spreading my essence in form of fiction in the minds of the younger, collaborating with creativity and analytical thinking of each of them.

My lovely wife, Antje, who is increasingly in much more tune with me than I am with myself, also has her hobbies, like photographing robots in bizarre and comic situations. She has a gallery at the virtual technology museum.

However, we are just two in a sea of talent and creativity and in this sea is where we find our inspirations and answers, because something that the man never could be was hermetic. From the social interactions that we built and they only work when we develop the aptitude of understanding that we are just one in the middle of many others. With exception of the geniuses, and super-humans, of course. But, these ones, are unusual cases.

I take advantage to say one detail about Brasilis and the Post-Node which is extremely meaningful to make us feel in a world with ecstasy and meaning — art. The post-node art is surreal. If I were an anthropologist and had to do an taxonomy of our species, I would call it Homo artisticus. Brasilis is full with galleries and museums, and public squares. The squares are always receiving expositions of artwork and artistic manifestations, but only of young people. And, despite being named as Tark’s absurd and limited, this really worked out. Without our mediocre influences, young people are our biggest specialists in creativity and innovation. They are huge musicians, painters, sculptors, dancers, playwrights, architects, decorators, screenwriters…I wouldn’t know how to define post-nodal art, but it is at least, mind blowing. Sometimes I am coming back from work or jogging and I see a painting of the guys, and I am entranced by how an astronaut see some other planet’s observable space. And, the best part, without melancholy, depression or consumerism. It’s like those kids are the personification of nature, that orchestrates our species to finally contemplate.

I confess that sometimes I’m pretty conservative and I think everything is a tasteless freak. But they are the authority and I’m the layman. Adults make art, yes, sure. But private art, in their houses, their offices, or special samples. But the public squares, galleries and museums (which are open spaces and not closed ones like in pre-nodal period), belong to young people.

Luq makes hyper-realists sculptures with rocks. It looks like androids or even humans, not sculptures.

Lino is a fruitful screenwriter, writer. He trembles me with his imagination. He’s making a virtual game.

And Lara is in love with gardening, she has always been, since childhood. And music. She doesn’t play any instruments, nor even composes or anything, but she has a lot of interest in this area and I believe she is going to stay, artistically, in the electronic music area, which is the rhythm that young people love the most at parties. It’s not my style, though. I am still a bossa-nova guy, popular Brazilian music and a good and old rock in roll. But Lara loves music classes and stays locked in her world listening to music and observing nature. Making cuts and remixes. Maybe she will be something like a DJ. Her music teacher flatters her a lot and says she has a future, specially because she has a inborn aggressiveness that can be well directed to the major chords frequency.

I foresee, I don’t know, things are uncertain…but I foresee a planet full not with industries and agricultural farms, but with museums and art galleries. Arte divinorium, as it is already called nowadays.

My daughter died in a terrible accident in the sea. I don’t know what to do. I think part of me died here.

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