THE ORDER OF REASON

He thought the day would never come. He was certain he had made the bargain in dream, but now he knew the Order of Reason was real. In his dream he had made a deal with a strange secret society, a deal he later reneged on.

So while biking home at night after a long day’s work at his lab, which he had made very renowned, a black sedan crept behind him, matching the speed of his bicycle for many blocks. When he passed a secluded area next to a park, it pulled out in front of him and stopped, blocking his way. Two men in black suits exited the sedan’s rear doors, plucked him off his bike, pulled a sack over his head and muscled him into the back seat. He was an unwilling passenger on a ride to his destiny.

It had begun a decade earlier, when he an undergraduate biology student and began in the campus bar that he frequented after his classes. He had imbued a few too many, and was ranting and raving about the bright future of the science of genetics, to a complete stranger who had bought him a drink and then sat and listened patiently for over an hour.

He then bought the bright young student another drink, which he downed with gusto. The whole room then began to spin, his vision became blurry and he felt very drowsy. He remembered being helped up to his feet and guided out of the bar by this kind stranger, and then he blacked out.

He awoke in what appeared to be a corporate boardroom. He was seated a one end of a large oak table, opposite to a distinguished looking gentleman in a gray suit and tie. A pair of spectacles hung off the top of his nose. His gray beard and his piercing, intelligent gaze bespoke of wisdom, but also of malice.

Shocked and disoriented, he tried to rise to his feet, but was shoved back into his seat by
Two burly men in black suits that stood on either side of his chair.

“Welcome to the Order of Reason.” the old man began “You have been chosen to take your place among some of the greatest minds in history. The benefits of membership are many, but so are the risks.”

He started to speak, but the old man silenced him with a gesture of his hand.

“ “There will be time for questions later. First you must listen, and then you must decide.”

So he had no choice but to sit and listen for hours about how the Order of Reason had been making covert scientific discoveries, which were decades in advance of anything the public had been told, or even suspected. They used their wealth of knowledge to further their own agenda, which was to control and thereby save from certain destruction, all of humanity.

He was offered training and resources, as well as access to centuries of their amazing research. As long as he followed their rules he could be one the greatest scientists in history.

Naturally, he took the bait. So in a few years he was a world-renowned geneticist who was responsible for the successful creation of human stem cells, along with some amazing feats of cloning. His star was rising and though the deal he had struck sometimes troubled him, he was never sure whether it really happened, or whether it had been all some drunken hallucination.

However now he sat before them again. The old man still had his place on the far end of the table, but there were now several others seated there as well.

The old man spoke. “ You have been brought before this tribunal accused of reneging on our agreement by making restricted research public. I trust you remember being told the terms of membership?”

He nodded.

“Then you must be aware of the trouble you caused us. Your experiments have escaped from the lab and now exist in the public domain. You have created a storm of controversy in the media and enraged many religious groups. This is the very thing ours rules were created to avoid and now, it should be obvious why.”

“The ignorant masses can only be informed of our work gradually and only if they have been properly prepared for it. Since the earliest days of science the ignorant have caused the enlightened ones among them no end of suffering and persecution. The Order of Reason was created to end this state of affairs and to save humanity from its own folly.”

“You have disregarded these principles, and now you must face the consequences.”

Those consequences turned out to be very grim. Word came out that he had faked the results of all his experiments, and had deliberately submitted his false results to several prestigious scientific journals His career was now in ruins, and the Order of Reason’s plan for humanity marched ever on.

The aging guns defending the mouth of the harbor had roared throughout the night, but to no avail. Soon the warplanes were buzzing overhead dropping their payload of explosives, demolishing buildings and sending people running in every direction in the vain pursuit of shelter. Soon, only pockets of resistance were left, scurrying like mice through the ruins of their homes wielding shotguns, rifles and even hunting crossbows to harass and confuse the American invaders. Most of them were civilians, as a surprise attack destroyed the nearby base in the early hours of the conflict. Some were old men, some were children, and they all had lost their quiet lives and their families to smoke and fire.

He was one of those fighters. He was barely out of his teens and had been woken in the early hours of the morning to the sound of guns and bombs. He managed to escape the explosion that wrecked his home by climbing through his bedroom window. The rest of his family wasn’t so lucky.

As a child, he had used his father’s rifle to hunt rabbits in the forest on the outskirts of Halifax. Now he had it pointed at the head of an American officer rolling down an empty street, standing in a jeep. He took his time lining the Yankee up in his sights, as he only had one shot, then softly pulled the trigger.

War had been declared only days earlier, in the spring of 1920, and most people on both sides of the border thought that their leaders must have gone insane. The catalyst of the conflict had occurred on the streets of Toronto a month earlier.

The government and the media had declared that Toronto had finally lost its innocence that night, when four cars stirred up the freshly fallen snow as they careened through the downtown shopping district. Every minute or so, the staccato sound of a Tommy gun would echo through the city as another innocent was gunned down and robbed. Store windows would explode when fired upon and cover the snow with glistening shards of glass. The stores were then looted and vandalized. The police rushed to the scene, but by the time they arrived, the culprits were long gone.

Soon politicians on both sides of the border where pointing fingers and raving until they were foaming at the mouth. The Americans were accused of exporting north their criminal sub-culture, one that idolized bank robbers and gangsters. It had spread during the depression, when countless able- bodied men were left unemployed and in a state of poverty, which made robbing banks suddenly seem like a good idea. There was also the matter of the American origin of the guns used in this and other crimes.

The Americans were quick to point out that the Canadians were smuggling liquor south. There was talk about closing the border to trade and arming their border guards so they could arrest suspected rum- runners and hold them indefinitely without trial.

Talk of war began to rumble in Washington and Ottawa. They both had contingency plans for the unlikely event of a war between the two neighbors, and very soon the seals were broken and those files had been opened.

The Americans were the first to take action, moving swiftly to take Halifax. Next there was an attack on Niagara Falls that left much of Upper Canada without power and in the dark. Soon there was a blockade on both coasts, and the US air force controlled all of Canada’s airspace.

Canada then regrouped and sent its army into the northeast states, with orders to advance until they could lay siege to Washington D.C. The troops in the west were under orders to destroy roads and bridges as they retreated north, and Canadian snipers were doing damage in all the occupied territories.

Now, a Canadian child had an American Lieutenant lined up in the notch of his rifle. He had been taught not rush a shot, to carefully take aim and softly pull the trigger, but he had never killed before, so he unconsciously jerked the gun slightly to the left as he fired. The bullet barely grazed his targets head and the loud retort from his rifle gave away his position. He rose to his feet and tried to scramble away as a grenade was lobbed into the ruined building where he was hiding. He was killed instantly in the blast.

The bombs still rained from the sky, shaking the ground and covering a young boys body with the rubble of his hometown.