FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH

KEVIN WHITE

3-4-95

            A lone man in a space probe experiences some trouble. He is working on a broken solar panel outside of the USS CONSTITUTION space station when there is a small explosion, the  probe is  sent off silently away from the station. There is nothing anyone can do. Contact is kept with him for nearly three hours before his damaged electrical unit gives out.

            The side of  Dr. Aldous Cottle's  repair probe, with its right hydraulic arm still gripping a section of the solar panel, is watched for nearly three days before it disappears from view  completely.           

            Doctors representing the Space-Federation estimated that Cottle could have survived for about five hours before he froze.

            Five years and twenty days later he came back.

            The distant form of the probe was picked up by a telescope,  stationed  500,000 miles past Mars.

            It took eleven months for a positive ID. of the object. There was no indication of life. The probe was moving at an incredible rate back along exactly the same route it had exited the solar system on.

            As it approached the earth it began to slow down. A shuttle was needed to intercept it,  this is when the problems really began.

            Speculation had been rampant around the globe since the first stories of the returning probe hit the papers. No one knew why it was returning, or what was guiding it.

            The hostile world with its sixteen hostile nations had no alliances our unions. All of these very separate nations did agree on the importance of this strange appearance in space, however, and every nation wanted whatever answers that could be acquired from the probe to be theirs alone.

            Because Dr. Cottle, or whatever remained of him, was an American, NASA took the drastic measure of blowing up a shuttle from the Nation of Thailand that was at the intercept location first. The US. shuttle took the probe into their bay and opened it up. Inside they found Cottle sleeping, he woke up as they took off his helmet and smiled.

            He was perfectly healthy, it was if no time had passed. Researchers had no idea how he could have survived without oxygen. Dr. Cottle was returned to Edwards Air Force Base, and then secretly shuttled to White flag,  Montana, where he was de-briefed and observed.

            All he could tell them about what had happened to him, they already knew; He was repairing a panel, there was an explosion and then he woke up.

            He was tested and observed for three weeks and then moved into a safe house in central  Idaho, under surveillance twenty-four hours a day.

            People got caught up in the latest small scale war America was having with Thailand, a war of technological attrition that was started by the incident with the shuttle. Eventually the Government stopped paying Aldous's rent, and he was thrown out, left to fend for himself. He was no longer of interest to an overtaxed, and distracted government.          

            Very few people actually remembered Aldous's story, it had been six-months, and in the meantime there had been plenty going on. Aldous never found a job, ended up getting a ride to Los Angeles. When he got there he looked up his brother Cal, as far as he knew. his only (still living ) relative.             His brother let him stay. He was given the couch and a pillow. Cal asked his brother to put up with his nocturnal habits or sleep in the garage, Aldous chose the couch.

            The first night he slept there Aldous awoke to the sound of a dog barking in his brothers room, he also heard some hushed voices.            

            The next day while eating breakfast Aldous asked his brother about the noises. Cal ignored him for a minute, lost in thought, and then told Aldous that they were going to start a religion.

            Within a month Cal had Aldous set up as the charismatic head of a full blown cult, operating out of a house outside of Vancouver BC.

            Cal wrote out the whole story; Dean's return from the folds of time, the bosom of the creator, etc.

            Aldous started by broadcasting with a microphone from his house in the suburbs. He took his windows out, to open up the room, then placed two speakers on the windowsill.           

            With a microphone Aldous began to speak to the confused people of his neighborhood. He asked his neighbors for money mostly, money to buy a radio transmitter.

            When he was settled into his fifty gigawatt radio tower he started thinking of television. His thoughts about television made the airwaves in the form of brutal money drives buried under a thin layer of basic psych. 101 emotional button pushing. He made his listeners feel scared, directed them a little, scared them a little, directed them a little, etc.

            He had his television station, fourth biggest in the whole country, within a year. Twenty four hours a day of nothing but Aldous working his way into pockets, checkbooks and bank accounts, twisting this way and that. First he is laughing then he is crying  Aldous knew how to play a crowd.

            His show ended up becoming syndicated all over the world, in over thirty languages. Aldous claimed that his personal wealth was small, that he did not even own this t.v. station. Interest in finding out the truth dwindled with his growing popularity.           

            Most of the people in the world, just about every single person within a mile of a radio or television watched or listened. The whole world listened twenty four hours a day to the man.

            Other t.v. stations went out of business quickly. Aldous bought them up and shuts them down permanently.

            By early April 2006,  it is widely known that Aldous was the sole owner of his corporation, his brother Cal was out of the picture.           

            Aldous ended up making his home on some island in the deep south pacific. People flocked from all over the world to the islands.

            The islands become out of control. They were soon completely covered by devotees hoping to see their leader.

            Because none of these people had much money upon arrival, (they gave it all to Aldous),  lack of food became a big problem.

            The extreme overcrowding became too much and people started dying. Starvation, disease and murder, the whole ugly scenario. Dead bodies began to litter the pristine waters surrounding the islands.

            Sharks started becoming frequent visitors to the shallow waters of the islands. The sharks grow huge and fat on  a seemingly unlimited food source. Their numbers multiplied rapidly.

            During the summer of 2006 a panic swept the islands. It was rumored that Aldous was dying. The devotees begin searching the islands for Aldous. Millions of people took to the waters, swimming in vain, searching. They were  eaten within hours of taking to the water.

            For the inhabitants of the rest of the planet the news from the islands was that there was more room for devotees to go live with Aldous.            

            He was on twenty-four hours a day. He spoke for about seven hours a day ( almost exclusively about sacrifice, the sacrifice his devotees must make)  and the rest of the time he was sleeping or reading. He sent  camera crews all over the world to film beautiful actors, acting out the scenes of his life.

            “The Life of Aldous” was the most popular show . The actor who played Aldous was rumored  to be a good friend of Aldous.

            It was said among the devotees that the actor, his name was Tim Westman,  was visiting Aldous often. They said he used boats and planes to get to the home island of Aldous.

            The sharks could be found mainly in the paths of boats and planes around the islands. No one ever found out if Tim Westman was actually on any of the boats or planes,  but a lot of people died trying .

            The boats and planes that were being followed by the devotees, were jammed with devotees.  The tiny airstrips were busy twenty four hours a day.             As fast as they could leave whatever it was they were doing for a life and go  down there, that is how fast they died.

            Whole sectors of the world economy were affected  before the winter of  2007.

            The cult of Aldous flourished for years. It directly effected most of the people on the planet. Even after they found Aldous dead, shotgun still in hand, in his three room split-level on a hill overlooking Vancouver BC., it continued on.

            Finally it was like it was out of style, and people stopped watching t.v. and walked outside.

            There was obviously a lot of upset people in the world, people who had lost loved ones, and it took a while for the world to loose its morbid air.

            More than half of the  planets population died in a search for Aldous.             A twenty-thousand mile square area of the South Pacific was closed off for years because of what local authorities described  as grave health concerns.

            When the cult ended people began to really enjoy  their lives. Hunger disappeared within weeks. Crime became almost unheard of. People had room, and time, and they distanced themselves from each other and grew paranoid.

            A new guy came along, got his own network. He told everyone that their paranoia was justified. He told them that the voice in their head was him.

            Cal Cottle was his name. Cal didn't sleep, hardly ever. His headquarters were in Oregon. People had no problem in his church because their was no church, you simply kept to yourselves. You never saw other people.

            The followers of Cal  were easy to spot, If you ever saw one out in the open. He or she would be very shaken and disturbed, shielding their eyes from light, they always seemed persecuted.           

            The followers of Cal were all sentenced to life in prison in June 2008, after a whacked out member took a shotgun in to a seven-eleven in Iowa and killed seven people. He told the police that Cal made him do it.

            They where easy to get behind bars. They volunteered to be permanently incarcerated  into work camps, as long as they were allowed to watch, or at least listen to his  voice as they worked, slept and ate.

            This left roughly one fifth of the original population of the earth, to do nothing but maintain the work camps and  take over what use to be their neighbors property.           

            Three-fourths of the population remaining outside of the prisons was female. Men  were removed gradually from positions of authority in society and turned into breeding machines and laborers.

            The world experienced a thousand years of peace and prosperity like no one could have ever imagined.