Vote for Mithras, conclusion

Our Own Darkness

Construction of the monument began shortly after election day. They say that the Pyramids in Giza defy what was once believed to be the construction capabilities of the ancient Egyptians. Even in the modern day, it’s hard to emulate what they did. But the technology is there to make something just as permanent, just as lasting. If no expense is spared, then those crumbling remnants of a long lost power become nothing more than building blocks, children’s toys.

The Mithras Pyramid rose up in Alliance, Nebraska. It was solar and wind powered, completely off the grid and self sustainable with terraces for farming, and a complicated and groundbreaking method for rain harvesting. Once complete, it became the headquarters for President Mithras. It’s where he sheltered when the end days came. Though that was still a few years off… It took 15 years to finish construction. In that time, Mithras turned a Republic into an Empire. His image was stamped on coins traded from Washington to Tokyo.

Mithras, learning from the past, installed himself as god-king. Eliminate the middle-man. After all, the modern face of humanity was tamed. No wild tribes fought against authority and denied gods. Everyone wanted to believe in something, and mindlessly trudge through their crushing days. Everyone wanted to be told what to do, and to earn their petty paychecks, and put luxuries on their credit cards, and get fat and diseased and blind.

Mithras gave them what they wanted. The ultimate consumer society run by a benevolent monarch. The semblance of elections even remained. A note from Roman history in those days building up to the Caesars… Vote for your local officials, who are always the same. Maybe the occasional wild card who, himself, is also cut from the same cloth. The rich will always be rich, the poor always poor, and the status quo maintained even with a horned god in the Oval Office.

It was pretty clear that the idea of a two term limit was out the door. Everyone had made peace with such things, and Mithras had the job for life. It wasn’t really surprising when the time came for him to leave DC behind and move the seat of his empire to the Pyramid in Nebraska. That was Mithras. What a guy. Always a little weird, but the Pax Americana couldn’t be denied. There were no wars on the news, there was no suffering. Crime was down. Every squeaky wheel had been greased. Unemployment, of course, was solved the old fashioned way – monuments and temples. Roads and bridges. Construction. And, if a few lives were lost along the way, then no problem. If a few buildings weren’t up to snuff, no worries.

In his second term, Mithras made overpopulation a hot button issue. With ten billion people crowding the world, it seemed like a reasonable concern. Studies said that the population would double by 2100, and the Earth just wouldn’t be able to sustain. The commercials were terrible. Your children…your grandchildren…on a crowded, dirty planet. Their short, brutal lives plagued by starvation, disease…

Scientists were nearly unanimous – the human race would either drive itself to extinction or suffer a massive die-back if something wasn’t done.

All of this engineered by Mithras and his followers, of course. A world of lies, manufactured evidence. And how easy it was. With the media controlled by a tiny handful, there were no voices to question the statistics, the studies, or the straw men and women who touted the coming collapse.

When the rules came restricting births, many embraced it. But waiting for the human race to simply stop breeding and slowly die out wasn’t something anyone could rely on. Of course, the babies came. The human pestilence. The viral infection running rampant across the globe.

Mithras sealed himself into his pyramid and, a day later, people started to die. Kill a virus with a virus.

Some survived. There are always those who are immune. Perhaps one in every ten thousand made it. The virus started the week of October 12th and, by Thanksgiving, the world’s population was down to just over a million. Including, of course, those who were loyal to Mithras.

Those who were naturally immune came to the Pyramid, if they were able. Their god king gave them food, shelter, water, a purpose. All of the comforts of the old way. His new tribe numbered in the thousands but, slowly, the others were gathered. The remnants of humanity would be corralled. Controlled.

And, in the following years, as Mithras built his utopia, he awoke the other old gods. He’d collected them, one by one, over the years. The human bodies, that is, which acted as prisons for the pristine and powerful souls of the gods. He kept them sedated, on life support, as good as braindead. His followers had no need to fear anything as they travelled the world and collected the remains of the old gods. They toiled in the cloning labs day and night. And as each vessel came to maturity, Mithras stalked into the vast room beneath his pyramid that housed the captured souls. He personally cut the throat of each sleeping prisoner, and he leaned in to breathe their last breaths as the souls were released into the ether and, naturally, without question, sought out the bodies in which they belonged.

Those who had once opposed Mithras, or would do so if given the chance, were kept sedated. Would die in their hospital beds beneath the pyramid and be recycled into the children of the tiny human community that served the old gods.

The new Golden Age had begun.