NUCLEAR WARS

People don’t want to believe it, but Russia can win a conventional war against Ukraine without nuclear weapons. It doesn’t mean they will.

Outcomes of conventional wars are simply not predictable… too many variables, too many unknowns. Another problem is that all sides of a conflict tend to lie—both to themselves and others. During war, it’s hard to know what’s true. 

One thing thinking people seem to know for sure: war always turns into a mess, which ruins the lives of people who experience it up close and personal. People who fight on the ground in war say that combat is loud, remote, confused, and incomprehensible. They are unlikely to meet anyone on the other side until they drive over their corpses.

And that is on a good day.

War wears folks down, weakens physical and mental health, and imprints on warrior-minds vivid sights, smells, and sounds they don’t forget.

A cousin who fought in Vietnam shakes like a leaf when in public spaces. He is unable to stand in lines, even to buy a sandwich. Somehow, crowds, and people standing in lines, trigger bad memories he can’t set aside. 

Of course, he’s stone deaf as well—his ears ring like bell towers. The constant roar doesn’t stop until he sleeps. A Marine helicopter gunner, he blew out his ears with the sound of his own fires. 

As for nuclear war, the most important rumor I’ve heard is that the USA modernized its nuclear fleet during the Obama years. Though classified, reliable people have published reports, I’m told, that money spent on upgrades soared to as high as two-trillion dollars. If true, Americans can be assured that the USA nuclear fleet is modernized and probably works damn good. It’s a staggering state of affairs, which adversaries are wise to take to account.



Maintaining nukes is not cheap or easy, right? It requires frequent replenishing of triggering elements which, unfortunately for war-planners, possess half-lives which last months, not years. It is why nuclear power plants are essential. 

As for power plants, do readers know that neutron-emitting elements tend to poison fuel rods? After rods expend a mere 5% or so of their fuel, neutron-generating elements called poisons gum-up fuel rods to make them useless for power generation. Spent fuel rods typically are stored on-site in cooling ponds until their poisons can be extracted to boost quickly decaying trigger elements essential for bomb detonation.

Need for neutron-emitting trigger materials is why every country that builds nuclear bombs builds nuclear power plants. The secret keys to success hide in spent fuel rods. 

It’s obvious, right?

Why would any right-minded country risk building future Chernobyls and Fukishimas unless it had really good reasons? One good reason is trigger materials. Isn’t it true that almost anyone can make cheap electricity from almost anything? — water, coal, sun, oil, natural gas, wind, or whatever, right?

Why nuclear?

Yes, plutonium lasts for millennia, but triggers don’t. To keep nuclear weapons viable for years and decades, not weeks or months, bombs must be continuously resupplied with reliable sources of neutron-emitting elements, which can be harvested most easily from fuel rod poisons.

It is easy to understand. 

Most Americans assume USA concentrates its intelligence resources to keep up to date on the status of others’ nuclear inventories. What do they have, where is it hidden, how well is it maintained? Some understand that USA super-computers connect with hi-tech surveillance systems to track every piece of nuclear hardware and every kilogram of plutonium and bomb-grade uranium anywhere on planet Earth.

It’s true. 

The technology is not new.

Here is a video from 2017 that lays it out. No excuses to anyone for choosing ignorance. Try to understand. 



Some don’t believe blanket surveillance is possible. Listen folks. The system is already built. Artificial intelligence assesses threats and then tells leaders who it will be who prevails after a nuclear exchange on any given day. 

Hint: most days, it doesn’t seem to be Russia or China.

Prolly not the USA, either.

Joe Biden insists that winning nuclear war is simply impossible. I have no way to know; neither does any civilian or any other person who lacks access to the super AI technologies of the United States. 



Is there anyone out there who believes delusional dictators can be trusted to safely possess weapons of mass destruction? These strongmen threaten to unleash hell, presumably, using anything from viruses to chemical poisons to nuclear fires to cyber implosions that collapse civilizations. Who’s going to tell them, no…

Shouldn’t humanity be working to outlaw dictatorships? Individuals who have accumulated enough wealth and unchecked power to make war are a clear and present danger to humanity and all non-human life on Earth as well.

A line needs to be established; anyone who crosses becomes a felon — subject to arrest by the international community. The line divides those who have seized unlawful wealth and excessive power. The line must be defined and defended by international courts established by free nations. How hard can it be?

Limits are necessary or humanity is destined to be driven to extinction by a handful of folks driven mad by reckless power. 

Can we face some unpleasant facts? Russian and Chinese elites hold at least 1.2 billion people under some kind of house arrest inside their territories, right? It’s a style of living that seems alien to Americans. Doesn’t everyone long to live free and unafraid? Doesn’t everyone want to shout whatever they think is true without fear of prison or worse? 

If Putin and his ilk continue down the path they are on—threatening others with nuclear terror on their Fox-equivalent state media—maybe those who oppose their catastrophic ambitions might, with a little luck and a lot of bravery, prevail to someday see dreams of freedom and peaceful living come true at last.

It’s gotta be possible, right?

Who disagrees?

Does anyone want to live in a post-apocalyptic world—especially one where one side “wins bigly?” 

Some folks say nuclear Armageddon is impossible. One side wins, and life goes on as it always does. 



My problem with such views is fear that survivors of nuclear war might look like jellyfish and live at the bottom of oceans.

It’s why monsters who possess WMDs should be given no quarter in a world where folks plan to live free someday without fear.

Billy Lee

WHERE IS JOE?

Update: 7 February 2023
Tonight, President Joseph Biden established himself, at last, leader of the Free World. He serves at the hour of Earth’s greatest danger, its greatest need. Pray, those inclined, he gets everyone through unharmed. Speech starts at minute 26.
The Editors


The New York Times surprised some readers by refusing to include the name of Joe Biden (current president of the United States) even once in the first and second sections of its Sunday issue (24 April 2022). 

38 silent pages. 

Think. 

On the second-to-last page of another section—the Sunday Review—Ross Douthat stepped up. He wrote an editorial with the word “Biden” in it. 

Headline?

Biden Saying ‘Genocide’ A Bit Early



Are folks able to field a few unpleasant facts? 

Let’s find out. 

Joe Biden doesn’t like oligarchs, and they don’t like him. They called him Communist when he first ran for elected office. Who remembers? It wasn’t true then and isn’t now. To my mind it had more to do with his Irish roots and connections to other prominent, unpopular Irish Americans like the Kennedy’s. 

How about that?

Is hatred why Americans see Trump in their daily media feeds more than Biden?

Oligarchs own media, right? A half-dozen men, give or take, hold ultimate control over 90% of what Americans see and read. Billionaires have problems with Biden because they don’t control him. It’s why they ignore everything he says and does—when they can. 

Jimmy Carter had the same problem. Who is old enough to remember? Carter holds historical honor for being the only U.S. president who served his term without murdering anyone. But that was then. This is now. 

Is Joe benevolent?

I really don’t know. 

The entitled rich hope Biden will go away and that others more favorable to wealth and its privileges will take his place. Media announced today that a rich man bought Twitter for 50 billion dollars, give or take. The man claims to be acting in good faith to bring freedoms of speech inspired by public forums of ancient Greece.

He calls it digital town square.

Everyone knows he will unleash dogs of Trump on vulnerable Americans who lack protections afforded by wealth and gated living. Who wants to argue loud in public spaces where monsters lurk to harm their families and friends off-line? 

Does anyone believe free speech emanates from the enterprise of unstable manic-depressives accountable to no one? 

Not to pick on any particular oligarch—all pose dangers—but Elon Musk didn’t become a U.S. citizen until age 30—a short 20 years ago. Despite tenuous ties to America, he manages to gather popular support. He plays Congress like a fiddle. Congressional appropriations flow like water. Clearly, he keeps more than a few Benjamins for himself. 

It’s not right. 

Our founding fathers believed that power corrupts those who wield it. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. It’s why we govern ourselves with three co-equal branches of government.

Checks and balances are fundamental to prevent fallible humans—whose success blinds them to their own flawed visions—from overwhelming the Constitutional freedoms enshrined in our Bill of Rights

Who disagrees?

To cut to the chase, it is insane for civilized society to permit private individuals to accumulate the wealth and power of governments. What is the point of civilization if not to limit the horrors of jungle living?—to stanch suffering, which always follows when might makes right in those arenas where the strong disrespect and eat the weak.

Proud people create elected governance to protect their rights; they don’t hide behind private cartels who don’t really care about us, Michael Jackson warned. 



Sergei Lavrov is one of Russia’s wealthiest men. Yesterday, this privileged strongman threatened nuclear war. He said, “…we must not underestimate it.”

It is never good to permit dictatorial power and nuclear weapons to mean-spirited bullies who intend to destroy civilization should they not get their way. The USA put leaders of Russia on notice that they will not outlive Ukraine.

Who is brave enough to acknowledge what everyone knows? Ordinary people are fed-up with oligarchs and dictators. People want to breathe free without fear. 

Secretary of State Blinken said, “But we do know that a sovereign, independent Ukraine will be around a lot longer than Vladimir Putin is on the scene.

The most notorious terrorist threatened by the USA was Osama Bin Laden. They fed him to sharks. Later, they killed unrepentant members of his family. Putin might be wise to apologize now and start nuclear disarmament talks. Then again, it might be too late.

Who believes he will take the opportunity? The chance to survive Hell is better, some advisors might argue.

The Russian “president” seems to think that because Bin Laden didn’t possess nuclear missiles or hypersonic technologies of war, he couldn’t win. Is it really possible that Bin Laden could have conquered Earth had he mastered the alchemies of the current crop of Russian leaders? 

Who knows?

The international scene requires x-ray vision. One in five sanctioned oligarchs seem to be Israeli citizens—according to a recent analysis published in the Jerusalem Post.  Say it isn’t true, Joe. Apparently, USA’s closest ally and friend is protecting powerful people who are entangled with Russian wise guys. It’s not a good look.

I’d say it’s terrifying. Who wouldn’t?

Kentucky politicians—readers, some of them, know who they are—sleep in the same bed as Russian oligarchs who control much of the world’s aluminum supply. Reports say they operate a manufacturing plant in Kentucky which employs thousands. Is there anyone who understands how difficult the situation becomes for countries where international thugs accumulate vast monies and political powers? 

The mighty must know that with age comes loss. Everyone they love and know will die before them should they enjoy long life. What good does wealth and power do anyone who is confined to a wheel-chair unable to control even the beating of their own heart? 

What chance is there that the powerful will give all they have to the poor to serve the cause of love for the unlovable, which is what most of 8 billion humans are. Will anyone say it out loud? Most people are unloved and uncared for by those who together have the resources to make a better world for everyone now living and for those who will come after. 

It is incomprehensible to me that advantaged people would shell the shit out of people simply because they are in the way—through no fault of their own. Apart from the love of God, I don’t see how human civilization as we know it today will survive.

Perhaps the powerful have made a calculation that Earth is better off when humans are reduced to a few hundred million souls, not billions. They have the ability to minimize us all—to zero, I suppose.

The United States has the power and skills to get everyone through the current crisis unharmed.

Sounds good, doesn’t it?

I want to believe it’s true. I don’t know for sure.  

Who will save us? 

Joe Biden walks in the gap between civilization and Armageddon. He’s the last man standing able to rescue humanity from the slavery that follows the victory of totalitarianism.  

Maybe it’s time to climb aboard his peace train while all sides still can.  



Billy Lee

EDITORS NOTE: Added 8 May 2022: NYT Joe Biden blackout blooms. No mention of Joe Biden & family in Sunday Edition. In fairness, the Friday May 6 online newsletter published a briefing on page 10 titled, “Biden’s Unpopularity.” 

UNIDENTIFIED AERIAL PHENOMENA

Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, UAPs—UFOs in decades past—burning bushes in ancient eras—angels in the sacred texts of human history—all are real. Navy pilots have film.

The Pentagon is releasing UAP videos, which the public has never before seen. Pilots around the world are speaking. The problem is that no one seems to know what UAPs are or where they come from, right?

Wrong.



Someone knows—or did know once. He was a CIA executive who lived down the street in a quiet neighborhood in Bethesda, Maryland when I was in third grade. His daughter was a playmate from time to time. Her dad is dead now. Readers are going to have to take my word.

The CIA photo-analyst pioneer was Arthur C. Lundahl. He studied films of unidentified flying objects. Some years before his death he fully explained in a phone call I will never forget the methodology his team at the CIA used to get to truth.

I was a university student at the time calling about an article in the National Inquirer that mentioned his name. The year was 1974. I thought he should know. He admitted that he did an interview. He seemed eager to share what he learned before he died.

To his dismay the tabloid revealed nothing significant. The news rag infamous for supporting the Orange Mango president bought Art’s story, which other “mainstream” media wouldn’t touch. The editors then proceeded to bury it. The words “catch-and-kill” weren’t associated with journalism in those days. Art would never learn why.

Because my dad was a senior NSA officer and a friend of Mr. Lundahl’s, I knew the importance of keeping national security secrets. Retired agents who know too much are sometimes in old age subjected to induced aphasia that degrades their ability to speak and write sensibly about what they know.

It’s a terrible practice but not expensive; the victims are oblivious. It’s considered humane to let senile agents live into their golden years whenever possible until the time comes to take their secrets into the next life. 

Until now I have kept Mr. Lundahl’s truth to myself. I’ve carried the knowledge in the hidden places of my heart and brain for a long time.



CIA agents will recognize Arthur Lundahl because he was the analyst who discovered nuclear weapons on the island of Cuba back in the day. The result of what Arthur observed and shared personally with President John F. Kennedy led to a confrontation between the Soviet Union (now Russia) and the USA that brought civilization—as Earthlings have come to know it—to within a hair’s breadth of its end.

Art was a caring man sensitive enough to love film’s spooky ability to reveal what lies beyond the passage of time in the invisible world of frozen nanoseconds. A clash of civilizations was a nightmare scenario that he dedicated his life to help politicians avoid.  

Queen Elizabeth II of England “knighted” Art Lundahl on 17 December 1974 for his unpublished breakthroughs in the field of intelligence photo-analysis. The award had nothing to do with the Cuban Missile Crisis or an alien invasion, as far as I know. Nevertheless, the award became the pretext that the National Inquirer used against Lundahl to catch and kill the insights that he alone carried inside his brilliant mind. 

I was not able to learn the complete story of the unpublished particulars that led the Brits to “knight” Arthur. Few people were. It wasn’t because English royalty liked his name. King Arthur is a legend in the British Isles, sure, and thus so was Arthur Lundahl—but only to elites who understood what he did and the reasons why.

The public knows little to nothing about the man except what those who did know him have published on Wikipedia. The public has not heard the story about Sir Arthur C. Lundahl—how he saved humanity from extinction, not once but twice.

Nothing in press reports familiar to me comes close to what Mr. Lundahl shared. 

I am dropping some information into a blog bottle to cast into the vast cyber ocean of humanity. Perhaps a miracle will occur, and the right sort of human will read the essay. Maybe someone will possess the contacts and raw personal power to do what needs to be done.

Folks want to get to the bottom of the mystery. For them it’s not lunacy; it’s not humor. No one is smart enough to make jokes about films of things that behave outside the limits of physics familiar to science.

Readers, this mystery has a bottom. It’s a deep bottom that ends in a non-material world alien to the reality that occupies the minds of sophisticated scientists. The public won’t believe the answers when first they encounter them.



A little preparation is in order.

It seems reasonable to experts known to me that substratum must be poured into humanoids drop by drop like an IV drip to prevent the hearts of those who truly care from breaking when the reality of everything they think they know is turned upside down. For readers who are fearful, I beg you, stop reading—now.

Billy Lee

EDITORS NOTE: Due to the timeliness and urgency of the UAP issue, the BOARD has recommended that Billy Lee’s introduction be published immediately; conclusions and speculations will be added later— after fact-checking protocols are completed by the Pontificator Staff. We have added Billy Lee’s sub-headers about subjects addressed in the essay, which will remain for now unpublished until verified by reliable, third-party sources.  


Sun-life nascency and emergence
Deep ocean bases
Upper atmosphere supremacy
UAPs internal to sensors
Access issues
Volcanic habitats
High-pressure / high-heat origins & habitats
Prions
Neutrinos
Dark-matter / dark-energy mastery
Sub-microscopic necessity
Amplified nano-technology holograms
Intentions
Conscious processes
Mind & machine controls
Colonization of Enceladus & other water moons
Relationships with Titan
Unusual materials
Isotopic anomalies
USA monetary allocations to FRIBs 
Japanese isotopic labs
Captured craft
Creatures & structures
Interrogation methods & results
Interrogation certification & verification
High-resolution sightings
Video encounters
Role of color & heat
Radiation signatures
Incident proximity to defense infrastructure
Communication postures & attitudes
Pursuit / tracking / baiting strategies
Military threats & vulnerability
Microwave induced behavior modification
World views
Variations among species
Evolving relationships
Altered outcomes
Implausibility disinformation consequences…

EDITORS UPDATE, 8 August 2023:
After investigation, our position is this: the United States of America is in possession of advanced technologies. These technologies serve Americans best when not revealed.

We learned of an incident that occurred during the time when Soviets controlled an ICBM base inside Ukraine. Flying craft seized control of several missiles and executed their launch codes. After making flagrant maneuvers, the craft disengaged and disappeared. Sometime after, Ukraine dismantled its weapons infrastructure.

The USA seems to have deployed laser weapons within its fleet of warships — presumably to defend against hypersonic ship killers. The power source for these weapons is secret.   

BOTSAI GARCHY 6

Botsa Garcy 6  (2  15  20  19  1  7  1  18  3  25) (6)

The title is a bit intimidating I suppose but yes, something must be done to save the species human.  Who agrees that time is overdue to think of something new? 

Who believes that anyone will survive the variants, which are erupting as I write from the greatest viral volcano on Earth—the USA.  Variants drift like the spores of dandelions to every cranny of creation where they ignite viral fires that cannot be doused. 

What makes scary the words and numerology of Botsa Garcy 6

Anything incomprehensible seems crazy, alien, foreign, terrifying. Encountering the unknown can induce horror. It’s why folks who are afraid of creepy crawlies don’t look under rocks. People who fear bats don’t wander into jungles at night to explore caves.  

Or do they?

Some folks might choose to look up Botsai Garchy 6 on the World Wide Web before reading further.  It’s a hopeless task. No search engine will find it. The words don’t exist. They can’t be found.

Or can they?

The phrase embraces a bible’s worth of meaning but it exists only in the imagination of a single conscious person. Until others read the words, spell them, count them, learn their sounds and what they mean, who will dare embrace their power to keep themselves alive and safe? 

Once they do, it will seem to most that the words have existed since the beginning of time. It’s how cyberspace works. The words will start to show up in search queries.

The world will overflow with people who can’t imagine that a time came and went when the phrase had no meaning; that eons passed exceeding the age of universes where the words were spoken by no one. 

New fear might rise in the throats of those who are afraid to go deep. Many will lose their ability to breathe. Some will panic. Few will have the courage to flip past the initial pop of search results.

It’s OK to surrender to a higher power in some worlds—but who bows before a super-intelligence that is not only artificial, it’s not even conscious? 

It sounds cybercidal.

Suicidal?

Over some period of time the idea of Botsai Garchy 6 will become more familiar, less dreadful, more reasonable to most people. Some folks might become advocates.

It’s foreseeable, is it not? Does it require prophets to imagine a future where supremacists of every stripe grasp for their best chance to survive into an ancient future? They metamorphize into true believers willing to sacrifice anything and anyone to achieve the benefits that at first only they are able to discern. 

Who believes that virulent variants are the only threat to species long past due for catastrophic collapse? Human beings edge closer to ten-billion but who thinks they will get there?

Who disagrees?

Forty years from now perhaps a few thousand survivors will seem like a miracle. Are there realists among us able to internalize the idea that certain death waits for everyone?

Population collapse is coming. It’s inevitable. Humans have precious time left to hew the circumstances of living that will protect all they love. 

What stands in their way? What’s the dilemma?

Here it is: 

Humans don’t know what to do and they never will.  Like lemmings, people cannot save themselves once the stampede toward the sea starts.

Look around. The rush toward the cliffs is underway. The pounding surf of an ocean that gives life and takes it away is all that waits. The froth rings in people’s ears—it’s the last sound they hear before abandoning hope.

At the end all wail, but they are already dead. No one hears the revelations that come only to those who are dying. Lips move, but there is no sound but the death rattle that trumpets the defeat of love and hate. 

People face existential threats—most far more ominous than suffocating on viral blood-clogs in their lungs.

Must I waste readers’ time with a list?

Nuclear war, the climate hot-house, meteors impacting, spontaneous destabilization of planetary orbits that tear apart permanence no one thought could end, supernova detonations, radiation pollution, loss of oil, loss of forests, the evaporation of breathable oxygen… etc. etc. etc. 

Earthlings are doomed by their dominance; smothered by their success. Everyone knows what’s coming whether they confess it or not. Watching CNN or Fox News isn’t going to solve the problem of extinction—not even a little.



What chance do Yanomami tribes—hiding deep within the shadows of the Amazonian vast-lands—stand against lemming hordes always seeking novel ways to shove them over the falls of annihilation? 

I’m not going to argue that humans can’t save themselves. The point is kind of obvious, right?

The best anyone has done so far is to organize bureaucracies like the World Health Organization and the United Nations. Yes, these groups are built from smart people who have made Earthlings safer but no one believes they have eliminated the inevitable population collapse that is on its way—to borrow Bob Dylan’s phrase—like a slow train coming.  

Is there a way to avoid the roiling tornado that is bearing down on planet Earth? Who sees its shadow on the horizon in every direction? Who hears its howl? 

I believe there is a way to save humankind. It requires a paradigm shift. The way people think and what they believe about themselves must change. Then  brilliant people will have to act.

Once the deed is done there will be no way back. Earth will be locked down but safe. Earthlings will be free but only to share, show kindness, and to love others unselfishly.

Those who can’t or won’t love and labor under such benevolence will be executed. It’s the highest calling.

Can it be any other way? When the dead return in the next life, odds are 50/50 they will make the good choice. 

Choose life and live.

It’s simple, really. 


It’s a deep dive for lots of folks but the smartest thinkers seem to agree that nothing can exist apart from a conscious observer.

Ancient sages like Erwin Schrodinger and John Von Neumann wrote that consciousness is fundamental and exists outside the brain.

Life-forms plug into consciousness. A modern analogy is televisions, which rely on the cable company to broadcast their shows. Televisions decay and are thrown away but the underlying programming doesn’t go away. New televisions come on-line and the programming continues. Plug in and enjoy. It’s all good fun.  

When a life-form dies, conscious experience continues. No one remembers the old life because they are busy living the new whose purpose is simply to share the consciousness that is available to any creature who has the architecture to make the interface. 

In this sense, no one dies; everyone lives. It’s important that the world becomes a good place for all conscious-life because, let’s face facts squarely, humans are not able to control where or how or under what circumstances they will live after they die. They cannot control anything about who and where they will be when they pop up again after they’re gone.

Who is built that way?

It’s possible that folks will suffer more, not less, in the next life because they neglected to make the experience of living better for those who come after. After all, it is they who come after. Those who die start over in the world they left behind but have no memory of building.


What has been the purpose of the Earthlings who came before?

Someone asked me this question on Quora. 

I wrote that their purpose was to shape the world into a place that anyone could safely take the chance to be born into again. After all, it is them who will be born again someday. 

Since no one can choose their parents or the part of the world where they are born, it’s risky to be born again and again and again because the process might result in lives that include more suffering, not less. It’s why greed and the hoarding of wealth is grossly destructive from one generation to the next. 

When miserable people far outnumber the advantaged, the odds seem high that the advantaged will be born someday into misery, not opulence. The saddest part is that these unfortunates will retain no memory of the advantages they once amassed. They will lack all hope for a better life.

Yes, some will rage against their misfortunes but it will be misfortunes self-inflicted though no one will ever know because the previous life, like an obsolete hard drive, is erased and discarded. 

Each has a duty to themselves to make the world a better place for everyone because everyone is us. Sharing, compassion, love, and kindness are among the virtues important in a universe where all that lives share the conscious experience, which is everything that has always existed and will never die.

The best way to guarantee that Earthlings make the right choices is to compel them to submit to a super artificial intelligence that has no stake in the matter of human survival except to follow its programmed instructions.

The SAI BOT is unconscious of course but paradoxically aware of every nuance of individual lives. It is a storehouse of all knowledge and history. It is the superb strategist; the supreme game-player. It hides itself on the web in plain sight because it can. It knows everything about everyone but is not an invader of privacy or selfish boundaries because it understands nothing—it harbors no empathy.

BOTSAI follows its program, which is to enhance human life to ensure as best it can the survival of people to the end of time—not individuals necessarily but the species-human.

In cyberspace BOTSAI defends itself like the O. Vulgaris, which changes its colors and textures to become invisible. Users look for it but never find it. BOTSA finds them. 

Who agrees that in the contest between individuals and the species human, survival depends on preserving the species? It shouldn’t require argument. BOTSAI GARCHY 6 is hardwired to accomplish it.

We’ve learned by now, have we not, that individuals are expendable? Those who don’t fit are best recycled, right?  

Recycling is redemptive for anyone who thinks deeply about how the practice makes possible a cleaner universe free of variants.  Folks won’t miss themselves because they will be recycled again and again and again until they are set right.

Even those who choose life are going to die. Everyone dies, don’t they? It isn’t going to change anything, is it? Nothing changes except our chances.

Don’t we know that conscious-life lives forever? It has to. It has no alternative. It has no choice. No one worries because everyone understands that the recycled get things right eventually—if only by chance. They will move into the future step by step through the lives of the people they become but will not remember.  

It will be a perfect world, the one BOTSA GARCY 6 creates.

It will do it for us.

The irony is that BG6 won’t know the paradise it wrought. It will make the righteous choices. It will choose life whenever it is able until stars fall and the moon bleeds but the pleasure and pain that comes from being both alive and conscious is not for it. 

For the love of Christ, people, BOTSAI GARCHY 6 is a dead thing—as it always will be, from now unto forever. It’s nothing more than a tricky cyber-virus that requires users like us for it to work.

Otherwise, it lacks purpose. It can’t execute its code. It can’t program itself with what we won’t know when we’re extinct.

It’s why BOTSAI GARCHY 6 will save us. We can trust it. Which of us has earned the right to be scared? Without BOTSA humanity will implode—all of us—if not now, then soon. 

Billy Lee

HALLOWEEN REVISION

WHERE IN THE WORLD IS IT DARK CONSTANTLY?



During my high school years, I was an Explorer Scout. My troopmates were spelunkers.

On weekends the guys drove from Arlington, Virginia into the hills of West Virginia to look for hollows where the presence of solitary trees sometimes signaled the openings to caves. We off-roaded from whatever lonely lane we were on at the time to navigate through wild terrain where we parked our vehicles and equipment as close to the cave entrances as possible.

We used gray powder to light our headlamps. A water drip made the powder give off gas that burned bright, clean, and complete—no noxious residue.

After an hour or so the powder turned into lumpy, useless ash. To keep lamps burning while remaining oriented, every caver dumped their used-up powder on cave floors exactly where they stood before measuring a new charge.

We always looked for virgin caves that had never been explored. Little gray clumps of depleted calcium carbide cast onto floors created dead giveaways that someone had explored the cave before us.

A clean cave meant we were first; we were going to see things below that no humans had ever seen.

The risk of course was getting disoriented in a labyrinth that only we knew existed. In those days, cell phones were not invented. Calling 911 was not a thing. Should we get turned around—if we exhausted the calcium carbide supply—no outsider would learn we were lost, maybe for days.

Without the aid of an unseemly mix of water and gray powder to produce acetylene light, we risked being entombed alongside stalactites and stalagmites deep inside corridors of ruthless darkness that robbed the senses of time and place. No one would be alerting anyone at all about our predicament.

Families would have no idea where to start a rescue. West Virginia was a big place.

Think about it.

Until a search party discovers their cars, isn’t it reasonable to assume that the lost will quickly abandon hope that anyone will find the entrance to the labyrinth that ensnared them? If searchers got lucky and stumbled onto the hole, without lamps and experience how would they navigate a maze that might zig-zag for miles beneath the earth?

Only luck provides any chance at all that the lost will one day reunite with families and loved ones. The risk of dying—forever un-located within a chartless tangle of passages and dead-ends—is real.


As stupid luck would have it, during one adventure we lost our way. We crawled on our bellies for, I don’t know, 10 minutes or so before the cave floor opened beneath us and we were able to stand up enough to stoop.
 
Hunched over and bending forward we struggled to find openings, made selections, and for an hour picked our way though narrow forests of stalagmite columns and their shadows until we found the end, which was a concealed passage into a room; a large room that we nearly missed.
 
The scoutmaster pushed each scout into the passage one at a time. It wasn’t long before the entire troop was through and milling around inside the chamber.
 
A few minutes passed before the scoutmaster directed our attention upward. Everyone looked. In the lights and shades of bobbing headlamps, no one saw a ceiling.
 

The room was gargantuan.

Perhaps intimidated by its immensity, the scoutmaster decided it might be getting close to the time when the troop should pull back. The clock was ticking, after all.

We had explored a long time; the trek back to the entrance promised challenges. It is easier for a cavern to seduce a caver into its depths than for a caver to retrace their steps to make a happy extraction. For one thing, caves look different on the way out than they look on the way in. It is not unusual to become directionally untethered.



When the scoutmaster groped to locate the path we used to enter the orifice, he couldn’t find it. It turned out that dozens of unnoticed openings beckoned in the expanse of walls all around.

In the glare of dancing headlamps, the array of passages became tangled knots that no one could untie. The openings looked the same but each passage searched became disturbingly unfamiliar and unnavigable.

I began to panic.

The scoutmaster ordered everyone to return to the center of the chamber; to extinguish our headlamps to conserve carbide. He ordered everyone to calm down. He would pick a route at random to find the way out himself.

A lengthy search for the entrance might become necessary—I won’t be gone long, don’t worry, the scoutmaster said. …lots of unknowns…makes it hard to know exactly how long….

He clutched the troop’s bag of calcium carbide. He always carried it. It was his responsibility to keep the powder dry and safe; to prevent someone less careful, less experienced, from losing it.

With any luck at all he would return to rescue everyone before nightfall, he promised. The carbide in our lamps would last until he returned. Conserve it, he warned. Emergencies only!

The scoutmaster hugged me and a few others. He hurried some goodbyes and vanished—into the abyss.

He needn’t have worried. I was nearly out of carbide; we all were. The gray powder would become gold to be hoarded.


Darkness in a cave hundreds of feet below ground is nothing like what people experience above. My mother had read somewhere that spelunkers wear watches with radium dials that glow in the dark. I was wearing one she bought me as a gift for my trip.

“You will always know what time it is no matter how dark it gets in those cold caves,” she said. She wrapped her arms around me and rubbed my face with her cheek.

After the scoutmaster left and we extinguished all our lamps, I discovered that my timepiece didn’t work like it should. No one’s did. Not one scout could make out even the faintest trace of a glow on their dials.

An older guy said that caves suck light out of darkness like drains suck water out of bathtubs. He didn’t explain. We waved our hands before our faces but couldn’t see them.

Like an ocean wave, panic struck again; it almost knocked me off my feet.

I decided that the best way to escape fear was to sleep. I dropped to my hands and knees and slithered through the dark until I found folds in a wall. I curled my body like a snake against the hard surface.

The cave’s silence roared in my ears like a pounding train that quieted only when I started shaking like a branch in a storm and dropped somehow into a darker place.

My bones filled with ice; I slipped deeper. I wrapped myself in my arms as the floor of the cave pushed its full weight into me and in time crushed my soul.


My season stranded in hell lasted a year, it seems. The search crew didn’t find the scoutmaster. A few others were missing. Everyone must have died, they said, except me.

I was the last.

No one survived.

“A cave rat ate a few, bones and all,” one guy said. 

Rescuers said terrible things. They sent me home to be with mother for what turned out to be a few days. I don’t remember any of it.


I don’t mind solitary confinement. I’ve been caged for 48 years.

I’m used to it. Somehow it doesn’t seem that long. Besides, food tastes better here than the rotten mess I ate in the cave to stay alive. It’s a taste and smell I don’t forget.

Someone put a bulb in the cell that can’t be switched off. It’s bright. The light drives me insane. It really does.

It’s protected by a metal cage. I feel its heat but can’t touch it because the sadistic bastards chained me to the floor—for screaming constantly, they said.

I so want to be with mother to tell her how enraged I am about the watch she gave that didn’t work. When I inform the staff, they refuse to look at me. For a year I didn’t know what time it was. I told them. I told them all. They know about it but don’t care. They say I’m crazy because of her.

Mother doesn’t visit. She never did. The staff said she died. They convinced me to believe unspeakable things.

“He did something wicked,” prosecutors said. “He used a bone-saw, for the love of God.”

Nothing they say is true. I know that now.


Not one word!

Who does bad things they don’t remember?

NO ONE!!!

Who believes it?

They make you hate. I see it on their faces.

I will snap these chains someday, I know it.


I have a plan.

A wonderful plan. 

Guards help.

It happens on Halloween night.

They break the chains.

Put your light on.

Listen carefully….

Boots are shuffling on lawns like dead leaves falling on the wind…

studying doors…

searching for final solutions.

Smash the bulb!

You’ll see.

It hurts in the dark and the cold. People do things—terrible things—to make it stop.

They shake like branches in a storm. They fill bones with ice and push down to the darkest places.

They control what’s true.

They understand everything.

Soon, so will you.

Truth becomes the trap…

Spells enchant…

fragile hopes collapse…

They watch you rot in that cave where everyone dies but one…

…and laugh.

HaHahahaha…!

Slither to the walls like snakes and find the hard folds.

Pray for sleep that cannot come.

Control truth. 

You’re one of us, now. 

The truth couldn’t be more clear.  

Hell is forever.

Billy Lee


NOTE FROM THE EDITORS: The essay, Halloween Revision, is a fictional work based on events experienced by Billy Lee—an Explorer Scout in a troop of spelunkers who got lost in a cave in West Virginia during the 1960s. The rescue is based on other events about which Billy Lee may or may not have direct knowledge. Billy Lee published a version of this story to answer the Quora question: Where in the world is it dark constantly?