Wax, or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees (1991) Movie Script
In early 1914, a spiritualist
cinematographer
from the Supernormal Picture
Society of London
joined the Royal Expedition to
the Antarctic.
His name was James Maker -
also known as "Hive" Maker.
James 'Hive' Maker hoped to
photograph evidence
of life... after death.
The Spring of 1915 found James
Hive Maker in France
where gas warfare had begun at
the Battle of Ypres.
Hive Maker photographed
the reaction to the new threat.
Each day's batch of film
brought him closer to his goal
of recording the moving spirits
of the dead.
The Supernormal Picture Society taught
that the dead live near to us
but in an unknown world.
This world could be made visible
by the cinematographer
who could see through the
haze of our world...
...to the darkness beyond.
To the Supernormal cinematographer
the ghost was a spiritual radium
in decay
which could stain photographic film.
It lived in the land of the dead.
Hive Maker wrote that he imagined this
to be a place of dense vegetation
where the souls of the dead lived
as small floating lights
Hive Maker believed that someday
these lights would swarm into our world
to join the living.
In the Summer of 1916,
James Hive Maker returned to his home
and business -
a bee farm north of London.
to supervise the work
and check on his hives.
A telegram had warned Hive Maker
of a new disease among British
Black bees.
To prevent possible ruin,
Hive Make hoped to purchase an
experimental stock
of specialty bees from Mesopotamia.
He had heard that these special bees
were both plague-proof
and producers of an unusually
clear honey.
If the experiment was successful,
he would replace his entire stock.
In London that summer,
the telegraph company had begun
to modernize its operation.
As a result, Ella Spiralum
lost her job as a telephone operator.
Spiralum herself was an electrical
inventor
who dreamed of developing a means to
transmit moving pictures
through the telephone.
Ella Spiralum was the half-sister
of James 'Hive' Maker.
Through 'Hive' Maker,
Ella found work as a photographic medium
at the Supernormal Picture Society.
Each Sunday, ghosts would appear
in a sance in Tavistock Square
to be photographed with the living
by Ella and her special camera.
Often, the ghosts spoke to Ella.
One talkative ghost had died in an
auto accident.
This ghost was the dead wife
of a Hungro-Egyptian man
who attended the sances.
This sad gentleman was the charming
bee scientist, Zoltan Abbassid.
Ella discovered that Zoltan
knew her half-brother,
James 'Hive' Maker.
It was Zoltan Abbassid who had brought
Mesopotamian bees to England.
Abbassid had discovered the bees
near Basra,
in the south of Mesopotamia.
In the Fall of 1916, the bee plague
stuck Hive Maker's farm.
The British bees began to die.
Their breathing tubes infested
by parasite mites.
The Mesopotamian bees flourished,
and quickly took root
in the empty hives of the dead bees.
At that moment,
a sudden love grew
between Ella Spiralum and
Zoltan Abbassid.
The two were married in early winter.
For the honeymoon, Zoltan took
his new wife to America
to see the cowboys.
They stopped in Alamogordo, New Mexico.
I live in Alamogordo with my wife,
Melissa
at the edge of the army's
Deseret Test Facility.
My name is Jacob Maker.
'Hive' Maker is my grandfather.
I inherited my bees from him.
I didn't keep them for the honey.
I just like to watch them.
Melissa and I were related.
'Hive' Maker's half-sister, Ella
was Mellisa's grandmother.
Mellisa and I met in Alamogordo
while we were working on a training
simulator for the shuttle.
When the project was finished,
we got married.
Mellisa stayed on the shuttle as part
of the technical support group.
I was reassigned to another part
of the company.
We still went to work together...
but I felt uneasy since my reassignment.
There was something in the air,
maybe my eyes weren't very good.
That had to do with the job.
I spent a lot of time in front
of the screen
in that first flight simulation
right on the side of the mountain
above town.
I was assigned
to military systems
where we built weapons systems trainers,
making sure that everything
was as real as possible.
I didn't really understand
what was going on...
until the first time it happened to me.
One afternoon,
when I went out to the backyard
to open up my hives...
...when I was among my
Mesopotamian bees...
I always thought about how
things had changed.
When my sight came back,
I was closing up the hive.
I'd gone someplace familiar,
but I couldn't remember where.
I must have spent several
hours with the bees.
When Melissa came out to talk,
it was almost time for dinner.
That evening, Melissa and I watched
the shuttle on television.
We made love that night...
...for the last time.
I usually flew from the start of the day.
My specific assignment was the Army's
integrated air battle mission simulator,
where several pilots could fly at
once over a common landscape.
I was a programmer
in charge of writing the code that
simulated target acquisition.
It was up to me to make sure the
gun sight displays worked.
The day after my strange experience
at the hive,
a thought came to me
in the middle of an explosion.
I remembered another strange experience
with the bees.
Only the week before,
I'd gone out after dinner
and as I opened the hive,
I knew that something was wrong.
There were voices
INSIDE the hive.
When I awoke,
I was watching the bees.
I realized that I didn't really
understand my job -
there were things I had to do, but
I didn't really know what they were.
So I went home early,
leaving Melissa at work.
"I discovered Pluto about 4pm
on the 18th of February.
Pluto seemed to be the most logical name.
There weren't many good mythological
names left.
And you may not realize that
that the fissionable element plutonium is
named for the planet, Pluto."
I was drawn to the bees...
I wanted to be in the dark again.
When the dark came,
I was able to stay awake.
I waited for something to change.
I began to travel...
I arrived... at a patch of land
hanging in the darkness.
It resembled the place of my birth.
I was born
on July 16,
in the house of my dead grandfather.
A place known as the Garden of Eden
near Abilene, Kansas.
James 'Hive' Maker left England in 1919
to invent this place.
Concrete trees bordered the property.
Up in the concrete trees, where
the concrete people.
On one side of the house
were the twin brothers:
Cain the Plowman, who had a lot
of fixed ideas
and his brother Abel.
When I was a child,
Cain killed his brother Abel.
After that
God put an "X" on Cain's forehead.
in order to protect him from vengeance.
Whoever killed Cain would die
thirteen times.
I read this riddle in my grandfather's
diary which I found in the library.
After that, I went for a walk.
I couldn't go beyond the perimeter
of the acre.
So I went indoors.
I watched the people in the trees...
and Cain...
as he left for another planet.
I decided that I didn't want
to understand what had happened.
I went to bed just as the sun was setting.
Melissa wasn't home yet.
The next day at work, I felt
especially sensitive
to what was happening inside
the machines.
I could feel the weapons
and the targets.
Inside the targets
I could feel that there were souls.
I was leaving my old self behind.
That afternoon, I could feel the
darkness around me.
I was on the edge of a journey.
That night as I watched television,
it occurred to me that the soul of a
person could fragment and decay
like one of 'Hive' Maker's ghosts.
I was lost...
The dead were in the sky.
I was their target.
They wanted me.
I knew that my suit would protect me.
I didn't want to tell Melissa
what was happening to me.
I was glad for the everyday
routine,
but I knew that I would soon have to
make a decision.
I separated from the ground...
I was a weapon.
Our battlefields were prepared for us
by the Defense Mapping Agency.
Every tape was a square of real landscape.
I could feel those places -
there were people there.
To hit a simulated target was to secretly
prepare murder against the real target.
Eventually, there would be real ghosts.
I had to decide now.
I was on a mission.
I turned off the radar, and headed
towards the moon.
The dead had attacked me.
Now I would attack THEM.
I was protected.
They wanted me dead,
but I would kill them before they
killed me.
I spent the night at a motel.
The next morning
I visited some friends at the National
Solar Observatory in the mountains.
We watched the clouds on television.
Then I went home.
I wasn't a killer...
I was a beekeeper.
There was only one way I could go.
I wanted to use the bees
to go back to the Garden of Eden.
The bees were waiting for me.
They pierced the side of my head.
Through this hole, they inserted
a mirrored crystal.
I had discovered television
among the bees.
Through the television, I could read
my grandfather's diary
at the Garden of Eden.
Ella Spiralum and Zoltan Abbassid
returned from New Mexico the next Spring.
Strangely, the Mesopotamian bees had
multiplied over the Winter.
The hives were filled with
their clear honey.
James 'Hive' Maker never harvested
as early as he did that year.
The colonies were so crowded,
everyday there was a new swarming.
Hive Maker followed lines of
Mesopotamian bees
away from the farm, and found
wild colonies in the trees
and caves of the surrounding
countryside.
That Spring,
Ella Spiralum began work on a device
that would allow the dead to travel
to our world.
She combined her brother's techniques of
ectoplasmic cinematography
with her knowledge of electrical
telephony.
She called the device, the electric
telescope.
Spinning discs scanned mourners left
behind by the dead,
changing their pictures to sounds
which were transmitted by
telephone wires.
The receiver changed the sounds to
moving pictures of the dead
which could float free and alive...
in the air.
During all this activity
the bee scientist, Zoltan Abbassid,
conducted his own experiments
on the Mesopotamian bees
he'd provided 'Hive' Maker.
I could see further through the
television,
out to the Deseret Test Facility,
where weapons were flying through
the air.
They were killing each other.
It was up to me to kill someone...
...that was where I had to go.
The X-shaped gun sight floated
before my eyes...
I was Cain.
That was my mark.
God would protect me from my victims.
Melissa called from work.
I told her that I was going to the
Deseret Test Facility
to look at the Army's implementation
of the Airbattle Mission Simulator.
I had no idea how long I would be gone.
The test facility was 60 miles away
through the desert.
Deseret was the main American testing
ground for guided
as well as semi-intelligent weapons.
The facility was slightly larger than
Rhode Island.
There was always haze around
the main post area.
That had reassured me right away.
THIS was a better place for me.
They were using my work to solve problems
with a vision-guided missile system
that they were testing for one of
their contractors.
I found the work disturbing.
I had the strong feeling that I should
go out to the range.
That I should be with the weapons.
I rented a small place
not far from the base.
I started taking morning walks
in the desert.
All this time,
the bee television was active
inside me.
I received pictures from the bees.
They showed me how weapons died
every day.
At the end of the day,
every night in the trailer park,
the bees told me about the new world
where they had settled
and formed a new nation.
It was the land of the dead.
The bee television showed me that place
where the radiant souls
of living spirits
split into innumerable pieces
forming beautiful patterns that
were their new bodies
and at the same time a language.
It was the language Cain brought with him
when he fled the Garden of Eden.
The thought of this new world
excited me.
My walks became longer.
I often found myself 15 or 20 miles
down-range
still full of energy.
My favorite stopping place was the
launch site monument
where the Army had tested Nazi rockets.
On the bee television,
I could see that this is where
the Moon and the Earth were joined.
All around this place,
semi-intelligent weapons were trying
to escape the Earth
hoping for a new life elsewhere.
When I was away from the ground,
the bee television became even clearer.
I could lose myself in the images
and become a weapon myself,
rising through the air.
My destination was the Moon.
That's where the dead lived.
I always enjoyed visiting the moon.
The dead were always quiet until I
started to leave.
That's when they spoke.
They spoke to me
...as bees.
They showed me a line
that I would have to follow through
the darkness.
It led to a place
hidden in the desert
where they were waiting for me.
I would have to follow this bee line
out to the test range.
That's where the weapons were.
They were leaving around the clock.
No one on base seemed to wonder
what happened to the missiles
that never came back.
But I knew that they had become
flying saucers,
and that I could
join them if I wanted
and become one of them.
And so it was,
that carrying only the bee television
and my own thoughts,
that I walked out to the desert.
As I walked, the bee tv showed me
the sights of past
or future explosions.
I walked for many hours,
engrossed by what I saw.
But eventually, I awoke.
I was afraid.
I could see the dead, shaped like
letters of the alphabet.
They danced for me.
The bee tv appeared among them
I was traveling in the right direction.
I woke on my feet,
heading north.
Less than an hour later,
I came upon an unfinished mud building.
It was a library in-progress
for the Russian Orthodox monks
of St. Anthony.
I met Father Bessarian.
He told me that there were demons
in the desert.
Father Bessarian also told me
that bees lived in the historical
marker at Trinity site
where the Army had tested the first
plutonium bomb.
That was 40 miles to the north.
The next morning found me at
White Sands,
a great stretch of pulverized gypsum.
The main ingredient in wallboard.
Out of the haze, a giant floating
light appeared.
Its body was a poem, written in the
language of Cain.
Here was a missile that had left the
Earth, and returned to touch me.
The desert became the past.
The dead marched across the sands
to reach me.
Their shadows crossed my face,
and I began to cry.
The sky opened...
I could see the darkness.
I wanted to take a picture,
but all I could do
was dance.
That's when the bees arrived,
riding on broken fragments of time.
They flattened the sands,
and built a room for me on stilts
so that I could be in the air
when the shuttle returned.
But I never saw it land.
I flew directly to the Garden of Eden
where there was a message waiting
for me in my grandfather's diary.
It was written by the dead.
From the bed of my birth
to the bed of my death
and beyond,
I would have to travel with the bees
to find the person I was meant to kill
on the planet
inside the Earth.
The Mesopotamian bees of my grandfather
were waiting for me on this planet.
They would show me my victim at the
moment of the kill.
At the end of the story,
I was still dead.
An angel arrived,
from the planet of Life
to take me back
to the White Sands.
The next day I arrived at Trinity site,
about 20 miles past White Sands.
There were camera bunkers still
standing from the famous test.
This was the birthplace of the
plutonium bomb.
The marker was my goal.
If there were bees...
I was glad I had my suit on.
On the bee tv
I could see myself.
I was approaching the marker.
I couldn't remember where this place was.
I did know that once I had traveled
across the ocean to Basra
in Mesopotamia
to find the tower of Babel.
I knew that I was from Alamogordo.
That couldn't be more than
50 miles by car.
But I didn't know how I could get back,
except perhaps as a bomb.
I couldn't allow that to happen.
I had to call Mellisa and warn her.
I dialed "O" for the operator,
but got ground zero instead.
Over and over,
I tried to make that call.
And then I remembered...
the bee tv showed me
that I was at Trinity site.
So that I would understand,
the bees showed me a movie called,
"The Garden of Eden Cave".
Starring me, Jacob Maker,
as "Fat Boy",
the first and loneliest plutonium bomb.
I lived in a mad tower
above Trinity site.
The day of my death,
the other dead came to visit me.
They said,
"Little bomb,
it is July 16, 1945."
"Now that you're gone,
they will make you a marker."
"And the bees will come to live here,
and the flying saucers."
"So you will know, that through
the grace of God,
the maker of people;
His son, the savior of the Christians;
and those bees who swarm through the air,
that though you are dead you were born
Zoltan Abbassid on July 11, 1882."
This is true.
In my youth, I studied Volapk,
rival of Esperanto, the artificial
language of international peace
and reconstructed the language of
Cain spoken
at the tower of Babel.
In 1915, I - Zoltan Abbassid,
traveled to Basra, in southern
Mesopotamia
in search of remnants from the
Tower of Babel.
The British campaign in Mesopotamia
had recently climaxed with a surrender
to the Turks
at Kut.
I traveled by plane
and boat against the retreat
to arrive at the famous tomb of Ezra,
the gatekeeper of the Garden of Eden.
I knew that the remnants of Babel
were hidden here.
I found native bees... in British hives.
Bees that danced backwards.
I dissected the queen.
She was blind.
My guess was that these bees had come
from INSIDE the Earth.
When I had this thought, I saw pictures.
I saw a man I had never met.
He told me that these bees had come
to Basra
through a cave that led to the center
of the Earth
where there was a planet that
someday I would visit.
The Tower of Babel was there
and the bees lived inside it.
When the movie was over,
I realized that the world was
surrounded by darkness.
That's because there was a cave the
size of mid-town Manhattan
hidden beneath the New Mexico desert.
The bees were waiting for me there
to show me how to get to that planet
and meet my victim.
So I followed the pictures inside my brain...
towards the dark place.
Beyond the desert,
in the mountains,
I found the Garden of Eden cave.
There was only one way in...
I had reached the land of the dead.
I relaxed for a few moments,
and then I was ready.
I knew which way to go.
Into the darkness.
The first thing I noticed
was the light.
The bees had illuminated the cave
for me.
The bees appeared on the tv,
speaking the language of Cain.
They were waiting for me.
They weren't directly visible to sight,
but I knew they were there.
The intricate stonework was their
honeycomb.
I saw myself on the television.
Then I saw the bees,
directly,
for the first time.
They were 30 feet tall.
They sang for me.
I could see that the bees lived
in the darkness around this part
of the cave.
Our world was puny and finite
in comparison with theirs.
I understood them as little
as the bees understood the beekeeper.
That didn't discourage me.
I continued to walk through the cave.
A tourist in the land of the dead.
Each corner held a new amazement.
They had created a world where the dead
could live.
Each soul could have a square of land
and time.
Both qualities were fluid,
the products of powerful
thought machines.
that worked behind the scenes,
powered by the raw energy of the bees.
It was a mechanism of astonishing
complexity.
All this tired me. I slept in a dark
corner - like a bee.
When the underground sun rose,
I could feel my destiny pressing
in on me.
It was time for me to find out
who I was going to kill.
Time
went forwards
and backwards.
I emerged in a room
as bright as noon,
covered with magnificent honeycomb.
Hidden behind those walls
the bees were sculpting enormous
wax figurines.
Feminine forms,
in which they intended to enter
our world.
They promised me one of these bodies
after my death.
To earn it, I would have to enter
their world.
I drove through a tunnel
and arrived at a city.
In the city, there was a building.
In the building, there was a room.
On the wall of the room was a
vibrating bookshelf
that held a crystalline book.
In the book, was the story of the bees
told in secret words
shaped from the bodies of the dead.
The story told me that here in the
Garden of Eden cave
vengeance was being planned
for the dead.
I shut the book,
left the building
and got in my car
for the long journey home.
I knew I wouldn't be alone for long.
Once I had traveled into the darkness,
I was sure to be followed back.
That afternoon
out of the dark machinery,
one of the dead of the future arrived.
It was grotesque
with 4 brains on a single body.
I felt that I recognized it.
I was afraid,
but I was drawn towards this thing.
I followed it deeper into the cave.
That's where I would find my victim.
It was almost time.
I used my programming skills
to re-shape the cave into a shield.
From behind the shield, I would attack
with the mark of Cain.
My reverie was disturbed by the sound
of a telephone ringing.
It was the dead wife of Zoltan Abbassid.
She was calling from the moon.
In the language of Cain,
she told me that a murder had been
committed in the past,
and that I would kill again,
in Basra,
in southern Mesopotamia.
As I spoke to her,
I remembered that I was Zoltan Abbassid.
I was already dead
yet I was still Jacob Maker.
So I already had my new body.
There was vengeance for the dead
in this cave.
They wanted me.
I went into the darkness to hide.
An escort appeared
to take me to asylum.
I followed it into the darkness,
past the "Vengeance" sign
to the graveyard
where words were born.
Past this was a place guarded by
the oldest of the dead.
There, the soul fragments of animals
were sharpened and organized
into complicated floating weapons.
Beyond... was safety.
The "puzzle" planets, shuffling in
perpetual confusion.
I went to one which had a moon.
This was my secret planet of refuge.
I couldn't pronounce it's name.
There...
I was born again
as the "X" shape, a floating gun sight.
It was time to return.
I plunged into the center of a planet
and traveled towards the place
where my old self was standing.
The "X" shape led
and my old self followed,
flying through the darkness on the
bee television
that miraculous shape given me
by the bees
and now being taken back by them.
Our destination was one of the infinite
planets of the future dead.
This one was still geologically active.
On it, cities were forming.
Each city birth was preceded by the
appearance of the Tower of Babel.
A hive of words
that articulated as streets
and avenues.
Office buildings
and windowless apartments
that I flew through on my way to the
religious center,
the Temple of Death.
Priests and military planners
were deciding on the shape
of the new culture.
Each soul would have a home
built on a floating patch of land.
Each house would have a certain
number of rooms,
each with a chair.
Sometimes there would a lamp or a
stairway for decoration.
There would always be a basement
and in it, a clock and
the entertainment center
controlling both the television
and the bed as well as the toilet.
All of which reminded me
...that I was dead.
I had fallen to the floor of the cave.
My death was relaxing and beautiful.
I certainly didn't want to waste
much time on it.
I had other places to go.
The first place you stop after death
is the pulsating place
which is designed to be familiar to
people who used to have bodies.
There, I was reshaped in preparation
for transmission to my next body.
I became a short poem, in the
language of Cain.
I would get my new body after I killed.
When the actual transmission began,
the "X" shape was there for me.
There were new escorts also, sent from
the Temple of Death to watch me.
Together, we approached
the final journey.
Space and time opened like an elevator
to reveal a planet that had vanished
leaving its weather behind.
Here was the electric telescope,
an astronomical instrument of
planetary size.
I looked in one end of the tube
and then the other and started the
search for the missing planet.
I discovered the planet of television
4 hours after my death.
I went down the other end of the tube.
This brought me just outside the planet.
Inside,
the television was at work.
I went closer to investigate this marvel.
It was the closest I would ever get
to the eye of God.
When the television turned its gaze on me,
for a few moments I see the world
as the deity did -
divided into different zones
of transmission.
That was where I had to go.
My escort was still with me.
Together, we traveled into the
television and burst into the past
where my future was about to be decided.
By the Fall of 1917,
James "Hive' Maker had begun to hate
his brother-in-law, Zoltan Abbassid.
He had no specific reason
other than the desire to be the sole
owner of the Mesopotamian bees.
The bees were still multiplying.
Hive Maker believed that these bees were
the dead of the future.
That theory could account for their
awesome numbers.
Ella Spiralum's machine had
not progressed.
Technical limitations had prevented her
from building a machine large enough
to scan an entire mourner
or receive a complete soul.
The night that I, Zoltan Abbassid, was
murdered
I had decided to reveal the results of
my experiments on the bees to my family.
A new version of Ella's machine was
running in the garden,
pointed at the hives
creating images from the sounds
of the bees.
This was the first time either I or
my bees had been in front of the device.
Strange patterns began to form
at the receiver.
A woman appeared on the screen.
Then 4 women...
My dead wife was in the hive
her soul had fragmented
and become many separate bees.
She wanted to kill me.
She needed a new body.
My escort made a signal.
Multiple faces appeared on
Ella's receiver.
The bees swarmed to attack me.
I, Zoltan Abbassid, never wore protective
clothing when I worked with my bees.
The masses of the dead had arrived
to murder me.
Each with the same reason under a
different name.
For they were the dead,
and vengeance was their life.
I was stung again and again...
When my breathing stopped,
I saw James 'Hive' Maker standing
over me.
Hive Maker always wore his suit.
That was the last thing I ever saw.
Now I was Cain.
The "X" shape was my mark.
Together we traveled back to the
planet of Television
which was transmitting the dead...
to the future.
Now I needed a new body,
and to get it we would have to kill.
Those who murdered Zoltan Abbassid
would be my victims.
Then I would be reborn.
I had seen God
in the planet of Television
and had faith that this was true.
I became a shape of light,
the poem that I was.
I hid in a flower crystal on the
bee television.
The "X" shape followed the path that
my enemies were fleeing along.
They were heading forwards through time,
back to Mesopotamia
which now had a different name.
I followed my enemies through the bee
television
to emerge in the air
above Basra, southern Iraq,
in the year 1991.
Now, I was going to kill.
That was my job.
I spoke the code that changed
the bee television into a weapon
with the image of my special enemy
engraved upon it.
I spun this projectile towards the
one who was waiting for me.
The "X" shape followed to the kill.
Back in the darkness,
at the graveyard beyond the
Vengeance sign,
many new souls were born.
They danced on bee tv.
This was "Victory".
I went back to the planet of the future
dead to celebrate.
When I entered the city, my former
escorts greeted me.
They'd had children.
Twins.
The "X" had gone there to give
birth also.
On the bee tv, many new bodies were
on display.
In fact, this world was twice as
large as it had been before.
There was twice as much time,
twice as many houses
and many more useless things also.
That was it! The end.
For the last time, I entered
the bee tv.
I traveled into the weapon boxes
and let my soul take on its true form.
I am the X-shaped Siamese twins.
With a little thought, I can change
my shape
and have that body the bees
promised me
in the cave.
We are Siamese twins at the beginning
of the world.
My family is here; we are all attached.
That's me, Jacob Maker and next to me
is me, Zoltan Abbassid.
We are on top.
On the bottom, are the two Iraqis we
murdered in the tank.
They are our brothers now.
We can live anywhere on this planet
that we want to,
but there's no place like home.
We are going back to the
Garden of Eden.
Or actually, where we went to live
after we left the Garden of Eden.
It's a beautiful day in Alamogordo.
I really enjoy my job.
I'm a woman now.
Actually, several women.
Our names are Alell and Zilalamak.
We're genetic researchers,
specializing in the study of
the shifting kernel patterns found
across generations of mutating corn.
My research is paid for
by my dead grandfather,
James 'Hive' Maker,
who moved here in the 1940s with his
sister, Ella Spiralum.
He made a fortune in beekeeping
which he let Ella invest in a flight
simulation company,
The Tower of Babel, right here in
Alamogordo.
That's where my brothers work.
Right now, their assignment at the
Tower of Babel
is one of Aunt Ella's inventions.
A two-way television that lets
them talk to the dead.
On the television, the dead have
promised that for the next 1.000 years
we get to live in peace on this
new world.
I love my brothers and I believe that.
That's the power of love.
whaleday@karagarga.net
cinematographer
from the Supernormal Picture
Society of London
joined the Royal Expedition to
the Antarctic.
His name was James Maker -
also known as "Hive" Maker.
James 'Hive' Maker hoped to
photograph evidence
of life... after death.
The Spring of 1915 found James
Hive Maker in France
where gas warfare had begun at
the Battle of Ypres.
Hive Maker photographed
the reaction to the new threat.
Each day's batch of film
brought him closer to his goal
of recording the moving spirits
of the dead.
The Supernormal Picture Society taught
that the dead live near to us
but in an unknown world.
This world could be made visible
by the cinematographer
who could see through the
haze of our world...
...to the darkness beyond.
To the Supernormal cinematographer
the ghost was a spiritual radium
in decay
which could stain photographic film.
It lived in the land of the dead.
Hive Maker wrote that he imagined this
to be a place of dense vegetation
where the souls of the dead lived
as small floating lights
Hive Maker believed that someday
these lights would swarm into our world
to join the living.
In the Summer of 1916,
James Hive Maker returned to his home
and business -
a bee farm north of London.
to supervise the work
and check on his hives.
A telegram had warned Hive Maker
of a new disease among British
Black bees.
To prevent possible ruin,
Hive Make hoped to purchase an
experimental stock
of specialty bees from Mesopotamia.
He had heard that these special bees
were both plague-proof
and producers of an unusually
clear honey.
If the experiment was successful,
he would replace his entire stock.
In London that summer,
the telegraph company had begun
to modernize its operation.
As a result, Ella Spiralum
lost her job as a telephone operator.
Spiralum herself was an electrical
inventor
who dreamed of developing a means to
transmit moving pictures
through the telephone.
Ella Spiralum was the half-sister
of James 'Hive' Maker.
Through 'Hive' Maker,
Ella found work as a photographic medium
at the Supernormal Picture Society.
Each Sunday, ghosts would appear
in a sance in Tavistock Square
to be photographed with the living
by Ella and her special camera.
Often, the ghosts spoke to Ella.
One talkative ghost had died in an
auto accident.
This ghost was the dead wife
of a Hungro-Egyptian man
who attended the sances.
This sad gentleman was the charming
bee scientist, Zoltan Abbassid.
Ella discovered that Zoltan
knew her half-brother,
James 'Hive' Maker.
It was Zoltan Abbassid who had brought
Mesopotamian bees to England.
Abbassid had discovered the bees
near Basra,
in the south of Mesopotamia.
In the Fall of 1916, the bee plague
stuck Hive Maker's farm.
The British bees began to die.
Their breathing tubes infested
by parasite mites.
The Mesopotamian bees flourished,
and quickly took root
in the empty hives of the dead bees.
At that moment,
a sudden love grew
between Ella Spiralum and
Zoltan Abbassid.
The two were married in early winter.
For the honeymoon, Zoltan took
his new wife to America
to see the cowboys.
They stopped in Alamogordo, New Mexico.
I live in Alamogordo with my wife,
Melissa
at the edge of the army's
Deseret Test Facility.
My name is Jacob Maker.
'Hive' Maker is my grandfather.
I inherited my bees from him.
I didn't keep them for the honey.
I just like to watch them.
Melissa and I were related.
'Hive' Maker's half-sister, Ella
was Mellisa's grandmother.
Mellisa and I met in Alamogordo
while we were working on a training
simulator for the shuttle.
When the project was finished,
we got married.
Mellisa stayed on the shuttle as part
of the technical support group.
I was reassigned to another part
of the company.
We still went to work together...
but I felt uneasy since my reassignment.
There was something in the air,
maybe my eyes weren't very good.
That had to do with the job.
I spent a lot of time in front
of the screen
in that first flight simulation
right on the side of the mountain
above town.
I was assigned
to military systems
where we built weapons systems trainers,
making sure that everything
was as real as possible.
I didn't really understand
what was going on...
until the first time it happened to me.
One afternoon,
when I went out to the backyard
to open up my hives...
...when I was among my
Mesopotamian bees...
I always thought about how
things had changed.
When my sight came back,
I was closing up the hive.
I'd gone someplace familiar,
but I couldn't remember where.
I must have spent several
hours with the bees.
When Melissa came out to talk,
it was almost time for dinner.
That evening, Melissa and I watched
the shuttle on television.
We made love that night...
...for the last time.
I usually flew from the start of the day.
My specific assignment was the Army's
integrated air battle mission simulator,
where several pilots could fly at
once over a common landscape.
I was a programmer
in charge of writing the code that
simulated target acquisition.
It was up to me to make sure the
gun sight displays worked.
The day after my strange experience
at the hive,
a thought came to me
in the middle of an explosion.
I remembered another strange experience
with the bees.
Only the week before,
I'd gone out after dinner
and as I opened the hive,
I knew that something was wrong.
There were voices
INSIDE the hive.
When I awoke,
I was watching the bees.
I realized that I didn't really
understand my job -
there were things I had to do, but
I didn't really know what they were.
So I went home early,
leaving Melissa at work.
"I discovered Pluto about 4pm
on the 18th of February.
Pluto seemed to be the most logical name.
There weren't many good mythological
names left.
And you may not realize that
that the fissionable element plutonium is
named for the planet, Pluto."
I was drawn to the bees...
I wanted to be in the dark again.
When the dark came,
I was able to stay awake.
I waited for something to change.
I began to travel...
I arrived... at a patch of land
hanging in the darkness.
It resembled the place of my birth.
I was born
on July 16,
in the house of my dead grandfather.
A place known as the Garden of Eden
near Abilene, Kansas.
James 'Hive' Maker left England in 1919
to invent this place.
Concrete trees bordered the property.
Up in the concrete trees, where
the concrete people.
On one side of the house
were the twin brothers:
Cain the Plowman, who had a lot
of fixed ideas
and his brother Abel.
When I was a child,
Cain killed his brother Abel.
After that
God put an "X" on Cain's forehead.
in order to protect him from vengeance.
Whoever killed Cain would die
thirteen times.
I read this riddle in my grandfather's
diary which I found in the library.
After that, I went for a walk.
I couldn't go beyond the perimeter
of the acre.
So I went indoors.
I watched the people in the trees...
and Cain...
as he left for another planet.
I decided that I didn't want
to understand what had happened.
I went to bed just as the sun was setting.
Melissa wasn't home yet.
The next day at work, I felt
especially sensitive
to what was happening inside
the machines.
I could feel the weapons
and the targets.
Inside the targets
I could feel that there were souls.
I was leaving my old self behind.
That afternoon, I could feel the
darkness around me.
I was on the edge of a journey.
That night as I watched television,
it occurred to me that the soul of a
person could fragment and decay
like one of 'Hive' Maker's ghosts.
I was lost...
The dead were in the sky.
I was their target.
They wanted me.
I knew that my suit would protect me.
I didn't want to tell Melissa
what was happening to me.
I was glad for the everyday
routine,
but I knew that I would soon have to
make a decision.
I separated from the ground...
I was a weapon.
Our battlefields were prepared for us
by the Defense Mapping Agency.
Every tape was a square of real landscape.
I could feel those places -
there were people there.
To hit a simulated target was to secretly
prepare murder against the real target.
Eventually, there would be real ghosts.
I had to decide now.
I was on a mission.
I turned off the radar, and headed
towards the moon.
The dead had attacked me.
Now I would attack THEM.
I was protected.
They wanted me dead,
but I would kill them before they
killed me.
I spent the night at a motel.
The next morning
I visited some friends at the National
Solar Observatory in the mountains.
We watched the clouds on television.
Then I went home.
I wasn't a killer...
I was a beekeeper.
There was only one way I could go.
I wanted to use the bees
to go back to the Garden of Eden.
The bees were waiting for me.
They pierced the side of my head.
Through this hole, they inserted
a mirrored crystal.
I had discovered television
among the bees.
Through the television, I could read
my grandfather's diary
at the Garden of Eden.
Ella Spiralum and Zoltan Abbassid
returned from New Mexico the next Spring.
Strangely, the Mesopotamian bees had
multiplied over the Winter.
The hives were filled with
their clear honey.
James 'Hive' Maker never harvested
as early as he did that year.
The colonies were so crowded,
everyday there was a new swarming.
Hive Maker followed lines of
Mesopotamian bees
away from the farm, and found
wild colonies in the trees
and caves of the surrounding
countryside.
That Spring,
Ella Spiralum began work on a device
that would allow the dead to travel
to our world.
She combined her brother's techniques of
ectoplasmic cinematography
with her knowledge of electrical
telephony.
She called the device, the electric
telescope.
Spinning discs scanned mourners left
behind by the dead,
changing their pictures to sounds
which were transmitted by
telephone wires.
The receiver changed the sounds to
moving pictures of the dead
which could float free and alive...
in the air.
During all this activity
the bee scientist, Zoltan Abbassid,
conducted his own experiments
on the Mesopotamian bees
he'd provided 'Hive' Maker.
I could see further through the
television,
out to the Deseret Test Facility,
where weapons were flying through
the air.
They were killing each other.
It was up to me to kill someone...
...that was where I had to go.
The X-shaped gun sight floated
before my eyes...
I was Cain.
That was my mark.
God would protect me from my victims.
Melissa called from work.
I told her that I was going to the
Deseret Test Facility
to look at the Army's implementation
of the Airbattle Mission Simulator.
I had no idea how long I would be gone.
The test facility was 60 miles away
through the desert.
Deseret was the main American testing
ground for guided
as well as semi-intelligent weapons.
The facility was slightly larger than
Rhode Island.
There was always haze around
the main post area.
That had reassured me right away.
THIS was a better place for me.
They were using my work to solve problems
with a vision-guided missile system
that they were testing for one of
their contractors.
I found the work disturbing.
I had the strong feeling that I should
go out to the range.
That I should be with the weapons.
I rented a small place
not far from the base.
I started taking morning walks
in the desert.
All this time,
the bee television was active
inside me.
I received pictures from the bees.
They showed me how weapons died
every day.
At the end of the day,
every night in the trailer park,
the bees told me about the new world
where they had settled
and formed a new nation.
It was the land of the dead.
The bee television showed me that place
where the radiant souls
of living spirits
split into innumerable pieces
forming beautiful patterns that
were their new bodies
and at the same time a language.
It was the language Cain brought with him
when he fled the Garden of Eden.
The thought of this new world
excited me.
My walks became longer.
I often found myself 15 or 20 miles
down-range
still full of energy.
My favorite stopping place was the
launch site monument
where the Army had tested Nazi rockets.
On the bee television,
I could see that this is where
the Moon and the Earth were joined.
All around this place,
semi-intelligent weapons were trying
to escape the Earth
hoping for a new life elsewhere.
When I was away from the ground,
the bee television became even clearer.
I could lose myself in the images
and become a weapon myself,
rising through the air.
My destination was the Moon.
That's where the dead lived.
I always enjoyed visiting the moon.
The dead were always quiet until I
started to leave.
That's when they spoke.
They spoke to me
...as bees.
They showed me a line
that I would have to follow through
the darkness.
It led to a place
hidden in the desert
where they were waiting for me.
I would have to follow this bee line
out to the test range.
That's where the weapons were.
They were leaving around the clock.
No one on base seemed to wonder
what happened to the missiles
that never came back.
But I knew that they had become
flying saucers,
and that I could
join them if I wanted
and become one of them.
And so it was,
that carrying only the bee television
and my own thoughts,
that I walked out to the desert.
As I walked, the bee tv showed me
the sights of past
or future explosions.
I walked for many hours,
engrossed by what I saw.
But eventually, I awoke.
I was afraid.
I could see the dead, shaped like
letters of the alphabet.
They danced for me.
The bee tv appeared among them
I was traveling in the right direction.
I woke on my feet,
heading north.
Less than an hour later,
I came upon an unfinished mud building.
It was a library in-progress
for the Russian Orthodox monks
of St. Anthony.
I met Father Bessarian.
He told me that there were demons
in the desert.
Father Bessarian also told me
that bees lived in the historical
marker at Trinity site
where the Army had tested the first
plutonium bomb.
That was 40 miles to the north.
The next morning found me at
White Sands,
a great stretch of pulverized gypsum.
The main ingredient in wallboard.
Out of the haze, a giant floating
light appeared.
Its body was a poem, written in the
language of Cain.
Here was a missile that had left the
Earth, and returned to touch me.
The desert became the past.
The dead marched across the sands
to reach me.
Their shadows crossed my face,
and I began to cry.
The sky opened...
I could see the darkness.
I wanted to take a picture,
but all I could do
was dance.
That's when the bees arrived,
riding on broken fragments of time.
They flattened the sands,
and built a room for me on stilts
so that I could be in the air
when the shuttle returned.
But I never saw it land.
I flew directly to the Garden of Eden
where there was a message waiting
for me in my grandfather's diary.
It was written by the dead.
From the bed of my birth
to the bed of my death
and beyond,
I would have to travel with the bees
to find the person I was meant to kill
on the planet
inside the Earth.
The Mesopotamian bees of my grandfather
were waiting for me on this planet.
They would show me my victim at the
moment of the kill.
At the end of the story,
I was still dead.
An angel arrived,
from the planet of Life
to take me back
to the White Sands.
The next day I arrived at Trinity site,
about 20 miles past White Sands.
There were camera bunkers still
standing from the famous test.
This was the birthplace of the
plutonium bomb.
The marker was my goal.
If there were bees...
I was glad I had my suit on.
On the bee tv
I could see myself.
I was approaching the marker.
I couldn't remember where this place was.
I did know that once I had traveled
across the ocean to Basra
in Mesopotamia
to find the tower of Babel.
I knew that I was from Alamogordo.
That couldn't be more than
50 miles by car.
But I didn't know how I could get back,
except perhaps as a bomb.
I couldn't allow that to happen.
I had to call Mellisa and warn her.
I dialed "O" for the operator,
but got ground zero instead.
Over and over,
I tried to make that call.
And then I remembered...
the bee tv showed me
that I was at Trinity site.
So that I would understand,
the bees showed me a movie called,
"The Garden of Eden Cave".
Starring me, Jacob Maker,
as "Fat Boy",
the first and loneliest plutonium bomb.
I lived in a mad tower
above Trinity site.
The day of my death,
the other dead came to visit me.
They said,
"Little bomb,
it is July 16, 1945."
"Now that you're gone,
they will make you a marker."
"And the bees will come to live here,
and the flying saucers."
"So you will know, that through
the grace of God,
the maker of people;
His son, the savior of the Christians;
and those bees who swarm through the air,
that though you are dead you were born
Zoltan Abbassid on July 11, 1882."
This is true.
In my youth, I studied Volapk,
rival of Esperanto, the artificial
language of international peace
and reconstructed the language of
Cain spoken
at the tower of Babel.
In 1915, I - Zoltan Abbassid,
traveled to Basra, in southern
Mesopotamia
in search of remnants from the
Tower of Babel.
The British campaign in Mesopotamia
had recently climaxed with a surrender
to the Turks
at Kut.
I traveled by plane
and boat against the retreat
to arrive at the famous tomb of Ezra,
the gatekeeper of the Garden of Eden.
I knew that the remnants of Babel
were hidden here.
I found native bees... in British hives.
Bees that danced backwards.
I dissected the queen.
She was blind.
My guess was that these bees had come
from INSIDE the Earth.
When I had this thought, I saw pictures.
I saw a man I had never met.
He told me that these bees had come
to Basra
through a cave that led to the center
of the Earth
where there was a planet that
someday I would visit.
The Tower of Babel was there
and the bees lived inside it.
When the movie was over,
I realized that the world was
surrounded by darkness.
That's because there was a cave the
size of mid-town Manhattan
hidden beneath the New Mexico desert.
The bees were waiting for me there
to show me how to get to that planet
and meet my victim.
So I followed the pictures inside my brain...
towards the dark place.
Beyond the desert,
in the mountains,
I found the Garden of Eden cave.
There was only one way in...
I had reached the land of the dead.
I relaxed for a few moments,
and then I was ready.
I knew which way to go.
Into the darkness.
The first thing I noticed
was the light.
The bees had illuminated the cave
for me.
The bees appeared on the tv,
speaking the language of Cain.
They were waiting for me.
They weren't directly visible to sight,
but I knew they were there.
The intricate stonework was their
honeycomb.
I saw myself on the television.
Then I saw the bees,
directly,
for the first time.
They were 30 feet tall.
They sang for me.
I could see that the bees lived
in the darkness around this part
of the cave.
Our world was puny and finite
in comparison with theirs.
I understood them as little
as the bees understood the beekeeper.
That didn't discourage me.
I continued to walk through the cave.
A tourist in the land of the dead.
Each corner held a new amazement.
They had created a world where the dead
could live.
Each soul could have a square of land
and time.
Both qualities were fluid,
the products of powerful
thought machines.
that worked behind the scenes,
powered by the raw energy of the bees.
It was a mechanism of astonishing
complexity.
All this tired me. I slept in a dark
corner - like a bee.
When the underground sun rose,
I could feel my destiny pressing
in on me.
It was time for me to find out
who I was going to kill.
Time
went forwards
and backwards.
I emerged in a room
as bright as noon,
covered with magnificent honeycomb.
Hidden behind those walls
the bees were sculpting enormous
wax figurines.
Feminine forms,
in which they intended to enter
our world.
They promised me one of these bodies
after my death.
To earn it, I would have to enter
their world.
I drove through a tunnel
and arrived at a city.
In the city, there was a building.
In the building, there was a room.
On the wall of the room was a
vibrating bookshelf
that held a crystalline book.
In the book, was the story of the bees
told in secret words
shaped from the bodies of the dead.
The story told me that here in the
Garden of Eden cave
vengeance was being planned
for the dead.
I shut the book,
left the building
and got in my car
for the long journey home.
I knew I wouldn't be alone for long.
Once I had traveled into the darkness,
I was sure to be followed back.
That afternoon
out of the dark machinery,
one of the dead of the future arrived.
It was grotesque
with 4 brains on a single body.
I felt that I recognized it.
I was afraid,
but I was drawn towards this thing.
I followed it deeper into the cave.
That's where I would find my victim.
It was almost time.
I used my programming skills
to re-shape the cave into a shield.
From behind the shield, I would attack
with the mark of Cain.
My reverie was disturbed by the sound
of a telephone ringing.
It was the dead wife of Zoltan Abbassid.
She was calling from the moon.
In the language of Cain,
she told me that a murder had been
committed in the past,
and that I would kill again,
in Basra,
in southern Mesopotamia.
As I spoke to her,
I remembered that I was Zoltan Abbassid.
I was already dead
yet I was still Jacob Maker.
So I already had my new body.
There was vengeance for the dead
in this cave.
They wanted me.
I went into the darkness to hide.
An escort appeared
to take me to asylum.
I followed it into the darkness,
past the "Vengeance" sign
to the graveyard
where words were born.
Past this was a place guarded by
the oldest of the dead.
There, the soul fragments of animals
were sharpened and organized
into complicated floating weapons.
Beyond... was safety.
The "puzzle" planets, shuffling in
perpetual confusion.
I went to one which had a moon.
This was my secret planet of refuge.
I couldn't pronounce it's name.
There...
I was born again
as the "X" shape, a floating gun sight.
It was time to return.
I plunged into the center of a planet
and traveled towards the place
where my old self was standing.
The "X" shape led
and my old self followed,
flying through the darkness on the
bee television
that miraculous shape given me
by the bees
and now being taken back by them.
Our destination was one of the infinite
planets of the future dead.
This one was still geologically active.
On it, cities were forming.
Each city birth was preceded by the
appearance of the Tower of Babel.
A hive of words
that articulated as streets
and avenues.
Office buildings
and windowless apartments
that I flew through on my way to the
religious center,
the Temple of Death.
Priests and military planners
were deciding on the shape
of the new culture.
Each soul would have a home
built on a floating patch of land.
Each house would have a certain
number of rooms,
each with a chair.
Sometimes there would a lamp or a
stairway for decoration.
There would always be a basement
and in it, a clock and
the entertainment center
controlling both the television
and the bed as well as the toilet.
All of which reminded me
...that I was dead.
I had fallen to the floor of the cave.
My death was relaxing and beautiful.
I certainly didn't want to waste
much time on it.
I had other places to go.
The first place you stop after death
is the pulsating place
which is designed to be familiar to
people who used to have bodies.
There, I was reshaped in preparation
for transmission to my next body.
I became a short poem, in the
language of Cain.
I would get my new body after I killed.
When the actual transmission began,
the "X" shape was there for me.
There were new escorts also, sent from
the Temple of Death to watch me.
Together, we approached
the final journey.
Space and time opened like an elevator
to reveal a planet that had vanished
leaving its weather behind.
Here was the electric telescope,
an astronomical instrument of
planetary size.
I looked in one end of the tube
and then the other and started the
search for the missing planet.
I discovered the planet of television
4 hours after my death.
I went down the other end of the tube.
This brought me just outside the planet.
Inside,
the television was at work.
I went closer to investigate this marvel.
It was the closest I would ever get
to the eye of God.
When the television turned its gaze on me,
for a few moments I see the world
as the deity did -
divided into different zones
of transmission.
That was where I had to go.
My escort was still with me.
Together, we traveled into the
television and burst into the past
where my future was about to be decided.
By the Fall of 1917,
James "Hive' Maker had begun to hate
his brother-in-law, Zoltan Abbassid.
He had no specific reason
other than the desire to be the sole
owner of the Mesopotamian bees.
The bees were still multiplying.
Hive Maker believed that these bees were
the dead of the future.
That theory could account for their
awesome numbers.
Ella Spiralum's machine had
not progressed.
Technical limitations had prevented her
from building a machine large enough
to scan an entire mourner
or receive a complete soul.
The night that I, Zoltan Abbassid, was
murdered
I had decided to reveal the results of
my experiments on the bees to my family.
A new version of Ella's machine was
running in the garden,
pointed at the hives
creating images from the sounds
of the bees.
This was the first time either I or
my bees had been in front of the device.
Strange patterns began to form
at the receiver.
A woman appeared on the screen.
Then 4 women...
My dead wife was in the hive
her soul had fragmented
and become many separate bees.
She wanted to kill me.
She needed a new body.
My escort made a signal.
Multiple faces appeared on
Ella's receiver.
The bees swarmed to attack me.
I, Zoltan Abbassid, never wore protective
clothing when I worked with my bees.
The masses of the dead had arrived
to murder me.
Each with the same reason under a
different name.
For they were the dead,
and vengeance was their life.
I was stung again and again...
When my breathing stopped,
I saw James 'Hive' Maker standing
over me.
Hive Maker always wore his suit.
That was the last thing I ever saw.
Now I was Cain.
The "X" shape was my mark.
Together we traveled back to the
planet of Television
which was transmitting the dead...
to the future.
Now I needed a new body,
and to get it we would have to kill.
Those who murdered Zoltan Abbassid
would be my victims.
Then I would be reborn.
I had seen God
in the planet of Television
and had faith that this was true.
I became a shape of light,
the poem that I was.
I hid in a flower crystal on the
bee television.
The "X" shape followed the path that
my enemies were fleeing along.
They were heading forwards through time,
back to Mesopotamia
which now had a different name.
I followed my enemies through the bee
television
to emerge in the air
above Basra, southern Iraq,
in the year 1991.
Now, I was going to kill.
That was my job.
I spoke the code that changed
the bee television into a weapon
with the image of my special enemy
engraved upon it.
I spun this projectile towards the
one who was waiting for me.
The "X" shape followed to the kill.
Back in the darkness,
at the graveyard beyond the
Vengeance sign,
many new souls were born.
They danced on bee tv.
This was "Victory".
I went back to the planet of the future
dead to celebrate.
When I entered the city, my former
escorts greeted me.
They'd had children.
Twins.
The "X" had gone there to give
birth also.
On the bee tv, many new bodies were
on display.
In fact, this world was twice as
large as it had been before.
There was twice as much time,
twice as many houses
and many more useless things also.
That was it! The end.
For the last time, I entered
the bee tv.
I traveled into the weapon boxes
and let my soul take on its true form.
I am the X-shaped Siamese twins.
With a little thought, I can change
my shape
and have that body the bees
promised me
in the cave.
We are Siamese twins at the beginning
of the world.
My family is here; we are all attached.
That's me, Jacob Maker and next to me
is me, Zoltan Abbassid.
We are on top.
On the bottom, are the two Iraqis we
murdered in the tank.
They are our brothers now.
We can live anywhere on this planet
that we want to,
but there's no place like home.
We are going back to the
Garden of Eden.
Or actually, where we went to live
after we left the Garden of Eden.
It's a beautiful day in Alamogordo.
I really enjoy my job.
I'm a woman now.
Actually, several women.
Our names are Alell and Zilalamak.
We're genetic researchers,
specializing in the study of
the shifting kernel patterns found
across generations of mutating corn.
My research is paid for
by my dead grandfather,
James 'Hive' Maker,
who moved here in the 1940s with his
sister, Ella Spiralum.
He made a fortune in beekeeping
which he let Ella invest in a flight
simulation company,
The Tower of Babel, right here in
Alamogordo.
That's where my brothers work.
Right now, their assignment at the
Tower of Babel
is one of Aunt Ella's inventions.
A two-way television that lets
them talk to the dead.
On the television, the dead have
promised that for the next 1.000 years
we get to live in peace on this
new world.
I love my brothers and I believe that.
That's the power of love.
whaleday@karagarga.net