#660 The End of the Whole Mess- Stephen King
Geniuses don’t always have the best ideas, in fact they often are some of the most shortsighted. This is a story about a genius that tried to rid the word of aggression and violence and failed miserably. Right off, the opening line is pretty gripping:
“I want to tell you about the end of war, the degradation of mankind, and the death of the messiah.”
The whole story is told as a last statement written by the genius's brother as he has about two hours left to live. He tells about the uncommon brains of his little brother, Bobby:
“Guys like my brother come along only once every two or three generations, I think—guys like Leonardo da Vinci, Newton, Einstein, maybe Edison. They all seem to have one thing in common: they are like huge compasses which swing aimlessly for a long time, searching for some true north and then homing on it with fearful force. Before that happens such guys are apt to get up to some weird shit.”
By the time Bobby was old enough to grasp his own mental abilities and look at the self-destructive tendencies of the human race, he set out to try and fix it. He found towns in Texas like Waco, had an uncommon rate of violent crimes. He studied these populations and discovered something in the water that made them more peaceful and docile.
He thought that if he could get the entire planet to ingest this chemical, he could rid the world of suffering. He set about synthesizing this water into a sort of peace-moonshine, and released in in the atmosphere via a Krakatoa-sized eruption. It worked at first but ultimately was a monumental disaster. Human kind was not meant to be docile, at least not like this. At least the planet was saved:
“We killed all the plants, but at least we saved the greenhouse.”
Notable Passage: “You got a kid trying to pass a mental kidney stone…I could prescribe something for his headaches, but I think the drug he really needs is a typewriter.”
No comments:
Post a Comment