Paris

Marilyn genuinely cared about only a handful of humans, most walked her Center these days. The other three walked earth millions of miles away. The first piece on the chessboard zoomed up and down his tower downtown Berlin scared by heights. The second man was sleeping under a sewer grate in the city of San-Francisco. The last, the fun one, had just parked his small car in a shady part of Paris. She had true respect for one of the tree, Takeda. The others were both the way there were, Takeda was a creature of genius.

Takeda had a gift to understand the unique role biology played in the Multiverse. Takeda in his sexy new body knew a shift on the nearby horizon. Marilyn knew the three men needed to connect, but how.

***

The virologist lounged, lost in thought. Takeda was still discovering the joys of living in a young, regenerated and flamboyant body. Days ago, every cell in his body except those forming the bones and his brain had been cast aside as puss. His system had undergone a biological thunderstorm, and nothing short of new biotechnology had kept him alive. At first he was upset the Ghost changed his race and sexual orientation, but now, looking at himself in the mirror, he felt thankful. This was the perfect camouflage. His fingerprints were new.

Takeda stuff felt guilt to have fathered the monstrous META virus; that was his only legacy on earth earning him the secret admiration of Nick, the Chairman of the Visconti and his evil conclave. He was now fully awake decades later, in 2072. Fast-moving science had passed him as he clung to life in a well-deserved coma. Every day was a new day he savored. The man looked at the tight youthful skin on his hand; the fingers flexed so readily. The tendons were new, and they felt like it.

The teenage centenarian was now hiding in plain sight. He sat in a half-broken seat, feet up against the backrest of the seat in the front row in the small movie theater. Today Paris was sunny and everyone was excited about a stupid online game, yet Takeda had been warned to hide from an intelligent digital creature. What better place than this dark place deep below the real world.

The dark basement of the four-story house crouched underneath Rue Sevastopol, in the heart of Paris. He was in Sevastopol Men’s Sauna, but this was no real sauna; that water was dirty and ready for a drain. The virologist was wearing a towel folded in half lengthwise and wrapped around his waist like a miniskirt. Here, gay men needed protection from twenty known generically diseases but no one went home disappointed.

His new young body was gold in this dirty sauna visited by an older crowd. Paris had many such places, this one was the trashiest. Takeda was likely the only breathing human unaware of what all the Electoral game entailed. All he knew was that it used the image of Marilyn Monroe; that part was amusing. In this crappy seat, Takeda was a Greek Adonis when compared to the rare older guests. Wrinkles no longer scared him, over the last half century, he'd gotten used to them. But he wasn’t here to satisfy urges but to hide.

Nick had goons keeping an eye on him at every moment since his escape from the retirement home in Vienna; this made this sauna an excellent place to escape for a moment or two. Thugs were sitting in the car across the street, most likely watching the stupid game broadcasting from mars. The Chairman of the Visconti would not let him roam free; there was a limit to the monster's trust.

On his lap, Takeda played with a computerized pad. It warmed his lap. He started by basic research into his new captors. On the screen, in this darkness, was the ugly face of Nicholas, the Chairman of the Visconti. He and his group of twelve were the faces of new evil in a century free of villains. They were miserable human beings, each infected by his META virus. In exchange for years more on earth, they had traded their humanity for sickness. His viral creation made its way into each cell, opened P-shaped genes and transformed them into I-shaped ones. The change halted the biological clock, suspending the advance of death at the cost of turning the biological process to a dormant semi-eternal ghosts mode. He found humor in the side-effects of his lab-created immortality. Their minds would age and soon each would be a walking vegetable. If cells no longer reproduced, disease evolution like cancer was halted.

To dare ask Takeda to destroy humanity, the Chairman had lost touch with his own. How could this monster think, even for a second, that he would kill his own race? Apparently, Nick and his compatriots had grown more delusional with time. Takeda loved life even if humanity too often disappointed him. In his coma, he had agreed to the bargain. What drowning man would not grab a life preserver. He did not feel compelled to honor the bargain, in fact fuck him.

The first obstacle to his survival was to control this genocidal mission, turn it around back on this group. The two men watching him were standing outside near a car. If they felt he abandoned his task, they would report him and be given the order to kill. He remembered the monster's note.

You have to deliver a weaponized airborne virus that kills 99.9% of the human population. It must be undetectable and show no symptoms. META virus holders must be immune. You may design an antidote. Death must be instant and painful and on command with a sound.

He was tasked with the creation of a painful doomsday weapon. Even Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, was misled as to the military's actual intentions for his weapon. Oppenheimer had designed bombs utilizing nuclear fission with the objective of peace in mind. No one would create a nuke once being told it would kill millions of innocents. Something amused Takeda in the monster's request. Takeda alone could conceive of such a deadly bug. He had, in the past, in moments of desperation, imagined how he could extinguish the human race. He never imagined he would have to do it.

Alone, in the darkness of the bathhouse, he shrugged and began a new search on his pad. Takeda knew the pale monsters very well; he'd fathered them nearly fifty years ago. The Chairman was not one to hide his true intentions. Nick was incapable of bluffing. If he was asking for a weapon, Nick planned to use it. Furthermore, the ghost's plans were always redundant. Takeda knew he was probably some rushed plan C, implemented at the last moment to replace a failed plan B.

He was aware that the human race was in danger; someone else was also working to satisfy Nick and destroy everyone. He wanted to live and also wanted the human race to continue. He simply had to deliver a virus which destroyed these monsters, not ordinary people but that was a normal man’s logic, he knew better. The new virus had to kill META carriers or yet be even stronger. For the moment, he had to appear to be working toward the ultimate solution. The goons outside had to report and by looking at their foreheads, these morons were no biologists able to confirm what type of bug he was designing.

He had to think and here he could. He would start with known facts. The timing of his regeneration and the ghost's genocidal request were somehow related. They coincided with the strange game on Mars and the arrival of the young girl named Sophie at the spike. His virus could not infect Mars on such short notice. There was also this strange game ran by the cartoonish bimbo Marilyn Monroe. These things were somehow related.

In the note was a not-so-subtle hint that he alone could decipher. The death had to be painful. Most of his deadly viruses weakened a host body until it expired from exhaustion. Pain is not a common state of mind for dying individuals in his world. Pain and sound at the time of death is counterproductive, it reinforces the body. It tied one hand behind his back as pain released endorphins and adrenaline, which served to protect the body. The request was not random. Nick’s plan, irrespective of its nature had pain and sound as a key ingredient.

Days ago, he would have concluded the pain was designed to send some message or to generate societal disturbance as bodies fell lifeless. Today, after watching the events on mars, he felt differently. The discovery of the Rho waves, this energy created by the brain, had given him cause for reconsideration. A comatose mind produced whispers of waves while the hurt brain would create a flood of them. If Nick wanted billions of minds to create these Rho waves as the bodies died, he somehow needed pain.

How he despised the old birds of the Visconti. The rich men and women knew the economy would crash if their secret ever became known. They believed everyone would, at some point, desire infection to postpone death. They were wrong. This was normal of narcissists, which the Visconti surely were to think this way. These men had worked hard to keep the benefit of his virus secret. They had secretly inoculated a handful of innocents around the world with it to hide their own self-infections amidst a global panic, but as they each reached the age of a century, the life-extending effects of his invention were becoming evident.

Takeda would kill himself long before he was forced to spend one day locked in a bunker underground with those monsters. The young man had the element of surprise, though. The ghosts respected him and imagined he would hold his part of the deal. Takeda's mind was sharp. But even at a hundred, in his haze back at the retirement home, he had misled the Visconti into granting his demanded boon. Their child-like reaction was priceless. He'd once read about the Italian Visconti. This current incarnation was playing the role of a group clouded in medieval legends. Takeda could only mentally picture one of the old freaks happening upon a book that described the practice of boon-giving, and their subsequent glee over having grabbed one more toehold into the long-dead past.

As things stood, he could conceive of no potential outcome where he would use the boon. Asking for payment to a contract was the best way to suggest he planned to perform on it. He knew better. In science, the expression "never say never" was more applicable; it was a guide. He looked around and closed his eyes, thinking of how he could improve his lot.

He dozed off in his strange surroundings.

His mind was still partly that of an aged man awaking from a decade-long coma. The jolts of endorphins, dopamine, and testosterone played games on his body. Naps were now part of his routine. Dreams filled his mind; they were sweet. In one, he saw a nuclear winter, mushroom clouds rising in every city, destroying most of humanity. The destruction, somehow, was only the first verse in a better song. As men choked on dust, their skin burnt, he saw some people mutate. Their bodies began to change, evolving to survive in the new hostile environment. A new virus infected these people, his virus. A bug designed to save mankind instead of destroying it. Then he woke up. On the screen of the theater were screams, the same as those from his dream but they were screams of naked gay men being tied in dungeons. He smiled.

Takeda blew air over the back of his hand. Every invisible hair stood up. He got goose bumps, and his body gave a slight involuntary shudder. Immediately, a surge of hormones and emotion erupted throughout his mind and in seconds, he was ready for sex. How could he sleep in a seat and yet remain constantly horny? He placed the computer tablet over his erection. It would have to wait; he had work to do. Outside on the street, the Visconti were undoubtedly keeping a close eye on him. If he stayed here long enough, they would come in to get visual contact. He had had already been here for hours. They had to be monitoring him with some implant inside his body.

Though this particular day was an exception, at this time of year, Paris was generally sad, wet and gray. Night arrived early in the afternoon and stayed long after the next morning's commute ended. The young/old virologist took a deep breath, tried to ignore his oversensitive body and turned his full attention to the tablet screen. In the darkness of the sauna, it lit his face. He was smiling ear to ear. The start of a mustache darkened his young upper lip. This new body was hairier than his last. He was now Latino, not Asian and loved it.

As if someone had turned on a light switch and lit his mind, the dangerous old man, the creator of new deadly viruses, was back. The smile slowly morphed into a terrible grin. The muscles in his face tightened. He began his work in a way no one would have imagined. He'd slumbered for decades. In virology, that was an eternity. Takeda did not research technological advancements, nor did he try to understand how his regeneration was now possible. Biology could wait. What concerned him the most was a new area of thermodynamics. The Greek philosophers had obsessed with these laws, but today, they were still widely misunderstood.

He mused as he read. Thermodynamics: the art of understanding how energy, as a flux, moves in the universe over time. Thermodynamics had a handful of laws. For example, it alone explained how the eternal movement of a pendulum was impossible. Work expended energy, and nothing could live forever.

On his little computer tablet, the pages of the online encyclopedia flashed quickly. They were colorful and animated. He turned the sound off out of respect for his surroundings and also to make sure any horny guy walking in wasn't turned off by the noise. This place required silence so the patrons could hear the groans of pleasure.

Just before he fell into his coma, the most important scientific advance of the last millennium was uncovered by a young student. In his haze, he often had promised himself that perfecting and employing this leap in thermodynamics would be his first priority once he woke up.

Takeda was nervous as he typed the words Fourth Law of Thermodynamics. His heart beat faster as the page appeared. He began to read. As everything of this importance, this discovery was mostly an accident. He alone knew he was ready to read mankind's most important discovery since controlled agriculture. He preferred the original name it was born under: The Tompkins Variance.

The title on the page wasn't the Fourth Law or the Tompkins Variance as named by the inventor, but instead, the discovery was coined "The God Bias." In this strange place, he was safe from the world he was tasked to destroy. Cameras were forbidden here for obvious reasons. In the distance he heard a bell, a patron had arrived. He had been waiting for the man. The clock read 10:23 AM. Takeda knew if he stayed here long enough, the white ghost would send a security guard to look after him.

"Chambre 113," said in the distance a shy voice. Everyone was watching the infernal game taking place on mars even the sauna keeper spoke slowly to his guest while looking at a screen, a giveaway the man was no regular.

"Les souliers dans le sac," he said in French.

"What?"

The sauna manager spoke with a thick French accent. "Put your shoes in the plastic bag. You cannot walk in with shoes. Need sandals next time." This individual was indeed Takeda's guard. Takeda had at most twenty minutes before the guard undressed, began to walk the maze and found him. Takeda smiled, he needed the man for his plan.

The virologist turned his attention back to the encyclopedia. As he did, on the screen flashed the smile of Marilyn Monroe. The digital goddess was excited.

-- The Hopkins Variance - The Fourth Law of Thermodynamics - The God Bias --

A human proved god exists using science. In his book entitled the Art of Persuasion, the French 16th century Philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote, "People most invariably arrive at their belief not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive." Not surprisingly, different people acquire diverse beliefs from identical life situations regarding the world's origin. To some, theology is an attractive explanation of the world, to others science is the most appealing solution of our origin. In both cases, these views are polarized and exclusive.

For centuries, scientists and theologians battled each other while they labored to understand who we are. These two groups stood, entrenched at opposite ends of the spectrum, but were often in agreement as to the need for humility in our race. To science and theology alike, our world is defined by complex written rules or a road set by a godlike figure in control of our per-determined destiny. Pascal, a firm believer in greater power, wrote that there were two absolute paths to error. The first was to take things too literally and the second was to take everything spiritually. To Pascal, one erred by walking exclusively on one of these two paths, but for nearly a thousand years, there was no bridge between these worlds until a young statistician proved the existence of the hand of God in our lives. His proof was born of science.

In 2046, a young doctorate student from Chicago, a man named J. Seth Hopkins, began the work that ultimately would change the modern world and reconcile science and religion. Hopkins loved poker and statistics. When his father told him he was about to erase four decades of security footage from his Casino, Seth acquired and digitized the data for his research.

Seth began with the analysis of over 7,000,000 rolls of dice at a single craps table. In the game, each player rolls two six-sided dice. The player throws both cubes against the opposite side of the table, ultimately settling them randomly on the green carpet. On average, of the thirty-six possible outcomes, the number seven happens 1/6th of the time. This combination is critical, as it stands in this game as the nemesis of the players.

Seth's initial review was simple: to see how many rolls were needed before the throw converged to the theoretical probability of 1/6. On each of the twenty tables he analyzed, the simple probability never converged. Instead of the expected 1,166,667 draws of the number seven, the number of draws was at best 1,162,104. This variation of 4,000 rolls or 0.4%, resulted in some small variance on each table.

Seth feared the players were somehow cheating his father's casino since the outcome variation always favored the players over the house. Immediately, every casino around the world ran a full analysis of its tables and uncovered the same inexplicable bias. Life always favored players in the range of 0.1 to 0.4%; a value increasing over time now referred to as the Hopkins Variance. There is still a debate as to why the variance never materialized before this experiment.

Seth tried to recreate the experiment in a laboratory, but the bias was quickly gone. Within 10,000 rolls made by humans or machines alike in his lab, the numbers converged perfectly to the naturally expected value of 1/6. Something about being in the genuine casino environment was giving players an advantage.

Seth's father, who also happened to be a minister, suggested that the bias was gone in the lab because his test subjects were not gambling their own money. This man of belief suggested that life somehow rigged the game in favor of the player. In an incredible leap of faith, Seth renewed the experiment, this time with gambling players betting their actual wages. The Hopkins Variance instantly returned. The experiment proved that man's desire to win and benefit influenced the outcome of draws.

The world was understandably in shock.

Seth went back to the Casino footage and observed that tables with more gambling players had a more favorable bias than the tables with only a handful of players. Studies immediately launched on all casino games and quickly confirmed the Hopkins Variance. On most everything where a random outcome favors man, the sheer will of the players seemed to bend the very concept of probability. The greater the desire for an outcome and the larger the number of players, the greater the bias.

Priests were quick to extrapolate the Hopkins variance to what they named the God Bias. To theologians, God's hand aided mankind even in gambling. Seth wrote a paper designating the variance the fourth thermodynamic law, but that name never became commonly used by the scientific community.

Takeda looked up. The consequences of the Hopkins variance predicated amazing possibilities. If there was a God, why would He help man gamble? What he read next in the article was even more shocking.

Since 2056, hundreds of experiments have validated the God Bias. The most conclusive research came in 2063 when a manufacturer of a hair regeneration drug wanted to know if his drug was beneficial, neutral, or hazardous to future users. Instead of physically testing the substance, the maker asked half a million volunteers to select between a placebo and the real drug. Based on the God Bias, if the drug was indeed beneficial to the patients, more than half would choose the drug over the placebo. If the drug had adverse effects and somehow injured humans, a majority would instead select the placebo. The Hopkins factor in this experiment was 0.43%, and as it was confirmed and validated, the world finally understood that science needed to adapt to tolerate faith. The God Bias had helped mankind verify the positive effect of a drug.

Takeda sat, stunned. Who could imagine reverse drug testing? Using a shift in expected randomness to determine benefit or detriment of an outcome was counter-intuitive. In a strange way, there was something reassuring about living in a world biased in favor of mankind. The long encyclopedia page continued.

In 2067, the Darwinian theory of evolution was amended to merge into it the findings of the Fourth Law of Thermodynamics. Species no longer only evolved based on features that allowed an increase in the likelihood of survival in the wild. Species like humans, who appeared immune from predatory pressures and less subject to Darwinian evolution, were now believed to adapt slowly, based on the Hopkins variance. This effect pushes humanity to evolve to its benefit, irrespective of what the exact benefit is. This variance explains why males release many sperm cells to impregnate the female egg. It describes life in a beautiful way. It reveals diversity's inner workings.

Behind him, on a screen, Marilyn Monroe was watching in awe. Takeda was soon daydreaming. The implication of this law to Takeda's mission was evident. Since he was tasked with the destruction of mankind, invisible forces would work against his success. If he tried to kill the Visconti and save humankind from destruction, his path to success appeared much more probable. The repercussions of this phenomenon were far-reaching to his mission. As a scientist, he could not ignore this. He had to find a way to use it to his advantage.

Takeda looked up again, lost in thought. The Bias was cumulative. If he managed to do something a million times, like let a virus replicate multiple millions of times, each time it did, the fabric of the universe itself would either help or hinder the virus depending on the outcome. If he introduced a partly finished virus, designed to change each time it reproduced itself, he could use the God Bias. The same virus could enter two different bodies, and if the universe liked the person, the virus would mutate into a benign Forman’s kill the other the Universe wanted dead.

There was poetry and beauty in what he was conceiving. Takeda did not even need to find out if somehow the META-infected ghosts were, in fact, acting for the benefit or detriment of mankind. The God Bias, properly harnessed, would take care of that problem.

He smiled to himself. This development was fantastic. In this awful and dark place, he had discovered the ultimate weapon. He needed to create a selective virus designed to accelerate natural selection. He would name it the Darwin-Hopkins virus, or the DH virus. Virologists and astrologists alike loved to name discoveries.

He looked down at the pad, Marilyn was smiling holding a sign. On it read ‘The God Virus.’ Takeda was less than a mile away from this new lab. He closed the tablet, but remained horny as Hell. He hesitated between jerking off or going after the guard. If he were lucky, the guard would be gay, but he doubted it. He slid the tablet behind his chair and in the blink of the eye, got up to find the guard. The man was part of his plan. Hopefully, there would be some fun in the process.

He walked this dirty maze and met up with the man halfway to the room.