Death from a Stranger

The other day while studying for my dissertation at the Chinese Cultural College, I came across this story at an academic library, printed in a now long out of print textbook for young students of the Republic. It's now 1000 years old and was preserved by one of the early founders of this planet. Its earliness explains some of its references to pre-planetary literature no longer read. This is also explained by the fact that it was written by an American. An American who lived on this planet for a brief time. We don't know much about this American, but it is my aim in researching to learn more about him. Here is the story:

"Camus’ The Stranger has the line “I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn’t.” The reader may find this quote quite applicable in describing our current state of existence. If this is not immediately apparent, let me explain.

We exist today in a millennial, cultural universe in which a majority of people do not know what interests them but are still quite sure of what does not interest them. Indeed, they feel they have a right to scrupulously avoid what does not interest them. Were the government or any member of the public to impose their own “interests” upon them, they would reject quite vehemently and defend quite eloquently their right to their own interests. They might knock down statues, burn buildings and scream in the streets, all for the sake of attacking a perceived cultural or societal interest--one that they feel they do not share in. In fact, through these violent actions, they are defending only the ghost of their own interest--an interest that they may not really even have any idea of.

 To illustrate this point, I offer you two stories of murder. The one mirrors Camus’ work quite oddly. The other is a story that deals with one of the common issues of our time, abortion. Taken together, these stories both illustrate how furiously the present society fights against what it does not want, even, before knowing what it does want. Perhaps this fight is, in effect, an attempt to discover what is wanted, what is of interest.

The hero of our first story, or perhaps more aptly the anti-hero, is an American named Logan. The fact that his name is Logan shows that his own parents had wanted a non-biblical name. The fact that his middle name is “Xavier” showed that his parents did not know what they really wanted. They knew that they did not want their son to be part of a “patriarchy”--patriarchy of white males that had been christened with names like "John," "Robert," "Paul," and "Peter" and had grown up to be crudely insensitive to women, minorities, and the underclass. 

Logan was one of those people who do whatever they feel like, again, without really knowing what they feel like. He had been this way since childhood. As a teenager, he had skipped school many times to go to the park and smoke a joint with his friends. He did not even know if this was what he truly enjoyed. He did not even ask himself this question, but he knew he did not like being told what was best for him by teachers.  Now in his 20s, he was sitting on a park bench in the same park he had smoked in as a teenager. Now it was a closed park during the middle of a pandemic (a virus outbreak). He was smoking a cigarette mixed with marijuana, commonly known as a blunt. Granted, he was young and so somewhat excused by his age, but really there was nothing to excuse him for breaking the rules during a dangerous viral outbreak, just to smoke a blunt in peace. The only thing that actually excused him was his desire to not do things he did not want to do. 

Indeed, what was the real reason for Logan being on this park bench smoking when everyone else was supposed to be inside or, if they had to be out, strictly social distancing and certainly not jumping over park gates? Was he a rebel without a cause or a rebel with a cause making a proud statement about personal freedom? The real reason was that he had spent his whole life in avoidance. He was in avoidance without a cause. In fact, Logan was one of the many, homeless youth in the city of Los Angeles. He had scraped up some coins and dollars in his hovel--God knows how he got people to give him money on the street--bought a 6 oz bottle of whiskey, drank three gulps quickly and decided on the novel idea of leaving his hovel to take a walk and smoke a blunt in the park. He was a perfect example of why not to give money to the homeless and especially not to young men living on the street who are capable of making a living. 

The day was warm and nice and full of the songs of the many birds that live in that part of LA. A wannabe poet, Logan was infatuated with nature poetry. He admired Byron, Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats for their admiration of nature but most of all because they rebelled against industrial society. In that rebellion, he felt he might be able to find his own voice. He especially loved Keat’s Ode to a Nightingale and had actually brought along his tattered poetry book and had it opened to the page. Hearing the birds while reading the poem, he easily pictured himself as he had always pictured the poet, under softly swaying branches, drinking deeply of some "draught" while the nightingale sang sadly of death above his head. It did not matter that Keats probably had not been smoking a blunt. 

He closed the book and looked up at the branches in order to recite the few words of the poem he had memorized-- “Darkling I listen; and, for many a time/  I have been half in love with easeful Death,/Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,/To take into the air my quiet breath;"--between alcoholic burps. The word "death" caused him to brood mournfully over his own unhappiness and to reflect just a little on his own depravity, to wonder where he was headed, if anywhere. 

Yet while he sat in a drunken, melancholic stupor, the mayor of LA was making dire broadcasts on the radios, filling the people with dread and threatening swift punishment of violations. One person who took these warnings to heart was Matthew Benjamin. Matthew Benjamin was far more decided in what he wanted. He was from a different generation than Logan and was entirely ensconced in the bible. His very name was entirely biblical. Of course, his interpretation of the bible was far from orthodox, but in following it he was extremely strict.  However, Matt Ben, as many called him, had one thing in common with Logan. He, too, was homeless. While Logan was homeless almost because he had in his 24 years rejected most careers that came his way, Matt Ben was schizophrenic and, unfortunately, addicted to powerful drugs. An undiagnosed brain tumor was also giving him blinding headaches, an impression of the smell of burning rubber, and occasional visions of the coming terror he prophesied. 

He made his living, if it could be called a living, by dressing in a superman outfit and posing in tourist pictures, pictures he never saw and in which he was often high out of his mind. Matt Ben called himself an evangelical conservative, put on earth to put God’s plan into action. At one point in his youth, Matt Ben had thought of becoming a preacher in order to set his people free. Then, someone had introduced him to crystal meth at a party and a long and toxic relationship had ensued. He took the drug not to escape reality but to embrace it--or so he thought, but now he took it because he had to. Now, he was an old, homeless vagabond with a brain tumor.

He also liked to go to the park but today he’d heard on the shortwave radio he always had with him that there was a real danger afoot. All public parks were to be closed--the virus was increasing. In his mind, it was all making perfect sense. He’d known the world was ending and the second coming was fast approaching. He also knew that the government was 100% corrupt and part of the destruction of the world. He knew that the pandemic was a biological weapon and that he alone had the key to it. Now, despite his better judgment and the signs on the park fence, he had to obey his inner voices which were telling him an important clue lay inside the park. He needed to go into the park for the betterment of the world, and he interpreted the prohibition as applying to everyone except himself.  

It didn’t take him long to find Logan on the park bench, and the minute he saw him he attacked him viciously. Camus describes this odd and inexplicable human willingness to viciously attack a stranger. Why do we have these urges--sane or insane? With four quick punches, he had like Camus’ protagonist knocked four quick times on the door of unhappiness. Matt Ben couldn’t have articulated what was going on inside his head. He simply knew that he needed to attack, that the other was the problem, that if he didn’t attack, he wouldn’t live. The fact is that most walk around harboring so much anger and resentment in their heart that when faced by a stranger they find these feelings sometimes unconsciously bubbling out.

Undoubtedly, the reader may find Matt Ben a ridiculous figure. But was he wrong? Was he wrong that it was people like Logan, people without a real purpose or concern for their actions, that are in fact ruining the planet and populating it with mirror images of themselves -- mirror images who do very little to see beyond the actions of their parents? Logan came from a well-to-do Californian family that had wanted nothing to do with him, a family that, perhaps a generation ago, would have given Logan more purpose, at least some sort of occupation from which to rebel, but which now mostly dealt in divorce and familial problems. Logan’s parents were separated as were his 6 uncles and aunts. They had no profession to pass on to him, no guild to enroll him in, no purpose to give him.

Anyways, Logan was quickly killed by Matt Ben, no one had taught him how to fight. As coincidence would have it, in that very moment the world really did end, and Matt Ben really did see the light, if there was any light for him to see. His brain tumor grew at the very moment that he was ripping Logan’s throat out as if stimulated magically by Matt Ben’s very hatred. Thus, at the moment that Logan died, Matt Ben’s tumor pressed onto an extremely sensitive and fragile area of the cerebrum and instantly killed the killer. 

The world ended at that moment and here’s where our second story begins. Of course, China was well aware that this event was happening. Only China knew about the build of toxic gases in the environment that was waiting to explode everything. We go to a distant planet where abortion has become widespread. Abortion is the preferred method of contraception because it allows scientists to use more developed fetal tissue for research. This planet has no idea of planet earth. The population of this planet consists of a few secretive individuals, humans that a secret Chinese mission evacuated from the earth just days before the earth ended. All of them, speak Chinese and all of them are communists. Abortion is the law of the land. 

It happens that on this planet there is already a race of people, it looks superior to earthlings but is intellectually inferior, at least in the eyes of the Chinese. Many of these aliens have brief, sometimes compulsory relationships with humans. Thus, the need for abortion. A woman who was taken in by the looks of one of these aliens walks out of from an abortion clinic. She walks into a movie theater and buys a ticket for a movie called “The Last Days in a Corrupt LA.”  The movie is a hodgepodge of different movies filmed in LA and some footage from newsreels. The surprising thing is that in some of the street footage of LA both Matt Ben and Logan appear--though at different times in the film. 

As an image of an exploding globe appears (not actual footage) a narrator quotes Camus blandly, “Since we’re all going to die, it’s obvious that when and how don’t matter.” Then the video cuts to President Trump saying that the USA is the best nation on earth. The narrator continues “These fools thought they had created the best nation on earth, but we know now that they were wrong. They were corrupt and because of that, they did not see that the end of the world was coming. They only fought among themselves.” The movie cuts to another scene of police brutality against a black man. “Their society had no love. They had no unity.” Now the scene switches to a brutal image of a woman being chased into a dark alley. “There was no safety in their age.” At the end of the video, the woman is almost happy that such a dark place as the USA with all its pain and human suffering is over. At least, now there is order in the universe and peace. Yes, some aliens have to suffer but it is natural for there to be superior and inferior. 

As she walks out of the movie theater, she sees a city with no idlers. Everyone is at work doing something important. There is no one who wonders about personal importance or role in the universe. Everyone has a role and a value. No one is forgotten; no one is left uneducated. In Logan’s world, there were droves of useless people without purpose or a real commitment to living. That is no longer the case in this new reality. No one feels themselves a stranger; everyone is identified by their duty to society. Even the aliens are put to work in their proper job. It is a far happier and straightforward existence.

Thus, ends our narrative students it is time to reflect on the lessons learned in the story. What did this story teach you that you can apply to our new society?"

It's interesting to note that the writer of this textbook is believed to have been executed shortly after writing this. The reason was that many felt he was a sympathizer with a now long extinct, pro-democratic movement. He denied those claims fiercely if the scant evidence is reliable. Either way, the piece affords us with a starting point from which to measure the merits of our current civilization. Also by learning about this American and how subtly he interwove himself in our community, we can squash any future rebellions.

The End