We sometimes joined domestic staffs or landscaping crews, and worked for years. Other times it was a matter of breaking and entering. Sometimes they could be caught during transit, while less protected. Sometimes their bodyguards would have to be killed too. They shouldn’t have taken work like that. Protecting mass murderers makes you complicit in mass murder. So we didn’t worry about them.
The only thing we worried about was what the guilty ones always call “collateral damage.” In other words, the accidental killing of innocents to kill your target. The guilty do it all the time, it’s one sign of their guilt, but we don’t. It’s a principle. Kali is very fair and very meticulous. If to kill a hundred guilty you had to kill one innocent, no. It’s against the law.
So it was often very tricky. One time I had to crawl in through air ducts. One intake had been left unmonitored, a mistake. All in the dark, but the building’s plan was clear in my mind. I got to the intake not monitored. Broke into it and crawled and crawled. Left right, up down. I had with me a plastic knife, pliers, and screwdriver. So. Unscrew the screws holding the master bedroom’s ceiling vent screen in place, from above using the pliers, in silence and moving very slowly. Took two hours. Then get to feet, making sure feet have not gone to sleep, confirm location of guilty one by night vision goggles and micro-periscope looking through vent slots. This one was a weapons manufacturer. There are a lot of them, but the ones at the top, who own majority shares, they aren’t so many. Several hundred identified at this point. All death dealers. Mass murderers for cash. You may know some.
Leap in the air, come down on the vent, crash down into room right on bed, trailing rope ladder. Stab the guilty one in the torso quickly four times, then the neck, several times. Night vision goggles make blood look black. Guilty one dead for sure.
Back up rope ladder, ignoring the other person also in bed, now on floor, shocked into immobility, or perhaps trying to avoid attention. Good idea. Back through air ducts, crawling fast. Out onto compound wall, up to roof, drone waiting to carry me up and away like packaged goods.
Now to spread the headset photos, spread the story. The guilty need to know: even in their locked compounds, in their beds asleep at night, the Children of Kali will descend on you and kill you. There is no hiding, there is no escape.
One down, several hundred to go. Although the list might get extended. Because Kali sees all. And the Children of Kali are not going away until all the guilty are gone. Be advised.
34
Notes for Badim again, on trip with B and Mary to India.
Fly into Delhi, met by Chandra, no longer in government, but asked by B to meet us and introduce us to new minister and staff. C takes us into government house and introduces us to her replacement and his staff. Meet and greet, then updates. Discussion of solar radiation management applied post–heat wave. They claim to have depressed temperatures in India two degrees and globally one degree, for three years, with decreasing effect, until six years later back to pre-operation levels. No discernible effect on monsoon during that time.
M questions this last assertion and C testy in response. Monsoon variability increasing for last thirty years, somewhat like California weather in that the average is seldom hit, most years much higher or lower than average, which is an artifact only. M objects, says thought monsoon was regular as rain in Ireland, crucial to crops and life generally, July through September daily rain, how variable could it be? Very variable, C replies. Not happy to be challenged on this. Daily rain a myth. Weeks can pass in August, etc. M looking skeptical, as is B.
B intervenes. What are graphs showing? Total rainfall year to year, monsoonwise. Why no graph?
Staff peck around a bit and bring up graph. Monsoon rain indeed fluctuating more through last two decades, and after their geoengineering maybe a bit more so. Second year after application particularly low, semi-drought, especially in the west. Another problem, C points out. Monsoon not the same east to west, always that way.
M asks what plan is going forward. Are they going to do it again? Because global average temperatures rising again. A few wet-bulb 34s in the previous few years, lots of deaths. Wet-bulb 35s very likely to happen again somewhere, and soon.
Exactly, C says. And wet-bulb 35 is deadly to all, but even wet-bulb 33 is also bad enough to kill lots of people.
Of course, M says. So does that mean you’re going to do it?
C defers to new minister, Vikram. V says, We are certainly ready to do it. It will be a more orderly procedure this time (not looking at C as he says this), involving democratic processes and expert consultation. But we are ready.
B asks, A double Pinatubo this time, I hear?
V: Probably yes. That is what first intervention was understood to be.
M and B not looking at each other. Finally M says, There are questions of sovereignty here, I know. But India signed the Paris Agreement along with all other nations, and the Agreement has protocols for this kind of thing that all signatories have agreed to adhere to.
We may break the treaty, V says. Again. That’s what we have to decide.
B points out penalties for this may be high. Won’t be like after heat wave.
V: We are aware of that. Part of the deliberative process. Is benefit worth cost?
C adds sharply, We won’t allow another heat wave just so we can be in compliance with a treaty written up by developed nations outside of tropics and their dangers.
Mary: Understood.
Meeting ends. No one looking happy.
Mary asks if she can be taken to see the site of the heat wave.
C
