Tag: CastaliaHouse

This is an excerpt from Young Man’s War by Rod Walker

The man in charge of my first combat patrol was named Captain Jonas Howard.

Captain Howard had been in Afghanistan and Iraq, which he was willing to talk about, and some other places that he was not. He spoke in a slow Alabama drawl, rarely raising his voice, and constantly chewed sunflower seeds as a means of keeping nicotine addiction at bay. He had learned the truth about the Dark the same way that so many others in Black Division had—on patrol outside Kandahar, a hole ripping itself in the air, and then a horde of giant stinking alien bug-things swarming out to kill everything in sight.

Or so Captain Howard put it. He had bit of a flair for the dramatic.

Bull and I reported to Captain Howard’s HQ as ordered at 0500 one dark, dry morning. Howard’s HQ was a large tent with a space heater, since Castle Base had gotten a bit crowded since Invasion Day. I had heard rumors that Black Division had facilities elsewhere, and that General Culver was taking in more regular Army bases under his command, but I hadn’t visited any of them yet.

Howard stood outside his tent, watching as his men loaded up their armored troop carriers. There were already a dozen sunflower seed shells around his boots. If he wasn’t careful he was going to need dentures by the time he turned fifty, assuming any of us lived that long.

“Sir!” I said. “Corporal Roland Kane and Corporal Rufus Bullock reporting for duty, sir!”

We saluted. Howard sized us up, then saluted back after a moment.

I should have mentioned that. Listeners started at corporal rank, since in the heat of combat we sometimes had to tell privates to move quickly to avoid a Darkside attack.

“You two look too young to be corporals,” grunted Howard. He pointed at me. “You don’t look old enough to drive.”

“I am seventeen years old, sir!” I announced. My birthday had passed while in basic training. Maggie had scraped together enough flour to make me a cupcake, which had been nice.

“Don’t shout unless I tell you,” said Howard. “Some of those drones have ears like bats. Let me guess. You got bit by a zombie, the Division found you in time, and now you’re a Listener?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

Howard’s gaze shifted to Bull. “And you. You’re a big fellow, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir!” said Bull with enthusiasm. “I am excited for the opportunity to bring destruction upon the Dark, sir!”

“You’re not bringing destruction to anyone,” said Howard. “You’re staying in the vehicles. The General himself will rip me a new one if I get one of his Listeners killed.”

“Yes, sir!” said Bull. “Then I am excited for the opportunity to bring destruction to the Dark vicariously, sir!”

Howard blinked and his lips twitched. I suspect he almost laughed. “Let’s hope you can retain that enthusiasm, Corporal. Both of you, report to Sergeant Mendez and do whatever he tells you.”

“Yes, sir,” Bull and I chorused in unison.

Sergeant Mendez turned out to be a Hispanic man in his middle thirties with a scarred face and tattoos that were occasionally visible when he took off his jacket. He looked like an enforcer for a drug gang, but he ran a tight ship. I suspect the fact that he looked like he could murder you with his bare hands without blinking helped him keep order.

“All right, you two,” said Mendez. “You’ll be with me in the second carrier.” He pointed at the second of the six M200 armored personnel carriers that would make up our patrol. “You’re new, so shut up, keep your ears peeled, and do your thing. You detect even a hint of Darksiders, you speak up right away, got it?”

“Yes, sir,” Bull and I said in unison.

“There’s going to be trouble on this patrol, so stay sharp,” said Mendez.

“How do you know there will be trouble, Sergeant?” I said.

“General said so,” said Mendez.

By now I had realized that most of the men of Black Division regarded General Culver as something like a prophet. It was well-known within the Division that Culver had been trying to warn Washington and the Pentagon about the Dark for years, and that he had been warning them something like Invasion Day was going to happen sooner or later. The Pentagon had ignored his warning, save for occasional demands to increase the number of female combat troops in the Division.

Well, General Culver had been proven right. It also helped that he seemed to be one of the few powerful people left with an actual plan other than hiding in a bunker someplace and hoping that his canned soup didn’t run out.

An excerpt from The Heretics of St. Possenti, a novel by Rolf Nelson.

“Prophet or not, Mohammad had a good grasp of the psychology of what motivates young men—and people in general—and structured things accordingly. Praying five times a day is a powerful psychological conditioning tool. Saying all your sins are forgiven if you die for the cause is a powerful motivation when they are constantly harping on all the sins people commit. They have the sword on their flags, and they are martyrs for their cause of taking over the world!”

“They are deluded fools,” replied Thomas sadly.

“Any more so than a third-century Christian choosing to get thrown to the lions rather than recant? You call them martyrs, too, do you not?”

“But that’s different!”

“Is it? You don’t arm yourself, you preach peace, and theirs is the way of the sword. If you were a testosterone-filled young man, which symbol would attract you more, a gun, or a lamb? I mean, unless you wanted to shag the lamb, slaughter it, and roast some kebabs afterward? Same for gang-bangers. They see the cops don’t let the good guys pack heat and tell folks to not fight the bad guys. Let the cops go after them. Let the insurance cover the losses. The guys in the hood see the law-abiding as weak, chumps, nothing but chumps or—if you’ll excuse the expression—sheep to be shorn.”

“But nonviolence works in the long run. I mean, look at Gandhi. His nonviolence worked very well—within his lifetime!—and freed India from England.”

“But he also said… Wait. Just a second. Got the quote… right… here.” He found it on the screen of his tablet. “He who cannot protect himself or his nearest and dearest or their honor by nonviolently facing death may and ought to do so by violently dealing with the oppressor. He who can do neither of the two is a burden. He has no business to be the head of a family. He must either hide himself, or must rest content to live forever in helplessness and be prepared to crawl like a worm at the bidding of a bully. Even your number-two hero knew that some people can’t be reasoned with, only dealt with at their own level.”

Finnegan added, “He also said that nonviolence would only work with a just and moral people like the English, and The sword makes men equal. Clearly nonviolent protest and letter-writing didn’t help the kulaks against Stalin.”

“But that isn’t Jesus’ way.”

“Hey, I didn’t bring up Gandhi.”

“Well, yes. But that isn’t the path of the Bible.”

“Truth isn’t always comfortable, Padre. It is what it is.”

“But guns are a symbol of violence,” said Cranberry firmly.

“No, they are not,” shot back Finnegan, just as firmly.

“Sure they are.”

“No, they are a symbol of worldly power. An amplifier of the intent of the user. In the hands of a nongovernment employee with a good heart, a symbol of freedom. In the hands of a good government, they represent law and order. In the hands of an evil man, a symbol of oppression and crime.”

Thomas had never considered that particular distinction. The vast majority of the previous conversations he’d listened in on had been of much more technical nature. “Possibly, but that doesn’t feel right. Far too many murders, wars, robberies, and suicides happen with them.”

“All of which happened before gunpowder showed up. Jaw of an ass sound familiar? The fact that… Wait. Let me get Old Testament here, I know I’ve got that quote somewhere…. Ah, here. Maimonides. Truth does not become truer by virtue of the fact that the entire world agrees with it, nor less so even if the whole world disagrees with it.”

“Maimonides wasn’t Old Testament. He was Middle Ages,” Cranberry pointed out. “And Jewish.”

“Ah, whatever. So was Jesus. Exact year is irrelevant. He’s an old-time scholarly dude. And he’s right. Doesn’t make a tinker’s fart in a tornado how the truth makes you feel. True is true. It may be inconvenient that three plus three is six, but there it is. Lifeboat math and figuring out who gets tossed over or fished out is never easy for a sane man.”

“But good men of Christian faith should not murder.”

“Agreed. But killing isn’t necessarily the same as murder. The commandment is Thou Shall Not Murder, not Kill. One is not just. The other is. Do cops and soldiers, even Christian ones, carry guns?”

“But soldiers and police are different!”

“Nope. They are people, too. Same rights, same commandments. Did the Knights Templar and the other chivalric orders carry swords much as the Saracen did or rely only on prayer while blessed by the Church and fighting to keep the Holy Lands safe for Christians? Did William Marshal, first Earl of Pembroke and pinnacle of the chivalric ideals, carry only words when asked by the pope to protect the young heir to the English throne to prevent war? He was so bad-ass even into his 70s that nobody was willing to challenge him to combat, so he secured the life of the future king of England and the Magna Carta. He was even offered a plenary indulgence for any sin he might ever commit in the future in exchange, for God’s sake! A spiritual blank check to do anything he wanted. But he turned it down. He was a good man and carried a sword doing his knightly duty for many long years.”

“But that was a long time ago!”

“So was Jesus. Does that make his words any less true?”

“Point taken.”

“Is the Church of today exactly the same as it was fifteen hundred years ago? Any new developments in that time?” Mickey asked.

“Well, yes, of course! Benedictine Monks and the Dominicans, Franciscans, Jesuits, and the various nuns’ orders. We adopted local languages in place of Latin. Other practical things like that. Times change, but the Word does not.”

“Not to mention some guy named Martin Luther…. But let’s not go there right now. So why were the monastic orders founded?”

“Monastic history is not my strong suit,” the bishop said, “but as I recall, once Christianity became the more-or-less official religion of the Roman Empire under Constantine, it wasn’t a great act of courage to be Christian. Some sought the hard life of a desert hermit to prove their devotion to God. Early Benedictines attempted to recreate that ascetic life, at least to a degree, and imitated Christ, who fasted in the desert before he started his ministry.”

“So a new order was founded to meet an unmet need?”

“Yes, I guess that is one way to look at it.”

“And the Templars?”

“To keep Pilgrims to the Holy Land safe, as you said, and retake it from the Islamic conquest. But this is totally different.”

“Maybe so. Maybe not.”

Bishop Thomas Cranberry finds himself at a loss when he is confronted by a thief and realizes some disturbing truths about himself. The experience sends him in search of the men who are increasingly absent from the Church, who find themselves at a loss in a world that has gone increasingly feral, and who feel that they have nowhere to go and no one to whom they can turn for support. In listening to them and attempting to understand their plight, he finds an unexpected mission.

THE HERETICS OF ST. POSSENTI is for readers who want the backstory of the story and for those who want to know how one inspired man can make a difference in a fallen world. It is a novel for those who need inspiration to get them though the day and those who look for unusual ways to accomplish the mission. It is for people who understand and respect the old ways but know that sometimes a seed cannot grow without splitting the pavement.

Rolf Nelson is the author of BACK FROM THE DEAD, the first book in The Stars Came Back series. This is how Rolf described the connection between the two books.

The first book written in this series of related stories was The Stars Came Back. It had a small but important part played by a somewhat mysterious order of monks, the Order of St. Possenti. It was also said they had a small but significant role in the past as they helped save, metaphorically and physically, the fully self-aware AI aboard the warship Armadillo. It was an unusual order of monks, and it raised more than a few reader questions. It also piqued my own interest: how could such an order of rifle-toting Christian monks come into existence? A fascinating plot device to use as a fully developed entity, but… How?

So I set about exploring the idea. I learned much in the process about Christianity, Catholicism, popes, monks, schisms, and more. I hope you enjoy the results of that labor.

What’s extremely exciting, at least to me, is that someone I very much respect recently informed me that he has picked up both books and intends to read them. I don’t know what he’ll make of them, but I do hope he’ll at least find some of the information in them to be useful.

From the reviews of SJWs Always Double Down:

• An improvement over the groundbreaking first. Where the examples in SJW’s Always Lie were a little inside-baseball, these are literally ripped from today’s headlines. Anyone who does not live in a cave who reads this book will instantly recognize the goings on. I have several people in organizations I’ll be buying this book for instantly.
• A worthy follow up to the first volume. After reading SJWs Always Lie I started noticing the patterns from the book in the news. I would not have noticed them without reading the book. Forewarned is forearmed. I recommend this book to individuals who may be attacked by SJWs and for executives who may be apolitical but who do not want to see their businesses ruined.
• The insight into the SJW psychological breakdown is probably the most important part, something SJWs Always Lie did not cover. Once you know your enemy, you can better predict them.

“What is Social Justice? Social Justice is the equal distribution of resources and opportunities, in which outside factors that categorize people are irrelevant.”
—Pachamama Alliance

At last, your long ordeal at the hands of the corporate inquisition is finally over. After six months of being interrogated by suspicious HR managers, defending yourself against false accusations, clarifying all the intentional misunderstandings and mischaracterizations, explaining away the ridiculous exaggerations, and enduring the cold shoulder from half the employees in your office, your boss has assured you that everything is good and you are in the clear. You’re grateful, of course, since he’s been staunchly in your corner since the first time HR descended on you like a thunderbolt for your alleged sins against diversity and inclusion. In the end, it turned out that it was all the consequence of a Dilbert cartoon taped on the inside of your door, to which one of the women in the office took offense; at least, that was the only tangible offense that remained after the six-month investigation failed to turn up any evidence of all the other crimes of which you were accused.

“I really appreciate the way you went to bat for me,” you tell your boss. And you’re truly grateful to him. When everyone else looked the other way, happy that the wolves weren’t out to devour them, your boss didn’t hesitate to tell his superiors that all the rumors were ridiculous, even going so far as to provide a vice-president with your travel itinerary and proving that you were in Canada visiting customers on the day you supposedly lingered at the entrance of your nameless accuser’s cubicle too long and made her feel uncomfortable. You’re pretty sure that if it wasn’t for him, you’d be out in the street looking for a new job already.

“Hey, you’re a valuable member of the team,” he assures you. “I’d hate to lose you, especially over some crazy nonsense like this. All you have to do is attend a one-day diversity class, and you can put this whole thing behind you.”

Diversity class? But you didn’t do anything! Didn’t they just confirm that you didn’t do anything?

“Why do I have to take the class now since they know I didn’t do any of that stuff?”

He spreads his hands and shrugs. “You know how it is. Sure, everyone knows you’re in the clear, but this lets the CEO assure everyone that we take racism and sexism and homophobia and all that very seriously, and keeps the directors off his back. I mean, the official story is that it’s all just a big misunderstanding, right, so they’re having you take this class to make sure there aren’t any more misunderstandings in the future.”

“But there wasn’t any misunderstanding. It was all just a pack of outright lies!”

He winces. “Hey, I know that, and you know that. Hell, everyone in the executive suite knows that. But they can’t come right out and say it either, can they?”

“Why not?”

“Because if they did, they’d have to fire the woman who brought the accusations against you, and nobody wants that kind of trouble. Look, we all know there is something seriously wrong with that woman. But if they fire her, we’re talking a wrongful dismissal lawsuit at the very least, and probably other employees getting upset and threatening to quit, other whackjobs manufacturing sob stories about how they were harassed or offended or whatever, and HR going nuclear. And if word got out to the media that we fired a black woman, forget about it! By the time it was all over, we’d have to rehire her and promote her to department head, set up a scholarship fund for disadvantaged youth, and sponsor at least three Women in Tech conferences.”

You stare at him, aghast. You can’t believe that after putting you through six months of Hell for nothing, your accuser isn’t going to get so much as a slap on the wrist.

“So that’s it? I get eight hours of detention for doing nothing while she gets nothing for lying about me? Isn’t there something in the employee handbook about not bearing false witness?”

“HR just thinks that’s the Bible. It’s not actually the real thing, you know.” He laughs bitterly. “Blessed are the freaks, for they shall inherit the corner office.”

So, with no little bitterness in your own heart, you heed his jaded advice and agree to do your time in diversity indoctrination camp. It’s not so bad, really. It’s essentially a day off, except instead of getting work done around the house, you’re spending it being lectured by an angry Asian woman in power lesbian attire, a very fat white woman with blue hair who breaks down in tears every time she talks, and an effeminate, overweight black man in a dress whose posterior rivals that of a force-fed hippopotamus. It rather reminds you of college, actually, only the catered food is better and there isn’t any beer.

Your fellow classmates are all white, all male, and most of them look bewildered and scared. They are programmers and IT guys for the most part, bearded and overweight and absolutely terrified of losing their jobs.

From Chapter 1 of SJWs Always Double Down: Anticipating the Thought Police.