Broken Symmetries: Age of Illuminati (8 page)

Chapter 15

Sardar, Hast’s brother, who had recently started practicing medicine, didn’t believe that prayers had any effect. He believed that most faith-healers were either deceiving people or ignorant about what they were dealing with. Most of the patients identified as being ‘possessed’ by these faith-healers do not have a real physical disease. According to Sardar and many other doctors, these patients are usually suffering from psychological problems known as conversion and dissociative disorders. The afflicted patients usually had emotional problems which they usually do not want to declare or which reside in their subconscious. Their brains would then present the emotional problem in a form of a physical disability which could then be treated by controlling or coping with the original emotional problem residing in their subconscious.

The problem is those patients are seeking emotional care by their relatives or close friends and this is how the supposed faith-healers take advantage. They label the patients as having a possessed spirit and this makes others pity the patient and not hold them responsible for their behaviors. This is exactly what a patient with a conversion disorder wants and finds it comforting. Sardar usually tried to explain this point to his brother to demonstrate for him why a conversion disorder is sometimes responsive to faith-healing giving a fake impression that there is something supernatural about faith-healing.

Sardar remembered his first time in the Emergency ward when he was having his first night shift. On that evening, a 17 year old boy who was presumably unconscious and brought to the ER by his parents. Sardar immediately checked the boy’s pulse rate and all the other vital signs they were all normal, then he sent out for blood and sugar tests and they all returned normal. Sardar asked the mother whether the boy had experienced any emotional problems recently. The mother said that yesterday his son had a major argument with his father. To Sardar, this looked like a typical case of a conversion disorder. Here he had a young patient with a healthy medical history and normal medical tests which ruled out any physical disease.

However, the boy’s father denied that his son’s problem was emotional and due to the argument they had, so he started to accuse Sardar of misdiagnosis. Sardar tried to explain to the father that he didn’t blame his son’s condition on him.

“Your son has a conversion disorder. I can refer him to a psychiatrist so that he can be treated properly,” Sardar said to the father.

“Are you saying my son is crazy?” the father asked in an angry voice.

Sardar realized that he was talking to a very ignorant man so he gave up the case but warned the father that if didn’t take his son to a psychiatrist to receive proper treatment and advice, his son’s unconscious episodes would be repeated every time he encountered emotional distress.

What made Sardar’s frustration even more was when he realized that the father had taken his son to a faith-healer instead of a psychiatrist. He figured this out a couple of weeks later when his brother, Hast, brought him a recorded video of a local faith-healer called Mam Jameel who was residing in a nearby town to Erbil. In the videos Mam Jameel was showcasing the treatment of some patients he claimed they were ‘possessed’, and to Sardar’s surprise, one of the patients was the same the 17 year old boy. Again, the boy seemed to lie unconscious in front of the faith-healer. In the video, the faith-healer was reciting some words with smoke all around him and the boy’s body began to shake. After a few minutes, he woke up, fully conscious again. His father profusely thanked the faith-healer for saving his son from the bad spirit.

Sardar heard the father saying in the video that he had taken his son to so many doctors and none of them were able to diagnose what was wrong with his son. “I believe this was a bad spirit who possessed my son’s body and now God has shown us this miracle through your blessed hands,” the father said in the video.

Sardar facepalmed himself while watching the video thinking ‘if conversion disorder still has such a big impact on re-enforcing superstition in the twenty first century, then how big was its effect in the ancient times?’ Nevertheless, Sardar himself was baffled by how responsive patients with conversion disorder were to the suggestions of a faith-healer. In the video, there was another young girl who was mute but started to talk immediately after the faith-healer recited his magic words over her, and there was another man claiming recent deafness but who started to hear again after the faith-healing. For Sardar, conversion disorder looked like a functional brain disorder which was hard wired specifically to be cured by faith-healing!

He thought that in the ancient times humans lived in small communities and societies; their size could have ranged from hundreds to thousands. If there was a conflict or a war among them, then bigger communities with larger sizes had better chances of winning and survival. However, larger communities would not have been possible if they hadn’t had a strong leader. A strong leader would not have been possible if people hadn’t seen their leaders as gods. People would not have seen their leaders as gods if they hadn’t possessed faith-healing powers, and hence, conversion disorders helped to create the illusion of some having supernatural or godly powers!

So in short, the genes that produced this weird disorder re-enforced superstition among people and the latter had a greater survival value at least in the ancient times; this was Sardar’s thoughts about this psychological disorder which was commonly depicted as exorcism. So for Sardar, the whole situation was like a conspiracy imposed upon them by Mother Nature.

     On the contrary, Hast thought conversion disorder was a sign that Mother Nature herself wanted us to adopt religion and believe in God! “There are countless ways for Mother Nature to evolve something that promoted unity among humans, so why would she choose superstition to do that?” he asked.

“Maybe, that was the easiest,” Sardar answered.

“No, I think Nature wants us to believe in something higher than ourselves, and superstition was the first step for us to realize that there was something supernatural about the universe. This is how ∞Illuhim∞ has revealed himself to us,” Hast said.

***

Sardar hated conversion disorder a lot, not only because it was the main tool in the hands of faith-healers, but he also thought that the disorder was no longer useful for human survival. He remembered one of his night shifts alone in the emergency ward. It was on a night he was exhausted after treating more than ten serious cases. His last case was a young 19 year old girl. She was brought to the ER by her friend, and she was unconscious. Sardar checked her vital signs and they were all normal. There was no serious neurological signs like pupil dilatation or an increase in her reflexes. Her friend said that the young girl had caught her boyfriend cheating on her today and she felt upset. She arrived at the friend’s house in tears and moments later fell unconscious. To Sardar, this was a typical case of conversion disorder again, an emotional problem presenting itself as a functional neurological problem. He thought about sending her for an MRI scan to be extra sure and exclude any possibility of a real neurological problem, but after hearing the story from her friend, he became certain that this case was just another conversion disorder and sending for an MRI was not necessary, but he decided to keep her under observation for a while. After all, a doctor’s job was to filter out serious diseases from non-serious ones and send only the needy patients for further expensive medical investigations; otherwise, the MRI queue would pile up unnecessarily.

      To his horror, one hour later, the young unconscious girl started vomiting and showing signs of a serious underlying neurological problem. When Sardar finally sent her for a brain scan, it turned out that she had a ruptured brain aneurysm, a life threatening condition. Unfortunately, she didn’t survive the resuscitation. The hospital’s administration didn’t blame Sardar for mismanagement because the disease was known to be hard to diagnose and manage and its mortality rate was high, but Sardar’s feeling of guilt was immense for not taking her case seriously from the beginning. ‘If there were no conversion disorders, I would have taken the girl’s unconsciousness more seriously from the start,’ he thought. It became clear to him that conversion disorder was now doing more harm than good. ‘Stupid, blind Nature has invented a disorder without realizing its harmful long term consequences.’ From that moment on, he hated both conversion disorders and faith-healing holding them responsible for spreading superstition and deception.

***

Like everyone else, Sardar recently came across the news about the rising faith-healer in New Delhi who could heal patients with end stage cancer within a short period of time without any complications just by reciting the holy§cript and using some sort of a holy water. Sardar couldn’t believe that initially, but as he looked online further it became clear to him that many of the patients the celebrated faith-healer had treated were verified cancer cases. ‘How could this be possible!’ he thought to himself, ‘There must be something tricky going on.’

Chapter 16

A week after reading the BBC article, Hast made his next lengthy flight from Erbil international Airport and met Mark again but this time in New Delhi, India, one of the greenest capitals in the world. Upon their arrival at Padsha Mali’s location in a small town south of the city, they saw a long line of people in front of a building which looked like a recently built holy
☼
house. Guards and many staff members were standing around its doors taking names and regulating the meetings with the world renowned faith-healer, Padsha Mali.

In the queue people from all races and backgrounds, rich people, poor people, and even some high profile people all could be seen as they spoke different languages and wore different clothes. The locals in this small town started getting upset from the sudden surge of people from around the world coming to their town. Hotels were filled so some patients were sleeping on the pavements near Padsha Mali’s holy
☼
house or staying in the queue for days. Mark pretended to have cancer so that he and Hast could meet with the faith-healer in person. After registering his name in the queue and waiting for two days, their turn had finally come. Mark went on to lay down and let the faith-healer scrub his face with his wet hands and read passages from the holy§cript. When he finished, both Hast and Mark came out of the building and Mark showed Hast a small tube with some water inside it.

“What is that?” Hast asked.

“I stole it from the small bucket that Padsha Mali immersed his hands,” Mark said.

“So sneaky! I didn’t see you do that,” Hast said.

“That is what I’m trained to do,” Mark said.

“So do you think there is something in the water that cures cancer?” Hast asked.

“I don’t know but I have a friend who is a genius biochemist. Her lab works on finding better cures for cancer so she might find something in this water,” Mark said.

Before coming to New Delhi, Mark remembered Dr. Aabha, a previous friend of his at Oxford University. She was a clever biochemist working on finding new treatments for cancer. Fortunately, Mark realized that she had travelled back to New Delhi and he thought this would be a good opportunity to visit her and ask her opinion on the faith-healer’s abilities. ‘She most have heard about Padsha Mali and must be frustrated that a faith-healer was doing a better job than her right now,’ Mark thought to himself.

Hast and Mark took a train to New Delhi to meet with Dr. Aabha and test the water sample in her lab.

              “What do you think about Padsha?” Mark asked Hast while on their way to New Delhi.

“Well, I don’t like the literal interpretations of the holy§cript, but this man looks exactly like the Antichrist of my nightmares,” Hast said. “However, since he doesn’t claim that he is God I still can’t say he is the Antichrist.”

“Do you think he is planning to have more followers before declaring himself as God?” Mark said.

“That is what I fear,” Hast replied.

“If he looks so obviously like the Antichrist of your prophecies, how do you think he could deceive people into worshiping him?” Mark asked.

“That is what I ask myself too, as no one following Abrahamic faith will fall for this fraud if he declares himself as a god,” Hast said.

“But if he is the
Young Nimrod
, then maybe he is trying to use optogenetics to control people’s minds,” Mark guessed.

“That is what I fear,” Hast said.

***

After a half hour they arrived at Dr. Aabha’s lab, and after the initial greetings, she took the water sample from Mark eagerly and asked them to wear a special lab coat if they wanted to come to the lab and take a look while she tested the water.

“It will take only a couple hours,” she said.

“That is quick! I thought it would take days,” Mark said.

“We are in 2060 not 2050 anymore. Things are much faster,” Dr. Aabha replied.

“Then, I think we will wait outside till you finish,” Mark said as he felt too lazy to change his clothes and wear all the gloves, head covers, and plastic coats.

A few minutes later, Mark received a phone call. He apologized to Hast and went to an isolated corridor and talked for around 10 minutes with someone called Agent Roger from Interpol. The agent informed Mark that Prof. Sanders seemed to have changed his communication habits suddenly after their last meeting with him, and it appeared as though he was hiding something! Mark asked the agent to monitor Ericson Sanders and his secretary more closely. After the phone call, he came back to Hast.

The laboratory building had a nice cafeteria near the reception so Hast and Mark decided to have a drink while waiting for the results. After waiting for two hours Dr. Aabha came out from the lab very excited as if she had discovered something very important!

“You can’t believe what I found in the water!” she said. “A genetically modified virus that selectively attacks cancer cells.”

Dr. Aabha showed them an image of two slides showing two clusters of cells. One cluster was composed of normal cells and the other cluster was cancerous cells. When a drop of the water which contained the genetically modified virus was added, the virus attacked and destroyed the cancerous cells while leaving the normal cells unharmed.

Dr. Aabha herself was working to develop a type of immunotherapy against cancerous cells by artificially selecting the T-cells outside the human body. She was trying to induce random mutations in these immunity cells then selecting those which were attracted selectively to the cancer cells but not the normal cells. Her latest results were quite good, but it was in no way as good as this virus which seemed to have been genetically engineered to perfection to attack the cancerous cells only.

“I have read most of the recently published scientific papers and have never found anyone talking about this virus.” She added, “This is something completely new and revolutionary, so how come a faith-healer has had access to such technology?”

“Maybe he is a scientist,” Hast said.

“From our investigations, we couldn’t find any information that Padsha Mali had received any higher education. He was pretty much a normal faith-healer and only recently obtained this cancer healing ability,” Mark said.

“Then maybe another scientist is helping him,” Hast suggested.

After a period of discussion with Dr. Aabha about why a scientist would hide such an impressive invention and only reveal it through faith healing, Hast was pretty much sure about an answer he believed in; Mark didn’t want to reveal more information in front of Dr. Aabha. They thanked her for her help and then went out for a walk to discuss the implications of their findings.

“Why did you think a scientist is helping Padsha Mali?” Mark asked Hast as they came out from Aabha’s lab.

“Well, I’ve thought that the false prophet is an AI-robot who works under the Antichrist’s command to lure people toward the deception, but now I think the false prophet could be a scientist who is helping Padsha Mali, the Antichrist, to lure people into loving him and believing in him through cancer healing,” Hast claimed.

“So in this case
Young Nimrod
could be the scientist who is helping Padsha Mali,” Mark suggested.

“That is what I think,” Hast said.

Mark recalled the recent call from Interpol moments ago which found evidence that Prof. Sanders was hiding something. ‘Could he be the scientist Hast is talking about?’ he said to himself. Mark was impressed that Hast’s prediction about the faith-healer had come true; this was not the first time for Mark to find that his investigations converged with the prophecies of Abrahamic faith!

“By the way, you said Abraham told Nimrod that ∞Illuhim∞ will bring the sun from the west in the end days. Is that another sign of the Judgment Day according to the holy§cript?” Mark asked.

“You are right, and I have been avoiding this point so far,” Hast replied, “but indeed, according to the prophecies the Antichrist uncovers himself after the sun rises from the west!”

“Could this be metaphorical?” Mark suggested.

“That is what I have always thought, but I’m no longer sure,” Hast said.

“You said a world war would happen, and we already know a nuclear bag is missing,” Mark said. “Could a world war involving nuclear strikes cause a major change in the earth’s rotation?”

“We could ask this to an astrophysicist,” Hast suggested.

When Hast mentioned the word astrophysicist, the only name that came to their minds at that moment was Prof. Neil Baron and his TNARK-planet project which was about changing the planetary rotations in the solar system making them habitable for human life!

Prof. Neil Baron, a famous astrophysicist who was working at TNARK too, has spent many years on a project which aimed to control the speed and the direction of massive planets using human-made, powerful thrusting engines. Although the project was mainly theoretical, Neil’s lab had made many models of the powerful thrusts which operated by nuclear power. It was one million times more powerful than the ordinary thrusting engines used to push airplanes and space rockets. Installing those powerful thrusts on a planet could change the direction and the spin of a planet to make it more similar to earth. However, many scientists opposed Neil’s projects and had convinced the public that finding a suitable planet to live on would be much cheaper and more convenient than changing the dynamics of a non-suitable planet to make it more suitable, so Neil’s project was stopped a long time ago.

“Do you think Neil is involved in this conspiracy?” Hast asked.

“Neil Baron seems very benign,” Mark said, “but
Young Nimrod
could be among TNARK and might have access to the documents and proposals in Neil’s lab.”

“Or may be
Young Nimrod
himself encouraged Neil Baron  to work on such a project so that he could take advantage of his ideas for his evil purposes,” Hast suggested.

“I wonder if it’s practical to apply Neil Baron’s models to change the earth’s rotation,” Mark said.

“Maybe we need to ask professor Neil Baron himself,” Hast suggested.

“Perhaps after I make sure that he himself has not been involved in this conspiracy.”

Mark took out his cellphone and asked someone from Interpol to provide him with the names of all those involved with Neil’s project.

“I’m going to Cambridge again,” Mark said. “We can go together if you want. This time I’m going there with a private jet.”

“A private jet! How did you get that?” Hast asked.

“I have asked the head of Interpol to provide me with a private jet because my mission requires me to travel a lot between the different parts of the world,” he said.

“Wow, it looks so easy to request a jet from Interpol!” Hast said.

“It wasn’t that easy. They only agreed after I successfully convinced them that my mission was linked with the missing nuclear bag and my investigations could possibly lead to uncovering its location and the suspect,” he said.