Chapter 1: Foundation years
Towards the end of second world war, a good number of retreating Nazis escaped to safe havens in South America and in particular Argentina was one of their most popular destinations. Marcus was born to Angela and Joseph in the year 1950, in the city of Bariloche, a small town at the foothills of Andes in Argentina. Joseph was a brilliant mathematician who did most of the design related calculations for building and launching rockets. Joseph calculated and provided the trajectory of many rockets aimed at cities of Great Britain and was considered by his peers to be sharpest military mathematician on German soil. His wife, Angela was a cardiac physician, who met Joseph when she was treating his father, Prof. Anders. Prof. Anders was an anthropologist deeply revered by the Third Reich, but totally disregarded by the anthropologists outside Germany. He was well known for finding fossil remains of Neanderthals in caves of Neander valley in Western Germany. After unearthing the remains, he started publishing his conclusions in research journals without letting any of his peers examine the fossil. These reports were rejected outside of Germany because of impossibility of peer-review, on the other hand, one aspect of theory proposed by Prof. Anders caught the attention of Third Reich, which being, the European land was originally inhabited by a hominid species closely related to today’s humans. Prof. Anders proposed that the original inhabitants of Europe were the superior Aryan species and they out their benevolence welcomed the inferior, less evolved species that came out of Africa and soon the new species multiplied far more rapidly than Aryans, finally leading to their assimilation into the African species. He argued that the current inhabitants of Europe were far more superior because of presence of traits from Aryan species. He rejected the scientific name Homo Neanderthalensis and tried to rename it Homo Aryan, in fact he used that name in all his reports, which were rejected everywhere except Third Reich circles. The fuhrer was very close to Prof. Anders, and kept assuring the professor that his aim was to repopulate the entire planet with Aryan race. Aryan superiority was the one of the central themes of Nazi ideology and Prof. Anders’s theory seemed to align with what they believed. Prof. Anders died in the year 1938 after suffering heart failure.
As the war progressed, Joseph got involved in weapons related research, while Angela was drafted to look after wounded soldiers, they both were ready to lay down their lives for their fuhrer, but the Third Reich had other plans for them. As the battle of Berlin approached, the Third Reich started putting together a continuity ark that would ensure the survival of teachings, ideologies and a large enough population to restart the master Aryan race to finish what their fuhrer started. They chose the best and brightest minds, a total of around thousand men, women and children, Joseph and Angela were also chosen to be on the continuity ark. The continuity ark consisted of a large fleet of U boats loaded with people and treasures. Most of those U boats never made it to Argentina, they were sunk en route. In the year 1945, parents of Marcus escaped allied capture and landed on the coast of Argentina, finally settling down in Bariloche, along with few hundred other escapees. They were a tight-knit community, who largely kept to themselves, conducted frequent congregations to discuss and practice Nazi customs. They quickly transformed the small Argentine village into a busy German town. Marcus was growing up in a Nazi curriculum in every way. In the year 1964, Marcus had just joined high school and was looking forward to next level of studies as well as sports. Every Saturday, the entire German community would congregate at the town-hall to put up cultural activities which were mainly performed by children of the community.
On July 11th, 1964, one such congregation was going on and that day Marcus was performing the role of his grandfather, Prof. Anders. Marcus held a skull in his hand which was supposed to belong to a Neanderthal, but in actuality it belonged to some Argentine man. Half way through the play, main doors of the theater opened and an old man on wheelchair was brought into the hall escorted by six heavily armed men. Except children, everyone else in that hall were shell shocked and were dead silent. Marcus had no idea who this person on wheelchair was, but as the wheelchair man was being taken towards the main stage of theater, everyone on either side performed a Nazi salute. Marcus saw his dad salute the wheelchair man and the wheelchair stopped in front of his dad. Wheelchair man called his dad and he leaned closer to hear what the wheelchair man had to say, later his dad pointed his hand towards Marcus and immediately the wheelchair man made eye contact with him. The wheelchair man gestured to Marcus to comedown from the stage closer to him and Marcus did so. The wheelchair man patted his cheeks and held Marcus’s hand for few seconds. The wheelchair man’s right hand had a prominent tremor and was shaking uncontrollably. He told Marcus to push the wheelchair and take him towards the costume room of theater. As he was pushing the wheelchair, he heard the guards address the wheelchair man as my fuhrer, but the wheelchair man looked nothing like Hitler. The wheelchair man was totally bald, without a mustache. He appeared heavier than Hitler, in fact the wheelchair man down right obese. Against everything he was told and what he had read about the fate of fuhrer, he realized there was a possibility that the continuity ark had managed to save the man himself. Joseph had told so many stories about interactions between Hitler and Prof. Anders, now Marcus had a feeling he could get more insights into his grandfather’s life. They reached the secluded costume room and the wheelchair man asked his guards to leave the room.
“You look a lot like your grandfather. I am sure you are growing up to be a great man like him.”, said the wheelchair man.
Hitler knew his grandfather and the wheelchair man seemed to know his grandfather as well.
“Thank you my fuhrer”, replied Marcus.
This was the first time Marcus uttered ’my fuhrer’ in a real life scenario outside the walls of theater and he was not even sure whom he was actually talking to. He hesitantly said ’my fuhrer’ just because he had heard the guards say the same.
“You should be more interested in why I am here to meet you, rather than my identity. Do not worry about the messenger, it is the message that is more important, that too a message that your grandfather would have loved to give you himself.”
“Yes my fuhrer”, said Marcus, this time with more conviction in his voice.
The wheelchair man continued, “I still remember the first time I met your grandfather, it was in the year 1925, he showed me the real fossil of Homo Neanderthalensis, it was a very big skull.”
This was exactly what Marcus wanted to know, about his legendary grandfather. The wheelchair man continued about his grandfather.
“He was the one who gave me the first scientific evidence proving that Europe was originally inhabited by a far more superior species.* He told me that Neanderthals had a brain cavity 30 to 50% larger than those of today’s humans.*”
*Pure fiction and false information
Marcus had heard this piece of information a million times. He wanted to know further.
“Do you know what happened to the Homo Aryan species?”
Marcus had been told and retold the answer to this question innumerable times. He replied,
“they got assimilated into the population of migrating species originating from Africa.”
The man on wheelchair continued questioning Marcus.
“What about the percentage of Aryan traits left in different races of humans today? What is the expected outcome after tens of thousands of years from now?”
Marcus was very proud of himself at this point, because he was able to give complete answers to all questions.
“Among all races, our Aryan race retains 40 to 50% traits of Neanderthals while all remaining races have less than 10%.* At current rate of population growth of other populous races, our Aryan race would be completely assimilated into majority race and the resulting race will have less than 1% Neanderthal trait at the end of few tens of thousands of years.*”
*Pure fiction and false information
Marcus had pretty much exhausted every piece of information he had about Aryan race and was hoping that the wheelchair man stopped asking more questions. But the man on wheelchair continued.
“You are aware that your race is going to disappear and what do you plan to do about that? You seem to be very good at collecting information, for that matter even books have information. Of what use is being alive if you cannot react or respond to knowledge. So let me ask you again, what do you plan to do to save your race?”
“My fuhrer, you have already tried once to save our race and that attempt has been thwarted. If you failed then I do not know what a simple boy like me can do. I do not know what to do my fuhrer”
The man in wheelchair got very agitated and raised his voice.
“I am not your fuhrer. Your fuhrer failed because he was impatient, miscalculated a lot things and underestimated his enemies. He made it to the top, had the best opportunity to get the job done and he blew it. Now someone has to start all the way from very beginning”
Towards the end of that statement, he hit the wheelchair’s hand-rest with all his strength out of anger and that triggered the electric bell of wheelchair. The guards rushed in immediately to make sure the wheelchair man was safe. He told them to leave the room as soon as they entered.
“I am sorry for getting emotional. Do not want to dwell on past, let us talk about what to do next.”
At this point Marcus was not sure who this wheelchair man was. Either he was not Hitler or it was him but hated his past so much that he had come to consider his past as a different person altogether.
“Your grandfather had one major regret towards the end of his life. He knew what was happening with the populations of various races today, but could never decipher the underlying biological mechanism behind the traits. He was of view that the solution to the problem of disappearing race will be a biological one and not a military one. I asked him, how long it would take to develop a biological solution. He needed ten years, but I was the one who did not trust him. I should have trusted him and patiently waited for his solution. Now the allies have found the secret behind traits of all forms of life.”
Marcus ignored the fact that the wheelchair man was talking as if he was Hitler. Marcus had not come across any major biological discovery in news in recent years, the most sensational technological achievements were in the fields of nuclear weapons and space exploration. He thought that the allies might have concealed the finding.
“The finding has even been awarded the Nobel prize recently. They have found chemical molecules called DNA inside cells of plants and animals which carry the information related to traits, those chemical molecules transfer information related to traits from parents to children. This was what your grandfather wanted to find and establish the key differences between different races, subsequently use that information to save our race from extinction. The allies are very slow, they have just now found this DNA molecule, they have a long way to extract information to find differences between races.
“Had I said yes to your grandfather, he would be far ahead in this path. He is no longer here, but he lives through you and as soon as I heard about the discovery of DNA, I decided come and meet you, so that you can take up what your grandfather wanted to do. Will you take up this task for your father land, for your grandfather?”
To continue his grandfather’s work was something he never imagined he would do. His father, mother and even community elders often told him that he was very intelligent like his grandfather, but Marcus always thought they were saying those nice things just to encourage him and motivate. He considered his grandfather to be a legend with unmatched talents and achievements. Now it seemed as if an opportunity had manifested itself wherein Marcus would try to do what his grandfather had dreamed to accomplish.
“Yes my fuhrer, but I do not know where to start or how to go about doing this”
The man on wheelchair patted Marcus and smiled while nodding his head back and forth.
“You must go to USA, learn everything about this DNA molecule, and later develop technology based on differences to prevent the disappearance of our race, even if it means eliminating other races”
Only after listening to the final sentence involving elimination of other races, did Marcus realize what the wheelchair man meant by saving a race.
“My further, eliminating other races would mean wiping out 70% of human population. This seems an extreme measure. Can’t we come up with a political solution such as isolation of our race from rest of the global population?”
The man on wheelchair laughed.
“Can you believe that I asked your grandfather the same question. I asked him if we could save the race by providing an entire continent just for Aryan race and keep the continent completely isolated from rest of the world. His reply was that, migrating life, may it be microbes or humans, can never be contained by boundaries. At that time, I ignored his suggestion and set out to find a geopolitical solution, it failed. The solution has to be biological and it should involve either a rapid increase in Aryan population to outnumber the rest or a rapid decimation of population of other races.”
“My fuhrer, the solution involving rapid growth of Aryan population seems an ethical one and I will take up that approach.”
“Eventually, it is either going to be our race or some other race, so, do not think about ethics. You know what they say about war and love? Everything is fair in war and love. Ever since the migration started from Africa, Homo Aryan have been at war for survival and a part of them survives in you and me. You should save our race through what ever means needed, unconditionally. One other thing your grandfather told me was that the members of Aryan race will never be part of rapid population growth, because reproduction for the sake of reproduction has never been our thing. Do you understand what your grandfather meant?”
“Yes my fuhrer. I do understand. I will do everything it takes to save our race.”
“I know you will, because you are the grandson of great Anders. Do not worry about money, you will be best financed scientist in the world, I will not repeat the mistake I did with your grandfather. You will have unlimited access to money without interference from anyone, no constraints whatsoever. Remember, this will be final battle to save our race.”
After uttering the final sentence, the man on wheelchair activated the electric bell on seat rest, soon the guards came. He spoke to guards for few minutes and asked them to bring over some papers which he signed and asked Marcus to sign them as well. He did not read what those papers were about, just signed them, totally ten documents. One thing Marcus noticed was that the wheelchair man signed his name as Gustav, instead of Adolf Hitler. He did not want to think too much about that. The man on wheelchair patiently waited for Marcus to sign all documents. Also, they took fingerprint impressions of Marcus.
“I have transferred 99 percent of my wealth to you. I still have enough to give every person on this planet a thousand dollars. My job here is done. This meeting never happened, do not speak about today’s discussion with anyone ever. You can activate your bank account anytime, now or after a year or even twenty, all you need to do is walk into International South American bank, say your name and tell them you are a dead customer. That is a code word for them to confirm your identity and activate your account immediately. This bank has always had only one so-called dead customer and from this point onward that would be you.”
That was it. The guards escorted the man on wheelchair towards the exit of theater and on the way back everyone in the hall were standing and doing a Nazi salute to the man on wheelchair. He did not react to anyone’s salute, just kept a steady gaze towards exit. Soon after the wheelchair man left the theater, everyone dispersed without taking much. Joseph came to costume room to pickup Marcus. As soon as he saw his father, Marcus tried to tell him what had happened, but his attempt was immediately cut short by Joseph, who shushed him. They left for home immediately. Marcus never saw the wheelchair man nor heard from him again.
That evening, Joseph knew that Marcus had been told something very powerful and deeply impactful, so he wanted to talk to Marcus immediately. As soon as they reached home and closed the doors, Marcus burst into a list of questions and heated discussion with his father.
“Was he Hitler? I saw you salute him. But all his signatures read Gustav.”
“Marcus, you need to calm down. First tell me what he told you.”
“He wants me to save our race by finding a biological technology that would wipe out other races, just as grandfather wanted.”
“You shall not do any such nonsense. Do not believe any of those propaganda nonsense. That old man is a delusional schizophrenic who lives in an imaginary world.”
“If he is so bad, then why did you salute him? I saw you salute him.”
“We have a tradition of saluting anyone who has a V fashioned security detail. It was the norm in Third Reich. That was why everyone was saluting him. He is not Hitler. Hitler died long back. You know what happened, right? What nonsense are you talking about this man being Hitler.”
Marcus realized that his farther was trying to persuade him to ignore the meeting with wheelchair man. He was completely consumed by the wheelchair man’s words and was not going to let go of that meeting that easily.
“What about our disappearing race? Is that true or is that also an illusion?”
“That part is true, but racial genocide is not the solution. There has to be some other way.”
“But grandfather thought wiping out other races was the only way to save our race.”
“Your grandfather was not correct. That was the reason his reports were rejected elsewhere.”
Throughout his life, his father had told him that his grandfather was a legend and was someone who should be emulated, but that narrative had been turned upside down within a few hours. Marcus was not ready to accept the abruptly put forth revelation that was derogatory towards his grandfather.
“Why have you changed your opinion about grandfather so suddenly? When I am actually about to continue what grandfather did, you have become completely dismissive of grandfather’s legacy. You are afraid that I will be as successful as grandfather. You are a disappointment, you will never be half as successful as my grandfather. You will never stop me from taking up my grandfather’s path.”
“Look Marcus, I have not shared everything about your grandfather, because I wanted you to have an idealistic picture about your grandfather, thought that would inspire you. But now that you are considering literally taking up the path of your grandfather, it is time you heard about the other side of your grandfather’s story. After he proposed his theory about Homo Aryan and current intelligence of various races of modern human population, he went to Great Britain to present his findings at a conference in 1928. There he got to hear from his peers that a scientist by name Samuel Morton from USA had published relationship between brain size and race in the 19th century. He had divided the world population into five races based on a sample of collection of skulls. Morton had concluded based on his cranial volume studies that the so called Caucasian race was most intelligent among all races. At the conference, your grandfather was informed by other scientists that Morton’s studies were severely biased and many repeat studies had disproved his conclusions. They also suggested that your grandfather’s studies were biased because of just one Neanderthal skull as sample size. In fact, a group scientists told him that human species migrating from Africa used far more sophisticated tools than the Neanderthals. So they were almost certain that Homo Sapiens were significantly more intelligent than Neanderthals. They took him to Natural History Museum of London and gave him a tour of archaeological findings related to human evolution which convinced him that his conclusions about Neanderthals could be wrong or at least questionable.”
Marcus’s anger subsided. Now he was really confused whether to accept his father’s words or not. High energy excitement after meeting the wheelchair man had made him unsure of what to or whom to believe. But, at the bottom of his heart he loved his father and trusted him completely. Realizing that he had uttered some harsh words about his father’s accomplishments, he felt a bit ashamed of himself.
“I am sorry father, for taking bad about you. I want to believe you, but, it is so sudden and it is against everything I have heard till now. I am very confused.”
Father of Marcus was a very patient man. He understood the emotional situation his son was in and never got angry. He wanted to guide his son in the right path and prevent him from the predicament his father had got into.
“Your grandfather was indeed a great man. After attending the conference in London, he became convinced that his conclusions were not reliable. So, he tried to secure funding for a more elaborate search for fossils of Homo Neanderthalensis. But the Third Reich refused grant request because they felt the theory was already proven beyond doubt and felt that your grandfather was just trying to get more money. Towards the end of his life, he was in deep conflict with himself regarding his theory about Homo Neanderthalensis being more intelligent than modern humans and his name was forever tied up with the Aryan superiority propaganda, even though he had become thoroughly disenchanted with the very theory he had proposed. His health deteriorated quite rapidly once he started facing hostility from Third Reich, it was almost as if he gave up his will to live as soon as he realized there was no possibility of further research in the field he loved so much. Your grandfather never suggested a racial genocide as a solution. The Third Reich added lots of fictitious claims to the doctrine of your grandfather, especially regarding ways to save the so-called Aryan race.”
Marcus had completely calmed down and was paying close attention to his father. At this point they were having a conversation rather than a heated argument. He was a very objective person and wanted to dwell on the most important point he had discussed with the wheelchair main, which being the extinction of so-called Aryan race and what he could do to stop it.
“Father, I agree with you about the possibility that ’Aryan superiority’ might be a myth, but the slow disappearance of our race is a fact, isn’t it?
“Yes Marcus, that is true. But, remember one thing, the other races that are out pacing our population growth are not actively driving us to extinction, they are living their natural lives and we are living ours. What is happening is a natural selection process, part of evolution.”
“Father, do you even hear yourself? Are you telling we should remain silent while our race is disappearing? I have read that the wolves in Scandinavian region were eating away the reindeer and in order to protect the reindeer population, hunters were ordered to reduce the population of wolves. Why didn’t they accept that as a natural selection process and stay quiet? They intervened because, if the wolf population is left unchecked, they will over-hunt reindeer and once reindeer populations become very low, the wolves would come after livestock. So, you see when we foresee an adversity, we respond to avert it. Don’t we? Tell me father.”
“Yes Marcus, we do and we always should. But racial genocide is not correct. That is not the way to stop our extinction.”
“So, you do agree that our race needs rescue from extinction?”
“Yes Marcus, I agree, but without violence or bloodshed. I have seen and experienced enough to tell you that the path of violence to solve something as huge as saving a race at a global scale will not succeed through violence. Any such path will lead to extinction of all races, not just specific ones. Now that major powers have nuclear weapons, the next world war if it comes will be totally and absolutely deadly.”
“Father, I promise you that if I take up the path of saving our race, the solution I come up with will neither kill any soul nor will it shed one drop of blood.”
“I do not want promises about solutions. I want you to promise not to peruse this issue of racial extinction. Please listen to me, these things always lead to self-destruction. Civilizations that have embarked on eliminating a specific part of their population have all self-destructed. There is no such thing as non-violent path to accomplish cleansing of population, it just does not exist.”
“Not yet. But such a path could become feasible, now that so many discoveries and inventions are being made everyday.”
“I am telling you that such a path will never exist. What will happen is that you will start off trying to develop something to solve this problem and sooner or later you will realize that it is not possible. You know what you will end up doing? You will compromise on ethical boundaries and not give up. You would have gone so far ahead in life by the time you realize this path is not feasible that you will continue anyways. I am telling you what is coming, what will happen if you take up this path. Trust me, all that I want is for you to be successful and this point of time in your life is very critical. I do not want you to take a wrong decision and if you do so while I am alive right in front of my eyes, then my being alive is pointless. You are about to get into a trap, an one way tarp.”
“So what should I do about our disappearing race? Should I forget it.”
“Yes, forget it. We have this town to ourselves. That is a starting point. May be you enter politics to expand our population here, slowly and steadily. What do you think?”
“I will think about it.”
“Marcus, take up politics. Do not think too much about anything else. I will help you get enrolled into political studies.”
“Yes father. I will take up politics. We can go to university soon to check out what they offer in politics. Thank you father.”
“I am so glad you have decided to listen to my advice. I am so proud of you.”
That night Marcus did not sleep well, his mind was very disturbed, filled with voices. He assumed that the wheelchair man’s visit was a small blip and was ready to take a plunge into politics. The next day he went to library to pick up some books on Argentinean politics. It was dictatorship there, but still there was a system in place, so he thought it was an approach he could make his life’s work. He had dinner that night and fell asleep reading a book. That was the night he experienced first of many nightmare laden nights to come. He would get them almost every week. It was always the same dream. The dream opened with a local circus in some town in Latin America, where circus acts were performed by bears, elephants and even few lions were part of the show. At some point there was an announcement made to the audience that the last ’aryan man’ was about to enter the arena and it was Marcus who entered. The audience would get up and try to get a closer look at him, some even took photographs of him. As he went around the arena waving to the crowd, his eyes would catch the gaze of a man whom he had seen just once in his life. It was the wheelchair man, staring at Marcus. Seeing the wheelchair man, Marcus would break into tears. This was the point when Marcus’s sleep would break and he would wake up sobbing. Initially he thought it was just disturbed sleep. After half a dozen nights of dreaming, he even shared the details of the dream with his father. He father asked him to listen to some classical music before going to sleep. Over a period of few months the dream started getting longer and longer, soon the dream involved Marcus walking with the wheelchair man in the circus arena after all acts were completed. The wheelchair man and Marcus had proper conversations. Initially Marcus did not reveal about these conversations to his father. Almost two years after the dreams started, the wheelchair man started persuading him to go to Germany to start a revolution. Marcus discussed with his father about a tourism trip to Germany, but his father flatly refused his suggestion as it was dangerous situation over there, especially with the division of Germany into east and west. Finally, Marcus revealed to his father that the wheelchair man had been coming in his dreams, but this time his father did not support him, instead he blamed Marcus for the dreams and told him that the dreams were coming because he never stopped thinking about the day he met wheelchair man. Marcus’s father refused to talk about this topic anymore and felt that the more he was open to discussion, the more Marcus was getting obsessed with wheelchair man’s words. Marcus had no one to talk to and finally decided to talk to psychology professor at the university. He went to office of Prof. Sebastian on an afternoon so that the professor would have finished his lectures. He knocked the professor’s office door.
“Please come in” said the voice from inside the room.
“Hello Prof. Sebastian. My name is Marcus, I am a student of social sciences. If you are free, I would like to talk to you for sometime regarding a personal matter.”
“Hello Marcus. It is nice to see you. Come on in and have a seat.”
“Thank you professor.”
“Now tell me. How can I help you?”
“Professor, what can be done to stop recurring nightmares?”
“Dreams have profound significance, especially recurring dreams. They often originate from unresolved issues suppressed or buried in subconscious mind. There are two most common reasons for nightmares, firstly, a traumatic past experience which may be a repressed memory and then there is the suppressed or denied obsession. Tell me, which one is yours?”
“It is the second one. But I have been convinced that, that obsession has no future, it is an impossibility.”
“This dream of yours, does it involve you in future?”
“Yes professor, it does. It involves a future where I do not take up the path and as a consequence I am in deep deep trouble.”
“Let me guess, the decision to not pursue this so-called impossible obsession was not yours. You were dissuaded, rather vehemently by your parents. Am I right?”
“How are you able to decipher that from the type of my dream professor?”
“Even though you have decided to shun the path, your subconscious mind has already begun its journey along that very path. Had that decision been truly yours, then all that your subconscious mind had to do was to change your mind which is easily doable by showing you a dream about the benefits or luxuries you would experience if you would take up that path. A simple temptation would suffice. On the other hand if you are helpless with regards to deciding whether or not, to take up the path, then the only way to make you choose that path would be to make you revolt. A revolt is what your nightmares are driving you towards. Your subconscious mind is trying to make you believe that if you do not choose that path, your future would be bleak at best. It will make you fearful and increasingly restless.”
“But that path is impossible, certain to fail.”
“Says who? Your subconscious mind is absolutely convinced that the path that you are trying to avoid is the only way forward for you.”
“What will happen if I continue to resist this path?”
“Typically, the nightmares would become more and more severe, more frequent. Slowly your productivity at work or studies in your case would also get affected, eventually you will not be able to focus deeply on anything. In extreme cases, people become mentally ill. These nightmares will stop only when you resolve the issue in your mind.”
“How can I resolve it?”
“There are two ways to resolve this, the first way is for you to be truly convinced that this path is really impossible and not blindly accept what your parents are forcing you to believe. The second way to resolve this would be to stop resisting this path and embrace it. Now honestly ask yourself if you really think that the path resisted by you is truly impossible? If the answer is no, then you will not be successful in resisting that path for much longer without self destruction.”
“I do not even know how to revolt against the restriction being enforced upon me.”
“Most often, the dream itself has a solution to resolve the issue. Dream is a way of communication between subconscious mind and the conscious mind, a sort of message from one part of mind to the other. So if you try to recollect your dream carefully, the solution would definitely be there.”
They talked for few more minutes and Marcus thanked Prof. Sebastian for his time and also invaluable counseling. Marcus understood the reason behind his nightmares, but that did not help him much. In the months following meeting with Prof. Sebastian, Marcus’s night sleep deteriorated further. It got so bad that he started failing in exams and his father was called to the university. He was informed that if performance of Marcus declined any further then Marcus would be expelled. Marcus’s father tried to talk to him, but realized that Marcus was completely lost and was not paying attention to anything happening around him. Sleep deprivation was the root cause of Marcus’s problems, so after consulting a doctor, he introduced Marcus to sleeping pills. Initially Marcus seemed to improve drastically. He was visibly very rejuvenated and well rested. Two months after being introduced to sleeping pills, Marcus started losing weight very rapidly. When his father complained about this side effect to the doctor, the doctor asked Marcus if he had been taking more than two pills per night, even though he had prescribed just one. Marcus admitted that he was forced to increase the dose as he could not get sleep with just one pill. He increased the dosage by one pill every fortnight and within two months he was taking four pills every night. He was addicted to the pill and that too at lethal dosage. The doctor informed Marcus and his father that overdose of sleeping medication had damaged his liver. So he suggested a withdrawal therapy wherein the dosage would be decreased gradually, starting with three pills every night for one week followed by two pills every night the week after next and finally to one pill a night after a month. Marcus was no longer allowed to keep the pill bottle, instead his father would give him the exact number of pills prescribed by the doctor every night. The withdrawal symptoms added to the stress from sleeplessness and on the third day after meeting doctor, Marcus had not slept in four days and he kept begging his father for more pills while his father kept denying him. It was around 2 pm, Marcus refused to eat lunch until he was given pills and during this banter with his father, he lost his composure and punched his father in face with all his fury. His father started bleeding profusely and passed out, seeing all this, Marcus’s mother slapped him and asked him to get out of the house. Marcus immediately went to his room, grabbed his college bag and rushed out of his home. He had no idea where to go, he took the first vehicle he could hitchhike onto, it was a truck heading to the capital Buenos Aires. The truck driver’s assistant helped him get his next ride, which was headed further north towards San Miguel. In a week time he was recruited into a crew that wanted to join the socialist revolution by joining hands with Che Guevara who was at that time believed to be in Bolivia. Marcus thought that military training would be of help in some way or other in future and would help him build fitness after a close encounter with substance addiction. Within a year, Marcus reached Vallegrande province in Bolivia in 1967 and his crew was ready to join Che Guevara’s group which was in the same province. In the month of October, there were rumors that Che along with his crew had been captured and executed. Hearing this the commander of Marcus’s crew decided to retreat to Cuba to recuperate and recruit more fighters. Marcus was very much an outsider when they reached Cuba. He could not fully integrate into Cuban society and their military was very careful in selecting whom they recruited. He roamed around like a nomad for few months not knowing what to do next, that was when he heard about ’Freedom flights’ to the USA. People who wanted to leave Cuba and move to USA were flown to Florida on a daily basis. Marcus decided to leave Cuba just to escape the nomadic life.
On 20th March 1968, Marcus boarded a plane headed for Miami, Florida. All refugees were processed at the Freedom tower. He told the authorities that he was against the revolution in Cuba but his parents were firm believers in Fidel Castro, so he decided to run away from his home. After listening to this story, the authorities in-charge of rehabilitating refugees gave him a temporary identity card where Marcus got a chance to give himself a new name and it had to be a Hispanic name. Marcus Wagner became Alberto Rodriguez in the USA. Once his new identity was recorded in the refugee registration portal, he underwent an evaluation to determine his skill set area and level of expertise. There were three interviews followed by a written examination conducted over one week period.
At the end of evaluation, Alberto was told by the committee for refugee integration, that he could start his bachelor studies at one of the state universities in Miami. An education loan would be arranged for him. He could apply for any one of the three branches of science, namely physics, chemistry and biology. He also had to take up a part time job in the evenings to manage his boarding expenses. As soon as he heard the word biology, he realized that the path suggested by wheelchair man to travel to USA and find a biological solution was still alive, his appointment with destiny was gradually unfolding itself. He chose biology as specialization for his bachelor’s studies and also took up a job as house keeping boy at a small hotel. He started believing from that point onward that there were much larger forces at work to make his destiny come true. He was convinced that he was the one who would come up with a biological solution to save the Aryan race from extinction.