The Secret Address to the Physicians
of the Order of Asclepius
On July 4th, 2059, the following address was given to the secret society of the Physicians of the Order of Asclepius by the notorious Dr. Achilles Orestes Van Allen, the Order’s Supreme Leader and the Surgeon General of the Imperium. It has been faithfully transcribed by members of the Underground who risked their lives to infiltrate the meeting held at the Blair House in Washington, D.C. This leaflet that you hold in your hands is one of thousands that have been printed with the ancient technology of the mimeograph. It could not be disseminated through cyberspace because of the threat of deletion by the Emperor’s Cyber Police. Members of the Underground, and all brave souls, must disclose the contents of this address to the people. As the address reveals, the vast majority of the global population is being targeted for immediate elimination. The Underground must therefore act fast to overthrow the Imperium. God bless your endeavors, one and all, and death to the Emperor!
Fellow Physicians of the Order of Asclepius, I am speaking to you, the elite of the revolutionary vanguard, on behalf of our Beloved Emperor on this the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Great Revolution of 2034. (Shouts of Ave Imperator! Ave Imperator!) For nearly a quarter of a millennium, from the storming of the Bastille in 1789 until our Beloved Emperor seized power and assumed the imperial purple twenty-five years ago, the principle ideologies guiding humanity, liberalism, socialism and communism, were egalitarian in orientation, and always had as their highest ideal the goal of making people “equal.” But as Aristotle understood almost two and a half thousand years ago, and as those who remember the dark days before 2034 understand as well, “the greatest tyranny is the equality of unequals.” (Applause.)
Equality is the ideal of the inferior, of everything ugly, malodorous and mediocre, of every slimy worm that slithers through the mud, of every filthy cockroach that scuttles across the floor. I tell you, brothers and sisters, the Great Revolution means the days of striving for equality are over! (Applause.) The secret society of the Physicians of the Order of Asclepius was not established to make people “equal,” to uplift the stupid, the foul and the low, but to use our knowledge of science and medicine to make an ideal type of human, and to liquidate those who don’t measure up to our ideal of perfection! (Thunderous applause.)
Why should the world teem with billions of sub-optimal humans who are scarcely distinguishable from animals, when the scientific means exist to reduce the population to a few hundred million first-rate men and women? The city-state of Athens was never peopled by more than a couple of hundred thousand souls, and their contribution to science and philosophy, literature and art, is unparalleled. We Physicians of the Order of Asclepius, in our wisdom, were right to dismiss egalitarianism as a remnant of Judeo-Christian superstition (which is an apt description of liberalism, socialism, and communism) and to discard the goal of the egalitarian—uplifting the low, in favor of a supremely hierarchical goal—creating a higher type of human to rule the world, a modern Athenian, if you will. (Applause.)
We Physicians of the Order of Asclepius have always understood the difficulty of the task our Beloved Emperor has given to us, to improve humanity and the world by disposing of billions of undesirables. We knew it would be necessary to act covertly so that the undesirables wouldn’t catch on to what we were doing. Though many members of the Order were well-positioned in scientific, medical and biotechnical industries prior to 2034, it was only after the Great Revolution that we were able to implement a highly effective vaccination program. The program has been so effective, in fact, that I’m pleased to announce that the undesirable population within the Imperium has been reduced by more than 50 percent in the last quarter century, though, of course, this drop has not been disclosed to the public officially. As far as the stupid and boorish undesirables know, their population continues to grow! (Raucous laughter. Thunderous applause.)
While many undesirables have been killed by the pathogen our vaccination program gave to them, most infected by it are simply unable to have children, which avoids the complication of too many people dying too suddenly and giving the Underground a chance to wake the slumbering masses up to what’s happening. When members of the Underground, “paranoid types” as our Beloved Emperor’s media conglomerates call them, began to suspect that something was wrong and warned people not to get vaccinations or to vaccinate their children, we aerosolized the pathogen and introduced it into the ecosystem by seeding it in the clouds we made with our Weather Generators. Of course, we inoculated ourselves and other desirables prior to seeding the clouds to assure our continued good health. (Applause.)
The beauty of the pathogen we Physicians of the Order of Asclepius developed was that the symptoms would vary greatly with the location of the pathogen in the body. For example, when the pathogen was present in cranial tissues, symptoms would vary from encephalitis to Parkinson’s to coma. When the pathogen was present in the liver, it could mimic the symptoms of hepatitis or cirrhosis. Because the brilliantly designed pathogen produced variant signs and symptoms, people seldom suspected that they were infected by the same agent, and pathologists had great difficulty identifying the etiology of the disease.
In the rare cases when a particularly diligent pathologist suspected the correct causative agent, the biotechnical companies our Order controls would give them false assays, and if these especially thorough scientists persisted in asking unwelcomed questions, well, we’d simply get rid of them by arresting them for being Underground assets or removing their medical licenses or, if need be, staging fatal “accidents.” (Standing ovation.)
Our Beloved Emperor has been very impressed with the progress that we Physicians of the Order of Asclepius have made these last few decades toward our goal of creating a better humanity to inhabit the world. (Shouts of Ave Imperator! Ave Imperator!) So impressed, in fact, that he’s resolved to accelerate the process of human improvement by eliminating, en masse, the remaining billions of sub-optimal humans in the global South. There is simply no need for their labor anymore, which has been rendered obsolete by our robotic workers. Our Beloved Emperor is desirous that the refuse of the world be disposed of at long last in a great operation to be undertaken with our esteemed partners in the Alliance of the Global North. China’s Emperor Wang and Russia’s Tsar Nicholas III are in total agreement with our Beloved Emperor about what needs to be done to create a healthy and well-balanced ecosystem for the desirable remnants of humanity to live in. (Shouts of Ave Imperator! Ave Imperator!)
The objective of Operation Vesuvius, brothers and sisters, is to eliminate all populations external to the Alliance of the Global North. When this is achieved, the resources of the earth will be harvested for the benefit of the higher men and women we Physicians of the Order of Asclepius have had such a strong hand in creating! (Standing ovation.) Our Beloved Emperor wants you to know, fellow Physicians of the Order of Asclepius, that your work has been indispensable to improving the human condition, and with Operation Vesuvius, we will finally be able to bring about an extinction event for the billions of sub-optimal people who don’t measure up to our ideal! (Shouts of Ave Imperator! Ave Imperator!)
It gives me supreme delight, brothers and sisters, to announce that, in consultation with scientists from the Tsardom of the Reborn Russia and Neo-Imperial China, members of our Order have just made a breakthrough that has made it possible for Operation Vesuvius to be carried out, not at some point in the future, but right now! (Raucous cheers. Shouts of What did they do? What’s the breakthrough?)
One of our research teams—and yes, I must confess, it was led by me—has recently succeeded in genetically modifying female mosquitos to produce CRISPR-Car9 cassettes that, when injected into human flesh, will render all types of the phosphofructokinase enzyme non-functional, making it impossible for the infected to obtain energy from the carbohydrates they consume. Since the impoverished undesirables of the global South subsist mainly on carbohydrate-based diets, they will experience muscle weakness, cardio-myopathy, seizures and respiratory failure in a matter of days and will expire within weeks! Even undesirables of a stronger constitution couldn’t possibly last longer than a month or two, at most, and wouldn’t have the strength to climb over our barricades even if they wanted to! (Laughter and applause.)
The first swarms of these genetically-modified mosquitos have been dropped in targeted zones in the last few days, and the initial reports are that they are proving to be highly effective as agents of mass infection. (Shouts of Hurrah! Hurrah!) Operation Vesuvius is estimated to reduce the population of the global South by 80 percent in the next few years, and our robot infantry is now being programmed to mop up the survivors. And brothers and sisters, I want you to rest assured, if by some miracle one of us or someone we love is bitten by a genetically-modified mosquito—unlikely since the insects have been engineered to die in Northern climes—a reverse CRISPR-Car9 system is in place that will be administered immediately to save the infected desirable’s life. (Applause.)
In the next decade or two, and certainly before the fiftieth anniversary of the Great Revolution in 2084, the problem of overpopulation will be entirely solved, the health of the global environment will be restored, and the resources of the de-peopled lands will be distributed among the desirable populations of the global North. Nearly all forms of labor going forward will be carried out by our robotic workers, who will provide a living standard for the optimal humans that would make King Croesus himself jealous. After Operation Vesuvius, the remaining population will have the leisure to focus their attention on the finer things of life, literature and art, philosophy and science, like the best of the ancient Athenians. There will be no ages of silver or bronze for the future human race, brothers and sisters, only an ever-shining Golden Age! (Thunderous applause.)
We must never forget that we Physicians of the Order of Asclepius are the greatest humanitarians. We are doing the undesirables a tremendous service by relieving them of the burden of existence. Have faith in our Order and our Beloved Emperor, brothers and sisters! Rejoice and have faith, for we are the midwives who are bringing into the world a new and much-improved human race! When the stupid and foul and low are finally gone, a new age of human greatness will dawn! (Standing ovation. Tears of joy.)
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