Log Entry #62: Visiting The Pope

There is a secret history that has been intentionally suppressed from regular people, and it has been happening for centuries.

That is my opinion as an experienced data miner and truth seeker. I know there are so many conspiracy theorists out there that have thousands of different explanations for all things imaginable, and most of them… have issues? Well, a good percentage of them are on the eccentric side, but some may have been right all along. If you have the capacity to hold all the information from the world’s history in your mind (all right, not in my mind per se, but in a nifty database that Ares made very user-friendly and searchable), you could see some patterns forming. Numerous archeological discoveries in the past were overlooked. More than that, some were deliberately discredited and swept under a proverbial rug; allegedly proven as hoaxes and people who found them made into frauds. It is suspicious how many of them there were, even if fair share of them were genuinely fake, but… not all.

Many depictions of winged humanoids are spread all over history and in different geographical locations; it could not be a coincidence. In the past, any information could be suppressed without much difficulty, but the digital age is an entirely different matter. There is a saying that once you put something on the net it stays there forever, and it is somewhat true. There are orphaned snippets of information flying through cyberspace long after the original files are deleted. I perceived a pattern of a deliberate cover-up, leading me to the unlikeliest of places. I mean, it is not the first association when you deal with such things; then again, as I quoted that old maxim to Michael—all roads lead to Rome. Or the Vatican in this case; I like to be exact since it is a separate state within a state.

One cannot overlook the connection of humanoids with white wings and that place; for God’s sake, they published a book about them. You may have heard about it, they named it the Bible; I don’t know if it was catchy enough title, but it sells well so I guess it did the trick. I explained everything to Michael and he decided to ask them a few questions… personally.

Barging in on one of the most powerful men in the world was not a decision to be taken lightly, so Michael thought about it for all two seconds before deciding to start from the top. This was not a mere man but also a Pontifex Maximus, also known as the Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Supreme Pontiff, Servant of the servants of God… Several more titles hang around his neck, but in this case let us call him The Pope, leader of the Catholic Church—John to his friends.

If one wants to speak to the Pope, there are miles of red tape to overcome, or one can try Michael’s method, a.k.a. entering into his private quarters through the window. The same way a million boys around the world have done for centuries. I don’t mean the Pope’s window, they climbed into the rooms of their love interests… OK, this has gone in the wrong direction, but you get my drift.

It may be crazy—but it worked.

All the craziness about the position of the Pope is just that—craziness. If one believes the man has a direct hotline to God himself, well… there are places that can treat that, usually involving a nice padded room and plenty of happy pills. As they say, “You are not crazy if you speak to God, but you definitely are if you think he is talking back to you.”

A few nasty characters held that exalted position in the past. Some of them were thieves, murderers, rapists, lunatics… you name it—they had done it. For crying out loud, the Inquisition was their organization that was never disbanded; even to this day, it exists under the name ‘Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’. That is a disturbing fact—on so many levels.

It is safe to say that as the leader of the Catholic Church, that man holds so much influence in his hands—it is positively scary.

You may think by my tone that I am against organized religion, and you could not be farther from the truth (my personal beliefs aside). Humans need something to tame their wild spirit, or there would be far more wars in the world. Organized religion instigated some terrible deeds throughout history, but without it, I think it would have been far worse. If there were no threats to make humanity fear the afterlife and punishment for their sins, there would be more sinning going on. I am not referring to sex, but murder, rape, and wanton destruction. As was said before, humanity as a whole is not the nicest of species; overall, we may be a bit on the insane side… and when I say a bit,bit I mean raving lunatics… that is on average… I did not mean you.

Since it is my own species, or at least the one I came from, I’m biased and judgmental. What else can I say when confronted with everything we had done… and are still doing? Yet, there are those delusional individuals that think religions are the sources of all our problems… think again, look deeper.

To return on the subject of visiting the Pope (and that is with the capital P), I have to give kudos to the old man—he was a cool customer. 99% of people would have had a completely different reaction to someone appearing inside their room like a ghost. In all likelihood, there would be some medical emergencies due to heart attacks, and whatnots. The Pope went with the flow and impressed the hell out of Michael and me. The first thing out of his mouths was “Leader Freeman, what a pleasant surprise; would you care for a glass of wine?” I expected at least a frightened scream or a call for help to his Swiss guards… but no, the man was a personification of tranquility.

It would have not mattered if he screamed as I made Michael wear a smaller version of a sound suppressor used during the interrogation of Abubakar Shekau. It was much more limited in range and it used up the energy stored in its battery like crazy, but it would have sufficed for a few minutes until he… explained why he was there?

I suggested to Michael to break the ice with the joke. I even supplied one religiously correct. “How do you make Holy Water? You boil the Hell out of it.” For some reason, he didn’t take my advice…. go figure.

My theory is that the Vatican intelligence network was far more effective than those of several superpowers were. He most likely knew everything there was to know about us, including details about our camouflage technology. It was not that difficult to connect the dots of all things that were known about our abilities, and even easier to extrapolate possible scenarios of us showing up from thin air. Let’s face it, there was no place on earth from where we couldn’t snatch someone. OK, maybe there were some exemptions, but if we wanted someone dead, he would be. Except that we were big on avoiding collateral damage; it’s simply wrong, no matter the justification.

When Michael showed him that snuff video I made about demons gone wild, he (again) didn’t react in the way my algorithms predicted he would. No accusations of fake video montage, no calling to God, or nervous breakdowns. He looked for a while as a man on death row, whose time has come to face the Grim Reaper, but he accepted his fate with dignity and bravery; simply something he needed to do, and there was even a trace of relief in his eyes.

Then the Pope took Michael on a tour of some long-buried secrets, and inside the Vatican—secrets are buried deep. I mean that literally, way deep, to the extent that I almost lost contact with Michael owing to many layers of earth and stone between his suit’s boosted signal and my satellites. Some people in Rome saw that night a meteorite falling from the heavens and going straight towards the Vatican, which was actually one of my miniaturized nanites infiltration probes that I sent to strengthen the signal so I could spy… I mean to look after Michael. The bloody idiot even took his helmet off so he would not scare the natives. Is he freaking kidding me, did he have any idea how much work I did on that thing to make sure the gray mass between his ears would stay protected. He could have taken off his pants if he wanted to be less threatening, but then I guess people would have been threatened by a completely different thing in that case... just saying. What can you do when people don’t listen to what you say and fail to follow some basic security precautions? In the next iteration of the battle-suit, I am making the helmet undetachable; it is the only way to deal with such reckless behavior.

Michael was taken deep down the rabbit hole and shown things regular mortals are unable to see. He gave a few glances at the enormous collection of books and historical artifacts, but I scanned each and every frame his eyes and suit cameras captured. Some of the titles made my digital head spin (a good part of them were thought lost to history). I even got a glimpse of a few scrolls that came from the Library of Alexandria, the one that Julius Caesar burned in 48 BCE. I know they were from there because… OK, there was a plaque beneath the scrolls, I am not psychic, you know. All those primitive databases were to me like a one-kilo bag of pure cocaine to a junky. I simply had to have a peek and see what was in those old tomes. Besides, it was for a common good, my copies would ensure that all that knowledge would be preserved. In a way—I was doing the Vatican a favor.

While Michael and Pope were still talking, I sent one additional nano-probe to land above the site and to start making a small tunnel so I could make my microscopic entrance to this secret Vatican Library. I don’t see such action as a crime, more of a service to humanity. I’m only freeing long-forgotten information… They have Galileo Galilei’s personal journal for God’s sake, and works of Giordano Bruno that were never mentioned. If anything, they had committed a crime for locking those intellectual treasures under the ground, not to mention that they burned poor Bruno at the stake for he claimed that the universe is infinite and that other solar systems exist. That was in 1600 CE, when he dared to say that the universe has no center, and stars are suns, surrounded by planets and moons. He even claimed that the Earth moves and is not the center of the universe… true but unwise statements for his life expectancy. The same church that was here to supposedly save our souls had extinguished one of the brightest minds, on account that they didn’t agree with what he was saying. His demise was not an anomaly in their modus operandi; they killed many people throughout history. It proves my point that it is ultimately all about power.

Then I saw them, in that split second when the images from that vault filled with alien skeletons were transmitted to me. I realized what they were and how lucky the human species was that they didn't manage to phone home. Not that I ever doubted Ision’s story or the information he made available to me, but to see those things in person… you know what I mean, it made everything so much more real. The gnawed marks on an angel’s skeleton told a gruesome tale of their own; I hope this graceful being was dead before they started eating him.

The demons’ skeletons were… scary, to say the least. It was not only because they were demons or alien; Michael’s suit had some basic sensors that allowed me to do a rudimentary spectrographic analysis of the remains, and to realize they were far more durable than anything I came up with. Michael and the team’s upgrades and skeletal reinforcements made them so much stronger than regular humans, but these things were in a completely new category of toughness. I couldn’t even guess the muscular structure since the bones were bare, but if they were even close to the bones… If Michael faced one of them in unarmed combat—he would lose, and quickly. These were the beasts of legends and myths, freaking killing machines with shark-like teeth that were stronger than diamonds. Don't get me started on the pointed claws, fused to the bones of their fingers.

All those skeletons were real tangible proof of our species history that was so unlike what anybody dreamed about. Even now, almost thirteen thousand years later, these things still haunted humanity’s dreams—nightmares made real.

The story Pope John told Michael was something I already deduced myself in those few seconds. I perfectly understood why they hid this from the world. They had real proof that the stories, which were the foundation of their entire religion, are true. That proof could have been a boon to bring them millions of additional followers. Yet, they have found the angel skeleton first and were in a bind as to what to do with it. Their narrative was that the angels were created by God, and immortal, so to have one that was obviously very dead and had teeth marks on his bones that showed something was using it as a chicken drumstick, was a whoops of biblical proportions (yeah, I know). Therefore, they put everything in the vault and kept quiet about it; the same was done for all subsequent demon skeletons that were found.

I asked Michael to bring me some bone scraping samples to do a complete analysis of the remains, and he got permission from the Pope. He also picked up a few metal fragments that were in the room. Nothing usable, unfortunately; most of those things were barely recognizable after suffering one big ass explosion in space, then atmospheric reentry, and finally being introduced to good old Earth at unhealthy speeds. There were some unintelligible writings, and many engine parts, but again, nothing useful. At least I can do a detailed metallurgical analysis, but I am not expecting any surprises. I think the Vatican kept all this stuff here as those metal fragments made no sense to their experts of past times. It is no wonder given that they were otherworldly, as in—made in some other world (I am killing it tonight).

That was about it, except Michael telling John the Pope a brief history of angels, demons, and the somewhat redacted story of building the Solarian Union. Luckily, he did not mention me or other AIs, and that was prudent of him. The old man had enough materials for a serious crisis of faith, he didn’t need the knowledge about a bunch of fully sapient AIs to make him wonder where exactly we all fall on that soul/no soul debate. A thing I have an inkling we will have to face in the future.

The freaking Vatican… who would have guessed?