Phoenix

   The bird, magnificent as it was, flew over everyone’s heads and, just before disappearing as it always did, it let out a horrible cry, as if he had been wounded fatally. The cry was heard by every single man and woman that had come to catch it and they felt their hearts skipped a beat as they heard it. Then, the bird disappeared in second, making everyone wonder how much stranger nature could get. All the scientists that had come to the jungle stayed some more days but after a couple of them, they noticed no other bird like that would appear out of nowhere. That one, apparently, had been the last one of its species and now it could be hiding anywhere or maybe even dead. The jungle emptied in no time and paradise went back to be one.

 One of the scientists that had gone to the expedition, a man called Hunter, did not go back home after being in the jungle but instead traveled to several zoos, laboratories and so on in order to investigate. He wanted to know if maybe there was one of those birds in captivity or if anyone at least knew more about it than him. But most people, when explained what he was looking for, thought he was crazy. The creature he described was fantastic, out of some story told from generation to generation and even is account sounded even stranger than the most creative story of them all. He traveled the world for another year but no one knew anything. He gave up and he intended to return home immediately, as there was nothing more to do for him.

 However, he never got home. In the flight over there, he started feeling strange, like there wasn’t enough air. He had gone to the lavatory and it was only when the flight had ended that a flight attendant found him there, asphyxiated in the toilet seat, with a large red feather on top of his head. People thought he might have committed suicide somehow, but the autopsy proved, weeks later, that he had choked because he couldn’t breath. The reasons for that were not known or the origin of the feather, but the tragedy made it to the news and several of his colleagues realized there was something they couldn’t just ignore: the red feather.

 There was a tribe in the region where they had all gone to catch the bird. They had warned the scientist not to enter the jungle as dangers beyond their understanding lived there and could very well be their end. But the scientists thought it was just a folk tale to keep everyone away from the jungle. The tale said that the phoenix lived deep in there, alone always alone and with possession of a great strength and will. The legend said the bird could not be capture or tamed but that it could be befriended in order to find a way out of the jungle, if the person that found it was lost. But if it wasn’t, the bird would put its course on them, a course that would end life in little time.

 Every single person that had been at the jungle the time the phoenix cried, remembered the legend when they saw the news about Hunter. Some of them were openly scared; others dismissed it as a coincidence. A long month passed until there was word of a second victim, this time one of the assistants. She had been found dead in her apartment, apparently also asphyxiated and with a feather on her head. Then, two more deaths followed and the rest of the scientists just knew there was at least some truth to the legend. Now, some thought there was someone killing al of them, blaming them for something that had happened back them. Maybe they had an outbreak of some sort of disease or they just didn’t like foreigners in their lands.

 One of the explorers decided to take the bull by the horns and go back to the jungle where it had all started. The tribe there wouldn’t talk to him because they said foreigners had disrespected their beliefs and advice, which had been given in the best interest of everyone involved. They didn’t want to know anything about all those people ever again and asked to be left alone for good. Overnight, the whole tribe moved and they were not found again until several years later. The explorer attempted to enter the jungle again, to see if there were any answers inside, but that would be a secret for that place to preserve, as the paths had changed and nothing was the same as the last time.

  People kept dying until there were only three people left from the expedition that had discovered the existence of the phoenix. One of them, doctor Stacy Holmes, published a very controversial article where she described the creature and its behavior, what she could see anyway as the encounter had only lasted for a couple of minutes, until the beard cried and disappeared. No one really believed what Holmes had written on her report and the money that she had been granted for investigation was pulled away from her, leaving her to beg for more money to continue her investigation. Stacy was obsessed with the bird, she had been obsessed before too and it was something that hadn’t gone away.

 She was found dead on her bed, at home, asphyxiated as the rest of her peers. The feather rested softly on her head and the place seemed, to the people that came for the body, as some type of mausoleum. It was incredibly peaceful and beautiful somehow. Someone took pictures and they were all over the Internet, talking more about the possibility of a serial killer than about the feather or the ambiance in the place when the men taking the body got there. The remaining two people died in the following weeks. One of them thought it could hide from the curse but it could follow anyone anywhere so they died anyway.

 Back in the jungle, the phoenix appeared again. It floated around freely and was now, again, free to be. Often it would fly over the houses of the tribe that lived nearby, but they wouldn’t see it. It was a lonely creature, so there was almost no way that anyone could find it in the immensity of the world. What people didn’t know was that the bird moved around the globe at will, change its home from a cave on a cliff in China, to a nice nest in a European forest. It even lived among humans, who were too distracted and busy to realize they were so close from something they couldn’t even understand. The phoenix was a creature born several millennia ago, as the planet started to breath life. It was a time of legends and miracles, but a time that no one could remember.

 It had to be said that the cry did kill of those people but not the phoenix itself. He just did what had to be done in order to preserve a little mystery in the world, something that was being lost rapidly to the advancements of technology. The phoenix, being a creature with the capacity to be reborn and to cure every single disease in existence, could be the holy grail of mankind. But the bird knew what humans did with whatever they found out to be of use. They were brutal and did not care about anything except their personal goals, their thirst for financial retribution and for a power that, in the long run, didn’t mean anything.

 The bird cured people, however, when they were lost somewhere in the world. Because it had something many humans had lost long ago, which was compassion. Humans didn’t have it anymore, only showing a shadow of it when they wanted to gain something from behaving like that. Humans, almost all of them, were not sincere anymore and could not be trusted. That had been proven when that large group of them had entered the jungle without the proper respect, without hearing what their own had told them. They were disrespectful and only cared about their personal glory. The phoenix felt everything at that time, it could feel their ambitions and thoughts and the decision to put the course on them was as simple as disappearing and never being seen again.

 True, some humans had seen it and he had not killed them. Those lost souls; men and women that only wanted to go back to their families and be in peace, they wanted nothing more than to be left alone by life and the phoenix respected that. That’s why he helped them with everything he could, ultimately carrying them to the outskirts of the jungle in order for them to be taken care of by the nearby tribe. The bird was compassionate and behaved only in the way survival was meant for it to behave. It didn’t hate anyone or had any remorse either, it was just a pure creation of nature, forgotten by the world and that’s the way it should be forever, until the big change arrived.

Virus

   Although it was supposedly summer, the island was covered by ice and some snow too. Only a few patches of green were seen from the plane but once in the ground, those patches proved to be really small and sad. A car came to pick up the three people that had arrived: a security official, an expert in virus and pandemics and a botanist. It took them only fifteen minutes to reach the northern part of the island, where the vault was located. In the past, there was only one smaller vault where all the seeds that could be found in the world had been stored. Wanting to expand the collection, the owners of the vault decided to expand to living being, although they kept them in a special substance for the body not to rot or decay with time. It was a very delicate an expensive endeavor.

 But something had happened recently: one of the specimens brought in for the collection apparently contained an unknown virus than had already killed two of the scientists working in the vault. No one in the world knew about it because the place had been properly sealed and no one that was inside during the incident had been let out yet. They had enough food for a year inside the vault and it was imperative that they solved what was the virus in order to let them go. That’s why the owners of the vault had decided to call for help and received some from private parties involved in the creation of the collection. They couldn’t ask a government entity or everyone would know.

 Doctor Patel was a renowned botanist, dedicated to find a way to feed every single child in her native India. She had travelled all over the world in order to find every type of seed and nourishment that could help her achieve her goal. And, although she had not revealed it to anyone, she thought she was fairly close to achieving that dream. Ironically, one of the elements that she needed to complete her task was kept inside the vault and it was just days before she applies for a visit that she had been summoned due to her expertise with plants. She knew everything about them and it seemed that the people from the vault believed that a plant had something to do with the virus that they were experiencing.

 Then there was Fred Connor, also a world-renowned scientist but in a very different field. He had studied the use of several types of viruses as weapons and had also learned every tactic used by the governments that had used biological weapons against someone else. Viruses as weapons were no joking business to him and he was too well documented not to take one case seriously. This one of the vault one particularly intriguing, as the people working there had not been able to say if the virus that they were facing was from a botanical or an animal origin. The fact that it came from a rare animal had not been confirmed. He was eager to study this apparent new virus and neutralize it.

 Someone less excited about this trip was the taller black man that joined the two scientists. He was no science man or had anything to do with any studies or viruses or animal and certainly not plants. Mister Fox, as he liked to be called, was a private security agent that had been called to assess the situation in the vault. His role was not about helping anyone in any way. His orders were to shut down the place completely if he found out that whatever was inside could be dangerous for human life and, more specifically, for the investments of many wealthy businessmen that had put a lot of money to make the vault in order to get their taxes lowered. Fox had the authorization to use force, if necessary.

 When they arrived, one of the local scientists that did not work in the vault greeted them and told them to get inside. They were a bit nervous but he told them it was the only room that hadn’t been exposed to the virus as every shipment went in through a door in the other side of the building. The vault was built underground, so the building you could see in the exterior was only a very small part of everything that was the vault. Inside, they felt a bit less cold, maybe because the space was very small and their bodies helped each other to feel a little bit better. The local scientist, called Jorgen, told them that they could talk to the people in the vault via an intercom system that even video feed.

 It was Connor who sat down in front of the screen and asked Jorgen to dial the code of three numbers. There was no tone or ring, only silence. That was until, almost an entire minute later, someone answered and an image in the screen appeared. They seemed to be in almost darkness and the person that had answered could not really be understood. As the image got better, they all realized that he was wearing a mask in order to breath a bit better. But the mask had the disadvantage of masking his voice too. He then started communicating in sign language and Doctor Patel translated, as she had learned the language when she was in medical school. The person on the screen said that three more were dead and that only him and another one remained.

 The four-person team decided to suit up with special uniforms that were originally created to enter radioactive areas. They checked every single centimeter of fabric before entering the elevator, as any hole could bring the virus into their bodies and to the surface. No one knew if it could die in the cold but the fact that it had survived the trip to the vault wasn’t a very good reference. Only Connor and Jorgen had worn these kinds of suits before, the other took some time to put them on and he tried to help them. When they were ready, Patel communicated with the people below before they entered the elevator.

 The elevator was a very small space too.  On the instructions of Jorgen, everyone practiced how to properly breathe inside the suits. They had oxygen tanks that could last up to three hours but it wasn’t a very good idea to be there all that time. The plan was to go there and just check on the survivors and help them decontaminate. Once they had done that, they could put them in quarantine in a special room and then go up to call for help. After that, they could go down again in order to investigate everything they could about the virus. Fox was not so glad about the procedure, as he didn’t want to stay longer than necessary. His boss wanted news fast and helping people would only delay that.

 Once the elevator opened, Jorgen told them to follow him. It wasn’t long before they found a large room and, at least, three bodies pilled up there.  All three visitors stopped to look at the bodies and Connor said that he had never seen anything like that before. He had being in the presence of several victims of biological incidents and none of them looked like these people: these one had no visible eyes anymore, their skin had a purple hue and their bodies seemed boneless, like puppets. Doctor Patel realized they had dirt beneath their nails and that they were barefoot. Then, there was a crash and Fox pulled out a gun and pointed in the direction of the noise. One of the remaining scientists had dropped a tray.

 It was Jorgen who reacted first, very angry that Fox had brought in a gun inside one of the pockets that was supposed to hold medicine for the wounded. No one noticed when he put it in and he ordered him to keep that thing deep in that pocket if he didn’t want to have a real problem with the local government. But as they quarreled, they hadn’t noticed that the scientist that had dropped the tray was trembling. A scream by doctor Patel came just as the man’s skin started to bleed and his eyes seemed to melt inside his head. Then his body collapsed. Like the others, he was barefoot. The team ran towards the elevator and pressed up. As the machine moved slowly, they were panting.

 Once up, they were not able to speak or move. It was Connor that said that the other scientist was probably contaminated as well. He was about to remove his helmet when Fox stopped him and told him not to remove it, as they could have been contaminated. This statement by Fox surprised them all but no one said anything to him. They just headed for the chemical showers, which would clean up very single trace of the pathogen of their suits, if they had it at all. As they showered together, they discussed the horrible nature of the virus and how devastating it looked. None of them could believe something like that was real.

 They were not paying attention when something crawled in the showers. It had entered the elevator when they did and it decided to crawl up in a corner and just stay there and wait. After all, it had a way of waiting, a certain patience. It was the creature they had brought in but it didn’t look like it anymore. And it was getting near the cold, were it could finally feel much stronger.

Men as monsters

   Inoctium was the name of the compound that they had invented in the lab. It had many properties that a normal human would have deemed incredible and many of those who had been involved in the project thought exactly that. Many had wanted to leave the project before it was finalized but that wasn’t possible, as no one wanted any leaks or stolen information. It was obvious that any foreign power, anyone to be honest, would love to have their hands on such a potentially disastrous little element. So very few knew about its existence and another handful thought it was just an urban legend and that no one would be so stupid to create something so incredibly dangerous, although good in every way too.

  Only a small amount had been created but what had amazed the creators was what that small quantity could do. It was an alchemist’s dream as it had the capacity of transforming anything into platinum, one of the most expensive metals in the world. It could also be used to manipulate magnetic fields so many objects had been created around it to transform the world, as we know it. But of course, all of those objects, like flying devices and many military weapons, had not come out to the world yet. The committee that had approved tests to create the compound, finally decided to cancel the whole thing altogether and ordered the inoctium to be destroyed in the act and not a single thread of evidence to be left around. The reactions were varied but it wasn’t like they could say anything to prevent it.

 Nevertheless, the destruction never took place. And that was simply because the inoctium behave almost as if it was a living creature, a very strong and resilient creature. It couldn’t be destroyed. They tried every single corrosive agent, viruses, alloys, even small bombs but nothing seemed to do anything to it. The only real difference they detected was that the amount of inoctium had somehow grown larger. The committee, after hearing the results of the attempts to kill the thing, decided to keep it away from every single human forever. It was sent to a nuclear waste disposal facility, where the deepest chamber had been redesigned to contain even the largest explosion. The inoctium was placed there, under several locks, security and around several amounts of nuclear waste.

 Its creators never forgot about it. They felt it was their baby, their proudest moment as scientists. But they knew it was dangerous so they never spoke about the inoctium, ever again. The files that had been created around it had all been destroyed and their lab was dismantled. Thirty years passed and no one dared to go back to those dark times. That was until the day Yucca mountain, the place were the inoctium rested, exploded in a massive way. A whole was opened in the desert and some small towns were in the way; the earthquake that was generated wiped them out. It was the biggest disaster involving anything nuclear and scientists couldn’t explain what happened.

But the creators of the inoctium, a group of only six people, knew exactly what had happened. They had warned the government against burying the compound in a place were other chemicals and elements were kept but no one heard then and no heard after the explosion, mainly because only a handful of government officials knew about inoctium and they were all close to retirement. The president didn’t believe a word that he heard, thinking that if such a powerful thing existed, the past governments would have used to finally impose the country on the world. Maybe that was what he would have done but it wasn’t what had happened. The team knew that the explosion had a cause but no one would believe them.

 Two of them, who had married and had children, decided to try and recreate the process that had created the inoctium but they failed horribly, dying in another explosion, less massive but also a tragedy. Only the two of them died, so the other four members of the team knew what had happened. They insisted on talking to the president, they wanted to explain to him how it all worked for him to understand but he just wouldn’t listen. Word had it that he was trying to blame the explosion on some terrorist group or another country, so he could get a hand on their resources. This president was not like the other who hid their intentions; he didn’t care for those who were ashamed of what had to be done, according to him.

  The team reunited with other experts and tried for them to understand what was going on and how they should prevent anyone from mishandling what was left of the compound on the site of the explosion. If the wrong person got there first or if someone mishandled the inoctium, something even more awful could happen. The scientific community was much more receptive than the government, mainly because the four remaining members of the team had time to explain how they had created the compound and what were its properties. By doing so they were going against the law and against every single paper they had to sign the day the inoctium project was shut down. But lives had been lost and they couldn’t afford to allow more to happen.

 Nevertheless, the scientific community was very divided. Some, like the government, thought the four scientists were insane old people that needed to be in a retirement home and not talking to anyone about science. Others believe some parts but the properties of the inoctium were the thing that put them in high doubt. And other believed them, mainly because they had worked on similar projects before that had ended in failure. Despite that, they felt it was possible to do what they had tried to do back then. So the team got some support and tried again to contact the government, with no more success than before. It was announced, a few days after, that the country had concluded the explosion to be a terrorist attack.

  For the members of the team, it was a tragedy when they saw the images of tanks and planes attacking some country on the other side of the world. The government had declared them guilty of harboring terrorists and claimed that they should be brought to justice. What was obvious after a few days though, was the fact that every suspect they found was killed. No one was apprehended. In a few days that nation had fallen and occupation began, like it had happened before elsewhere. Of course, every single company prepared their luggage and landed in the destroyed country to set up business, weather it was security related or minerals related. Anyway, the world had lost another piece and scientists weren’t closer to prove anything.

So they decided to disobey in the most visible way possible: they would get the proper equipment and then travel to Nevada, were the explosion had taken place, to illegally enter the site and see for themselves if the inoctium had been destroyed or not. Many fellow scientists helped them prepare and get the equipment and it took them only a week to be prepared and leave for the desert. They had brought weapons too because this time they weren’t going to be just scientist but also madmen, even if there was a women among them. When they got to Nevada, they started doing vigilance on the site, which was very heavily guarded. Fortunately, they were able to get a military drone from one of its makers and used it.

 The drone discovered that the site was not only a whole on the ground as it had been portrayed in the media. The truth was that they had built several building around the explosion site and the crater created had been covered by a white fabric, which looked like plastic, or something like it. They didn’t get to see or know more as the drone was shot down and by the military, who were the ones guarding the place. The scientists had controlled it remotely so no one knew it had been them watching but they decided to head for Las Vegas, to think about their next step. The news had changed their headlines from “Patriotic war” to “Our heroes triumphed” showing military man “guarding” the streets of a ravaged town.

 The team knew they just couldn’t get into the site as no one would allow them to and another drone would be even more dangerous, because then they would really be in the eye of the storm. They didn’t know what to do, what to think of it all. Because of them, because of what they had done so many years ago, people were dying every day. That fake war and the explosion were a symptoms of a cancer that had to be taken out. And although the government was also another disease, it was preferable to deal with the inoctium first. They planned to seek help from the opposition to the president and to the war and try to get international help from scientists around the world, willing to speak on their behalf.

   But when the war on the other side of the world expanded and spilled onto other countries, the scientists were rendered mute. Because on one morning in august, people around the world got to see the most incredible and most horrible thing in the world: the military had used the inoctium against other. They had seized it and created weaponry with it. Easily, the world started to crumble and people, for the first few seconds, were all without a voice. They couldn’t believe they were seeing the end of their world on their TV and computer screens. And many wouldn’t get to see the real end, further ahead.

Mjölnir

   From the top of the hill, he looked majestic. It was incredible to see him glide over the water and then fly up towards the sun and then fall, breaking the surface of the lake with his huge body. The creature loved to swim, or so it seemed, and it looked really happy to be there. He looked like a child that meets the ocean for the first time. But he was much larger than just a child. He was more the size of two horses and there were far from any ocean although he could reach one in no time. The people who found him had called him Mjölnir, like the hammer that the god Thor held in battle, the hammer that the gods had created to bring order and stability to a world in chaos. He was that for them, a fantastic creature capable of bringing calm to this world.

 The two explorers that had gone to see him were so amazed that they just stared at him for an hour, never mind the fact that he might fly away in any moment. The locals said he lived deep in the mountains because they were the only inaccessible area of the region. The mountains her were sharp and built by nature like razors. Not any human could climb those and to use any means of transport would be a waste of time because of the magnetic instability of the area, which no one had ever explained. Maybe there was something to mine down there; maybe it was because of him. No one knew. What they knew was that he was, for all intents and purposes, unique. The locals never spoke about another one or a herd of them nor nothing like that. He was alone in the world.

 After a week of the discovery, the scientists had begun to look everywhere in the world with the same circumstances but nothing had come up yet. Maybe he wasn’t alone but they had to help him mate or he would be extinct in a number of years. To be honest, they had no idea how long the lifespan of a dragon was but the general thought was that they could live for hundreds of years, so that gave them some time to organize and look for a suitable mate. They studied him for weeks and weeks and more and more people came to meet him, which was astonishing due to the fact that, in the past, any person that had attempted to get close had died.

 Doctor Lemon was a brilliant biologist. She had discovered many new plants and animals in the deep forests of Indonesia. As for Doctor Samuelson, he was a paleontologist, the one that had discovered the first skeleton of a dragon in China. He was the reason the two of them were granted help from an American institution to go and explore the Razor Mountains and see if its inhabitant was real or not. They had to train hard for days in climbing and trekking and in every sport that could help them pass the mountain range. When they got there, they had to try it several times, risking their lives, in order to finally make the crossing that would lead them to Mjölnir.

The lake was not a place they went to look for him. They had seen it from the range and had thought they needed to recharge their water supplies before attempting to do anything else and the lake was probably made of melted ice water from the mountaintops. It was summer, so the lake was not as large as it could be but it happened to be large enough for a gigantic creature to swim in it. It was so strange, for both scientists, to see the creature so at peace and relaxed. If they hadn’t known any better, they would have thought he was a giant dog or something. Not for his looks of course but for the way he behaved in private, playing around and just enjoying himself.

 They had always been portrayed as savages in every single culture. They have been deemed dangerous and quite vengeful but this one did not seem like that. He seemed nice. Maybe that was because in all of the first week, they didn’t see him spout fire. It was possible that he used it only as mechanism of defense but when they saw him eat a deer, they realized he wasn’t able to do it at all. He was a very large lizard who happened to fly short distances but he had no ability to propel fire from his mouth or nostrils. This disappointed many who followed the investigation but he was, nevertheless, a species in the brink of extinction. The two scientist looked all around the area and found the skeleton of another dragon but it wasn’t its partner but its mother.

 The bones indicated it was a larger animal, with a far longer wingspan and a huge body. It was now easy to see now why they had such a clumsy ability to fly: they were too big. They weren’t like the pterosaurs of the past that were light like birds. These dragons were heavy and had to train their whole lives to be able to fly properly. That’s why no one had ever spotted one. Contrary to belief, they didn’t fly that much, they didn’t spout fire and they lived in an area where the magnetic field was just crazy. The area was soon protected by law, so only scientist and authorized people could come in, dare to cross the mountains, and then just watch him to his things.

 Both Lemon and Samuelson stayed there for a whole year and were the ones who set the rules on how to behave while staying in the area. They would explain to any visitors that they had been very careful for him not to se them or be able to smell them. They used a special perfume that made them smell like plant life so he wouldn’t come too close and attack. People always obeyed because it was more important for them to see him and take pictures than risking their lives in a silly way. But like with everything that goes into fashion, most people soon forgot Mjölnir, after only a year. Lemon and Samuelson were happy that this had happened because they needed to investigate more and see how much time he had.

They gathered saliva from the remains of his meals and some scales that had apparently fallen from him. Maybe he was changing skin like most reptiles or maybe he was sick. They had no real idea and that made them insane. For a while, they had to go back to a proper lab and just try to understand more about him. As they did all the tests and experiments they had to do, they realized it was a very difficult job as there was no other creature like it. Lizards and snakes were only similar to him in small things but, in the larger picture, he was a unique creature. And that worked against him hard because it’s much more difficult to protect something you don’t understand than the opposite.

 It was during that time that a couple of explorers in remote parts of the world found more dragon remains and even fossilized eggs. They were brought to a laboratory for investigation and hoping they could lead to a possible cloning project but that was cancelled when they realized there was nothing they could do with the eggs, except noting it features and putting it in a museum. After six months of hard work, they had come to the conclusion that the dragon was about to enter adulthood. His mother had died at least fifty years ago when he was a baby but only know he was beginning to grow up. That explained, at least partially, his behavior in the lake and the way he did things. He was becoming an adult all by himself and it appeared he would die alone too.

 Then the news came. The locals had found his body lying next to the lake. He was dead. Lemon and Samuelson flew to the area but it was too late, another team had come for the body and, with permission and bribes to the locals, they had managed to take the body in a helicopter and now it was far from the reach of those two scientists, the ones that had discovered him. For months, no one heard one more word about anything related to the creature. But both scientists decided to release a book with their impressions and experiences with the dragon. They thought they should at least be the first to say what he was like and how thrilling it was to discover him.

 The rival scientists released an autopsy report saying that he had died from drowning and that they had found the organ that might have produced the flames every single culture in ancient history attributed to the dragons. The discoverers of the creature published an article saying all of that was false and that there was something they weren’t telling and that they should have been able to check the bodies themselves or at least leave someone else do it. But they never did. And the body was never donated to any museum or organization. People, again, largely forgot about the dragon and about them, even as they slammed scientists without scruples every time they had the chance.

 Mjölnir was dead and the truth was he had died because he had wanted to. He was smarter than people thought and his fly over the lake were just an attempt to understand how to kill himself. He was grieving and because he missed his mother. And he was alone and that wouldn’t change. So he took matters into his own hands and did it. People would have never understood that because of the intelligence factor but that no longer matters. We will never understand.