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other books by scott adams god s debris the dilbert principle dogbert s top secret management handbook the dilbert future the joy of work dilbert and the way of the weasel dilbert cartoon books by scott adams another day in cubicle paradise when body language goes bad words you dont want to hear during your annual performance review don t standwhere the comet is assumed to strike oil when did ignorance become a point of vital excuse mewhile i wag dilbert a treasury of sunday strips version 00 random acts of management dilbert gives you the business dont step in the leadership journey to cubeville fm not anti-business i m anti-idiot sevenyears of highly defective people casual day has gone too far fugitive from the cubicle police still pumped from using the mouse it s obviousyou wont survive byyourwits alone bring me the head of willy the mailboy shave the whales dogbert s clues for the clueless build a better life by stealing office supplies always postpone meetings with time-wasting morons[close]
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contents introduction prologue old man ix xi 1 emergency headquarters interrogation avatar meets general cruz global information corporation hector s terrorist cell avatar flies to qadum avatar meets al-zee general cruz plans war stacey s cafe mackey s progress how israel fell mensa gic bombing vii 15 18 37 50 65 75 80 90 93 101 105 113 119[close]
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contents avatar and al-zee discuss the magician summit in switzerland war begins mackey writes code black force assassination attempt mackey makes aphone call h2 hospital room findinga donor thirty years later questions to ponder 127 133 143 152 156 159 164 168 172 173 179 viii[close]
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introduction this is a sequel to my book god s debris a story about a deliveryman who chances upon the smartest person in the world and learns the secrets of reality i subtitled that book a thought experiment and used a variety of hypnosis techniques in an attempt to produce a feeling of euphoric enlightenment in the reader similar to what the main character would feel while discovering the fictionally true nature of reality reactions to the book were all over the map about half of the people who e-mailed me said they felt various flavors of euphoria expanded awareness connectedness and other weird sensations that defied description a surprising number of people reported reading the entire book twice in one day so i know something was happening but no two people had the same reaction other people wrote angry letters and scathing reviews pointing out the logical and factual flaws in the book it is full of flaws and much of the science is made up as it states in the introduction i explained that the reader is supposed to be looking for flaws that s what makes the experiment work you might think this group of readers skipped the introduction and missed the stated point of the book but i suspect that something else is going on people get a kind of cognitive dissonance brain cramp when their worldview is disturbed it s fun to watch ix[close]
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introduction the most interesting readers are the ones who have instant amnesia after reading the book angrily insisting that there were no new ideas in it false memories are a common side effect of having your worldview suddenly bent you might love the book you might hate it but if you can remember it you ll be interested to hear that some readers thought it had no new ideas the religion war is a different kind of book it s written in traditional fiction form with a plot yes a plot involving the smartest man in the world trying to stop a pending war between christian and muslim forces the story takes you forward a few decades to imagine where our current delusions about reality might lead us and in the end it poses some questions that i think you ll enjoy rolling around in your head and jabbering about with friends while sipping a beverage it s not essential that you first read god s debris but you will find this book more enjoyable if you do my target readers for the religion war are bright people with short attention spans especially lazy students and busy book clubs i try to avoid tedious descriptions of scenery and clothing i hope you don t miss them you can read the whole thing in three hours and it s packed with ideas to mull while the story is fiction most booksellers will list the book under nonfiction because its purpose is to highlight the most important yet most ignored questions in the world i list some of those questions in the back of the book but they won t make complete sense until you ve finished the story i call them questions to ponder i hope you enjoy the book feel free to write to me at scottadams@aol.com to give your reaction i can t respond to every message but i try to read all of them x[close]
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prologue in the year 2007 a brilliant and charismatic leader named al-zee began his rise to power in the palestinian territories he was the architect of the twenty-year plan for eliminating israel the success of which started a domino effect in the middle east as one arab dictatorship after another fell and their territories rolled into the great caliphate al-zee s subjects heady from an unbroken string of victories demanded the spread of islam to the rest of the world al-zee understood that this was neither practical nor desirable but to satisfy the appetite of his people he began an unending war of minor terror against the christian-dominated world the attacks were calculated to be large enough to look like progress yet small enough to avoid provoking all-out war publicly he blamed renegade groups for the attacks.the christian-dominated countries knew al-zee was behind the bombings but they depended on him for their oil and wanted to avoid a larger war that would cripple their economies and in all likelihood increase the number of bombings terror weapons improved dramatically during al-zee s rule anyone with a few hundred dollars could buy a satellite-guided model airplane capable of flying a hundred miles to deliver explosives to a precise target.terrorists no longer needed to commit suicide so the pool of volunteers was unlimited al-zee was careful to avoid killing anyone important or destroying anything xi[close]
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prologue irreplaceable it was a difficult balancing act trying to wage smallscale war without provoking total war.the strategy worked until 2040 when general horatio cruz came to power in the christian alliance.[close]
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old man sir there s an old man in the lobby he wants to talk to general cruz a reddish rhino of a man stopped his lanky aide in midsentence cruz didn t like interruptions he didn t like a lot of things committees fools ambiguity or unknowns cruz s faith in god and his battlefield victories imbued him with a sense of selfconfidence and clarity that made him a natural leader he knew that god was on his side that his career was divinely inspired he believed that when an idea came to him without a trail it was god s way of talking those qualities plus his tactical genius propelled cruz to secretary of war a position that had evolved to include de facto control over all the armies of nato cruz used his eyes the same way he used everything else like weapons lieutenant ben waters suddenly found himself in the crosshairs it wasn t the first time waters had seen that look that sort of look from a man who killed people for a living would reduce most people to stuttering waters viewed it as information nothing more cruz had hand-picked waters from a thousand candidates not because of his test scores or his combat record both unremarkable it certainly wasn t waters personality charitably described as 1[close]
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t hereligion war remote there was something else at the age of eight ben waters used the family shotgun to kill both of his parents it was a small town and the neighbors agreed that ben saved his younger brother from an unimaginable fate no charges were filed since then the area of ben waters brain that makes a person feel alive was a catastrophe of molecules he never suffered from shame offense fear humiliation or failure but neither could he feel joy waters plugged the hole in his soul with military emotions loyalty duty and mission cruz picked waters as his aide because power is the midwife of temptation and the general s power was unequaled at least in the non-muslim territories so too were his temptations he had never crossed the line from duty to self-interest at least not in any grotesque way but the urge was a low-grade fever cruz ordered waters to carry a sidearm at all times officially it was to protect cruz from assassination unofficially it was cruz s way of protecting the world from cruz waters understood the meaning behind cruz s death stare a general on the verge of war doesn t need surprise guests it was obvious to both of them that the old man downstairs should be removed immediately but today wasn t a day when the obvious counted for much maybe if you talked to him for one minute he s old and tell security to drag his ass out of there that s the thing waters explained the guards left they just took off what do you mean left cruz said as his square face reddened and his eyes turned space-black 2[close]
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old man most people would have backed off but waters didn t feel fear not of cruz not of anyone or anything all he had was a sense of what to do next and in this case it meant an explanation the old man started talking to the guards and five minutes later they left they didn t say why call the marines off the roof if the old fool won t leave shoot him yes sir said waters in a way that revealed he knew it wasn t a workable plan waters walked deliberately out of the room dragging his past like a bag of graveyard dirt leaving cruz to continue arranging his war map on a huge oval table the whole world are fools muttered cruz while using a ruler to drag a battle platform from the indian ocean mapmakers were a frustrated group the old notion of a country was meaningless al-zee dominated the entire islamic world governments existed under his rule in a fashion to keep the water running to remove garbage and to run indoctrination centers for children but the real power was al-zee in the christian-dominated part of the world there was still a pretense that civilian governments ruled their respective countries in reality cruz had the power to redraw boundaries and remove socalled leaders with a word he didn t need military power to get his way although it was available if it suited him cruz was widely believed to be the only person who could stop the terror of al-zee no one felt it was a good idea to distract him the atheists and the smaller religions were lying low supporting the christian power base and enjoying safety in numbers.the 3[close]
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t hereligion war most enthusiastic supporters of the christians were the jews who escaped israel after al-zee s forces overran it in 2035 battle platforms were a recent addition to cruz s arsenal they were the size of cities floating on the ocean vastly more powerful than the aircraft carriers they replaced.the platforms could be assembled in days ringed by destroyers and monitored by an umbrella of satellites nothing could penetrate their perimeters thanks to nato s technical breakthrough of forced particle beams that could slice through incoming metal like a hot poker on a cobweb the rest of the world which was mostly al-zee s territories and a sprinkling of nonaligned powers used conventional missiles that were no match for the particle beam defense grid cruz moved one of his four battle platforms from the indian ocean to the eastern seaboard of the united states it meant one less asset near the main battlefield but it might make the civilian politicians more agreeable to his plans knowing they d be protected from incoming warheads and once they got used to that protection cruz would have something to take away from them in case they forgot who was in charge this was a different sort of war from anything cruz had fought before he couldn t hope to cut off the snake s head to kill the body as the media were fond of saying the genius behind al-zee s success was that he had weaponized a population of two billion people most of them under the age of thirty convincing them that death was better than life so long as they died in service to al-zee s interpretation of the afterlife there was a word that cruz avoided using but it was always in his mind.this wouldn t be a war for territory or power it would 4[close]
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