Nero
Hadrian
Mani
Attila
Aryabhata
Bang Gun
Bank Poo
Henry I
Genghis Khan
William Wallace
John Wycliffe
Johannes Gutenberg
Martin Luther
Galileo Galilei
Adam Smith
Accountant for Rothschild
Karl Marx
Adolph Hitler
Andrew Vecsey
Nero (37- 68)
I was the grand-nephew of Augustus Caesar who was the grand-nephew of Julius Caesar. I became a Roman Emperor. My father was described as a murderer and a cheat who was charged with treason, adultery, and incest. My mother was Agrippina the Younger, a great-grand-daughter of Augustus Caesar. My father died when I was 2 years old and I was adopted by my uncle Claudius to become his heir and successor. Because my uncle was afflicted with a limp and slight deafness due to sickness at a young age, his family ostracized him and excluded him from public office until he began to rule with his nephew Caligula. My father had been employed as a very high official of Caligula's staff.
Philo of Alexandria described Caligula as an insane emperor who was self-absorbed, angry, killed on a whim, and who indulged in too much spending and sex. He is accused of killing for mere amusement. Once at some games at which he was presiding, he ordered his guards to throw an entire section of the crowd into the arena to be eaten by the lions because there were no more criminals to be prosecuted and he was bored.
When I was 17, my mother killed Claudius with poison mushrooms and I became the youngest Emperor. My early reign was strongly influenced by my mother. One year later, I ordered her to be murdered. During my reign, I focused much of my attention on diplomacy, trade, and enhancing the cultural life of the Empire. I ordered theaters to be built and promoted athletic games. I had very capable generals during my reign.
Over the course of my reign, I often made rulings that pleased the lower class. I was criticized as being obsessed with personal popularity. I began my reign by promising the Senate more autonomy. During this period, I was known for spending my time visiting brothels and taverns. I put restrictions on the amount of bail and fines. Also, fees for lawyers were limited. There was a discussion in the Senate on the misconduct of the freed-men class, and a strong demand was made that patrons should have the right of revoking the freedom of freed slaves. I supported the freed-men and ruled that patrons had no right to revoke the freedom of freed-men. I was however more supportive of slave owners than of their slaves. The Senate tried to pass a law in which the crimes of one slave applied to all slaves within a household. Despite riots from the people, I supported the Senate on their measure, and deployed troops to organize the execution of 400 slaves affected by the law.
After tax collectors were accused of being too harsh to the poor. I arrested, impeached and removed many government officials for extortion and corruption. When further complaints arose that the poor were being overly taxed, I reduced all indirect taxes. The Senate convinced me this action would bankrupt the public treasury. As a compromise, I cut taxes from 4.5% to 2.5%.
In imitation of the Greeks, I built a number of gymnasiums and theaters. Despite the common belief that theater led to immorality, that performers dressed in Greek clothing was old fashioned, and that public expenditure on entertainment was a waste, I established festivals including games, poetry, and theater.
When I was 27, a great fire erupted in Rome. The fire started in shops selling flammable goods. It spread quickly and burned for over 5 days. It destroyed 3 of 14 Roman districts and severely damaged 7. It is uncertain who or what actually caused the fire—whether accident or arson. Popular legend claims that I played the fiddle at the time of the fire, even though there were no fiddles in my time. The truth is that I was not even in Rome. Upon hearing news of the fire, I returned to Rome to organize a relief effort, which I paid for from my own funds. I personally took part in the search for and rescue of victims of the blaze, spending days searching the debris without even my bodyguards. After the fire, I opened my palaces to provide shelter for the homeless, and arranged for food supplies to be delivered in order to prevent starvation among the survivors. In the wake of the fire, I made a new urban development plan. Houses after the fire were spaced out, built of brick, and many sidewalks were covered by roofs. I also built a new palace complex in an area cleared by the fire. This included lush artificial landscapes and a 30m statue of me. The population searched for a scapegoat for the cause of the fire and many blamed me. To deflect blame, I targeted Christians, ordering many to be crucified and burned. The cost to rebuild Rome was immense, requiring funds the state treasury did not have, so I devalued the Roman currency for the first time in the Empire's history. I reduced the weight and purity of the silver coins by 10% and the weight of gold coins by 10%.
I promoted an expedition to discover the sources of the Nile River. It was the first exploration of equatorial Africa from Europe in history. I composed songs that were performed by other entertainers throughout the empire. At first, I only performed for private audiences. I began singing in public in Napoli in order to improve my popularity. I craved attention. I participated in the Olympic Games of 67 in order to improve relations with Greece and display Roman dominance. As a competitor, I raced a 10 horse chariot and nearly died after being thrown from it. I also performed as an actor and a singer. Though I faltered in my racing and acting competitions, I bribed the judges and I won these crowns and was able to parade them when I returned to Rome.
When I was 29, there was a Jewish revolt in Judea stemming from Greek and Jewish religious tension. A year later I dispatched Vespasian to restore order. This revolt was eventually put down 2 years after I died. We were able to breach the walls of Jerusalem and destroy the city and the Temple of Jerusalem. The last Judean stronghold, Masada, was taken 5 years after I died. 10 thousand soldiers including thousands of Jewish prisoners were used to break through the walls of this citadel to find that 960 of the 967 defenders had committed suicide. Many of the Jewish rebels were scattered or sold into slavery. Over 1 million people were killed during the siege. About 10,000 were captured and enslaved and many others fled to areas around the Mediterranean.
When I was 31, there was a rebellion against my tax policies and I was driven from my throne. Many of my army officers openly refused to obey my commands and my palace guards abandoned me. I dispatched messages to my friends to come, but no one came. When I went to them, I found them all gone. I called for a gladiator or anyone else adept with a sword to kill me but no one appeared. I sought for some place where I could hide and collect my thoughts. A freedman offered me his villa 6km outside the city. Traveling in disguise, I and 4 loyal freedmen reached the villa. A courier arrived with a report that the Senate had declared me a public enemy and that it was their intention to execute me by beating me to death. Facing assassination, I decided to commit suicide. But it was not as easy as I thought it would be. No other Roman emperor had ever done that. As I prepared myself for suicide, I lost my nerve. I begged for one of my companions to set an example by killing himself first. Not having any takers I ordered my private secretary to perform the task of killing me.
My death was welcomed by Senators, nobility and the upper class. The lower-class, slaves and frequenters of the arena and the theater on the other hand were upset with the news. Members of the military were said to have mixed feelings, as they had allegiance to me but were bribed to overthrow me. After my death, there was a widespread belief that I was not dead and somehow would return. The legend of my return lasted for hundreds of years. Three impostors emerged leading rebellions who claimed they were me. All were executed. Some even believe that the number and mark of the beast in the Book of Revelation was a code for my name. My name in Greek translated into Hebrew had the numeric value of 666.
My death was followed by 6 months of civil war during which time Rome witnessed the successive rise and fall of 4 emperors until the final accession of Vespasian.
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Hadrian (76-138)
I was born to become an architect and I became a Roman Emperor. In Rome, I re-built the Pantheon and built the Temple of Venus and Roma. In Britain I built Hadrian's Wall which marked the northern limit of Roman Britain. I built libraries, aqueducts, baths and theaters.
I was born into a family originally Italian, but which had lived in Spain for many generations. I only had one elder sister. When I was 10 years old my parents died. Trajan, the Emperor adopted me as his heir just before he died. I was 44 years old. Despite my own great reputation as a military administrator, I witnessed very little military conflicts. I preferred securing peace by erection of permanent fortifications along the empire's borders. The most famous of these was the massive Hadrian's Wall in Great Britain and the fortifications along the Danube and Rhine borders. These were a series of mostly wooden forts, outposts and watchtowers. To maintain morale and prevent the troops from becoming restive, I established intensive drill routines, and personally inspected the armies. My policy was peace through strength and threat.
During my reign, I traveled to nearly every province of the Empire. I was an ardent admirer of Greece, and sought to make Athens the cultural capital of the Empire. I ordered the construction of many opulent temples in the city. I spent extensive amounts of his time with the military; usually wearing military attire and even dining and sleeping with the soldiers. I ordered military training and drilling to be more rigorous and even made use of false reports of attack to keep the army alert.
My first military service was as a tribune. As a tribune, as long as I was in Rome, I had the power to convene the legislative assembly through which the commoners could pass laws, elect magistrates, and try judicial cases. I acted as its president and proposed legislation before it. I also had immunity against any charges against me and the power to veto actions taken by magistrates. I could pardon any crimes, including my own. I could also summon the Senate and lay proposals before it. I later became governor of Upper Pannonia in Hungary.
When I was 45, I had an intimate relationship with a 13 year old Greek boy named Antinous. 10 years later he drowned leaving me totally grief-stricken and devastated. I founded the Egyptian city of Antinopolis in his memory and had him deified – an unprecedented honor for one not of the ruling family.
It had been fashionable among the Romans to be clean-shaven. All Roman Emperors before me except for Nero were clean shaven. I changed all of that and made beards fashionable. Most of the emperors after me started to wear beards. This new fashion lasted until the reign of Constantine the Great and was revived again 300 years after Constantine died.
I mitigated but did not abolish slavery. I had the legal code humanized and forbade torture. I traveled a great deal. The main purpose of my journeys was commissioning new structures, projects and settlements. My visits were marked by handouts which often contained instructions for the construction of new public buildings. My intention was to strengthen the Empire from within through improved infrastructure, as opposed to conquering or annexing perceived enemies.
When I was 54, I visited the ruins of Jerusalem destroyed 60 years before. I rebuilt the city. I built a large temple to the goddess Venus on top of what later Christians would come to venerate as the tomb of Christ. I built a new temple dedicated to the worship of Jupiter on the ruins of the old Jewish Second Temple. I abolished circumcision, which was considered by Romans and Greeks as a form of mutilation and hence barbaric. These policies of mine were considered anti-Jewish and triggered in Judaea a massive Jewish uprising. Roman losses were very heavy, and it was believed that an entire legion was destroyed. My army eventually put down the rebellion after 3 years of fighting. 580,000 Jews were killed, 50 fortified towns and 985 villages razed. After the war I continued the persecution of Jews in an attempt to root out Judaism, which I saw as the cause of continuous rebellions. I prohibited the Torah law, the Hebrew calendar and executed Judaic scholars. The sacred scroll was ceremonially burned on the Temple Mount. In an attempt to erase the memory of Judaea, I forbade Jews from entering Jerusalem.
The Pantheon was built as a temple to all the gods of ancient Rome. It burned down 2 times 150 years before I rebuilt it. 2,000 years after I rebuilt it, its dome, almost 50m high, remained as the world's largest reinforced concrete dome. It is one of the best-preserved of all Roman buildings and after 2,000 years continues to be used as a place of worship. It took over 700 construction workers over 3 years to construct the Pantheon. The gray granite columns that were used in the Pantheon were quarried in Egypt. Each was 12m tall and 1.5m wide and weighed 60 tons. These were dragged more than 100km from the quarry to the river on wooden sledges. They were floated by barge down the Nile River when the water level was high during the spring floods. The stresses in the dome were found to be substantially reduced by the use of successively less dense aggregate stones such as pieces of pumice in higher layers of the dome. As the best-preserved example of an Ancient Roman monumental building, the Pantheon has been the most influential in Western architecture.
Hadrian's Wall was a defensive fortification in Roman Britain built to separate the Romans from the barbarians. It was about 120km long. The east part of the wall was made from squared stone and was 3m wide and 6m high. The west part of the wall was made from sod - the grass and the soil beneath it held together by the roots. It was 6m wide and 3.5m high. The entire wall took 6 years to complete and was covered in plaster and then white-washed so that its shining surface reflected the sunlight and made it visible from many kilometers away.
I spent the final years of my life in Rome. I built a new Temple of Venus and Roma on the former site of Nero's large landscaped villa that Nero built in the heart of ancient Rome, after the great fire had cleared away the aristocratic dwellings on the slopes of the hill. It was the largest temple in Ancient Rome. It took 20 years to build and was damaged by fire 160 years after it was built. 700 years later, a severe earthquake destroyed the temple.
About this time, suffering from poor health, I turned to the problem of my succession. My last few years were marked by conflict and unhappiness. The adoption of Aelius Caesar proved unpopular. Fuscus, a very ambitious man, had designs on the imperial power for himself and the year before I died he attempted a coup. His grandfather was implicated and I ordered that both be put to death. They prayed before their execution that I would "long for death but be unable to die". Their prayers were fulfilled. I suffered from my final protracted illness so much that I had to be prevented from committing suicide on several occasions.
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Mani (216-276)
I was born to become a prophet in Babylon. I believed that the material world should be shunned and the spiritual world should be embraced. I believed that enlightenment, salvation, and emancipation or 'oneness with God' may be reached by practicing philanthropy to the point of personal poverty, sexual abstinence and by diligently searching for wisdom by helping others. I preached that the struggle between a good spiritual world of light and an evil material world of darkness explained the perplexities and contradictions of life. I claimed that light was gradually removed from the world of matter and returned to the world of light from which it came. I did not contradict Moses, Zoroaster, Buddha or Jesus, but clarified and crowned their imperfect and confused teachings. I proclaimed nothing new. I was crucified for my beliefs and my adherents were persecuted.
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Attila (406-453)
"Violence is justified in the service of mankind"
I was frustrated and disappointed at my last life. I chose as my next life a Mongolian boy in a family of rulers. I became king of the Huns. We were a union of nomadic tribes stretching from Mongolia to Turkey along the Siberian plains. We hunted with bows and arrows on horseback. I inherited the throne when my uncle died and shared it with 2 other cousins. We got very powerful and were greatly feared. As we rode into new territories we gained a reputation for plundering and pillaging. We achieved military dominance due to our superior horses and riding skills. We had special bows that we were able to use while we were riding. To overcome high walls we built battering rams and rolling towers. This way we captured many churches and monasteries. We demanded ransom for lives and later we extorted tributes for insurance against further attacks. We expanded to the outskirts of the Roman Empire where we were considered barbarians but hired as mercenaries whenever they needed fearless soldiers to police their outposts.
We were considered barbarians – the Hells Angels of our time. The Romans hired us whenever they needed fearless soldiers to police their outposts. We were like ploughs overturning overgrown choked gardens clearing them of weeds and preparing them for new growth.
Honoria, the sister of the king Valentinian of the Roman Empire was sent to a convent for plotting to kill her king brother. She offered me half her kingdom for her rescue. I liberated her from her abductors by kidnapping her. I kept her as a hostage and forced her to marry me. Valentinian was furious when he found out. I had to use 500,000 soldiers and took 3 years to take my claim of half his kingdom which reached all the way to the Atlantic Ocean.
Honoria seduced me on my victory night celebrations. I was drunk and she was able to easily stab me. It was only later when I died did I realize what a deceiving person Honoria was. She had also seduced one of my more ambitious commanders into a conspiracy to kill me. They planned to marry and to claim title to my newly conquered empire. She killed me and he buried me, then she killed him. She was caught, arrested, and sent back to her brother Valentinian. People have never been able to find my grave. My relatives over many generations grew to be rulers of Europe. Charlemagne was the greatest of them.
Charlemagne who lived 300 years later had 18 children with 10 wives. He became the founding father of all European monarchies. The monarchies would over centuries struggle for power, sometimes conquering with marriage, other times with war. But families grew and their language slowly changed, first by accent, then by dialect, until they could not understand each other anymore. They kept different rituals and customs, and evolved different cultures. The church also competing for power was a unifying and mediating force for these monarchies.
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Aryabhata (476-550)
I was a born in India to become a very famous mathematician-astronomer. I wrote and published a few works that turned out to be well remembered many hundreds of years after I died. I was only in my early 20s when I wrote them.
It all started when I tried to find out the relation of the circumference of the circle to its radius. I had a hunch that the size of a circle must have a very direct relationship to the length of its diameter. I experimented with circles from as small as I could to as large that were possible. The magic number I was searching to find was between 3.13 to 3.15. I guessed that it must be exactly in the middle of the 2 values, but I was not sure. So I called the magic number pi. Nature and the universe was made from so many circles that I believed that once I had a value for pi, then an entire new world would open up to me.
I played with very many equations and I called my game "algebra". The equation for calculating circumference from the radius of the circle was not the only equation that I worked at, but it was the most useful. I played with triangles as well and was able to find equations for areas and angles of triangles of any size. I found that the area of any triangle is proportional to its base and its height. I could also calculate any angle in any triangles if I knew the length of any 2 sides. To do this I used cyclic functions I called "sines", "cosines" and "tangents". The only practical application to playing with these kinds of equations called "trigonometry" was for studying the motion of the heavenly bodies.
Many of my colleagues who also studied the motion of heavenly bodies started to play with my equations. We were called "astronomers". We were more poets than mathematicians. We did not use numbers at all. We used the letters of the alphabet and symbols as well as numbers. With the mathematics that I developed, I was able to calculate not only the sizes of forms like circles and triangles, but also the areas they contained. I was able to calculate the motion of stars and planets and the moon and predict eclipses.
I used knowledge from Greek mathematicians and astronomers that was 800 years old. 800 years before, Aristarchus of Samos presented the first known model that placed the Sun at the center of the known universe with the Earth revolving around it and put the other planets in their correct order of distance around the Sun. He suspected that the stars were just other bodies like the Sun. His astronomical ideas were often rejected in favor of the geocentric theories of Aristotle and Ptolemy that were accepted by the Christian popes.
650 years before, Hipparchus of Nicaea developed “trigonometry”, an application of “geometry” that studied the relationships involving lengths and angles of triangles. He became most famous for his discovery that as the earth rotated about is north-south axis; the axis wobbled like a spinning top making one wobble cycle every 20,000 years. He was considered to be the greatest ancient astronomical observer. He made quantitative and accurate models for the motion of the Sun and Moon. He used the observations and the mathematical techniques accumulated over centuries by the Babylonians and other people from Mesopotamia. With his solar and lunar theories and his trigonometry, he was one of the first to develop a reliable method to predict solar eclipses.
To calculate the distance of the earth to the sun, the speed it orbits around the sun and the earth's diameter, all you needed was some geometry and some trigonometry. Using trigonometry, you could calculate all the dimensions of any triangle as long as you knew the length of at least one of its sides and 2 of its other dimensions- either an angle or a side.
To calculate the distance from the earth to the sun, I first formed a triangle made from the points made by 2 observers and the sun. Then I measured the distance between the 2 observers and measured the angles formed by this triangle. Then using trigonometry I could calculate the distance from one of the observers to the sun. I calculated that the earth was about 150 million km from the sun. Many hundreds of years later, that distance was measured to be 149.6 million km.
Once the distance between the observer and the sun was calculated, then the circumference of the earths orbit could be calculated. Since the earth takes a year to orbit around the sun, then the speed of the earth around the sun could be calculated. Using the value of pi that I was able to find, I calculated that the earth's orbital speed was about 30 km/sec. Many hundreds of years later, that speed was measured to be exactly what I calculated.
To calculate the diameter of the earth, I first formed a triangle made from the points of 2 observers and the center point of the earth. Then I measured the distance between the 2 points, and measured the angle made between the 2 observers and the center of the earth by measuring the length of the shadows the 2 objects cast at a particular time. Using trigonometry, I could calculate the distance from one of the observers to the center of the earth. I calculated that the earth's diameter was about 13,000km. Many hundreds of years later, that distance was measured to be 12,742km.
To prove that the earth rotates about the sun, I assumed that our sun was just a star that was so close to the earth, that it appeared to be so much larger. I proved that the earth rotates about the sun by observing that the relative positions of the stars changed with respect to each other and that these changes in position were cyclic, repeating once a year. Looking at 2 stars over a span of one year, I noticed that the first star moved with respect to the second star. At one point in time they would be aligned in a straight line, and then they would move apart for 3 months so that the first star would be to the right of the second star. The first star would then reverse its direction and move back to be aligned in a straight line again with the second star just like they were 6 months before. In the second half of the yearly cycle, the stars would move apart again but in the opposite direction until the first star would be to the left of the second star. It then reversed directions and moved back to be aligned again. This cycle repeated once a year and every year. The first star swung back and forth around the second star as if they were in a dance.
I argued that if the earth was at the center of the universe, then the first star would appear to be stationary with respect to the second star. To demonstrate this, I had the person I was trying to explain this to stand in the middle of a field and pretend that he was the earth. I then placed 3 people -my daughter, my son and my wife, aligned in a straight line from him. I placed my daughter 30 paces away from him to pretend she was the first star. I placed my son 20 paces away from him to pretend he was the second star. I placed my wife 10 paces away from him to pretend she was the sun. As he turned around remaining in his center position, he saw that my daughter, my son and my wife all remained stationary relative to each other. I then had him change position with my wife. As he walked around my wife in a circle, he saw that my daughter appeared to be moving with respect to my son in the same way that the 2 stars that I was observing appeared to be moving.
50 years after I died, I was born as Brahmagupta the great Indian mathematician and astronomer who wrote many important works on mathematics and astronomy. He devised a number that was not really a number. It was a symbol called "zero" that gave values to other numbers, depending on their positions. "Zero" was a very special symbol we used with numbers and we wrote it as "0". This symbol used in numbers of any size allowed numbers to be added, subtracted, multiplied and divided without having to use an abacus. It was just like an abacus, except in written form. Column of the abacus were represented by written numbers instead of colored wooden balls. The numbers in any large number made up of many numbers displayed the number of balls in each column and their positions represented the colors of the balls.
300 years after I died, my works were translated into Arabic and soon after, the Arabs became the best mathematicians in the world.
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Han Bang Gun (815-970)
I was born to be a soap maker who made soap for the Chinese Emperor and Empress who were obsessed with cleanliness. They asked me to make them a soap that would keep them beautiful and young forever. They had heard that such a product, called "the elixir of immortality", existed. They wanted me to make for them a soap that would keep them alive and young forever. I hated their arrogance and ignorance.
So instead of using the fats that I normally used for my soaps, I used extremely old bat shit. I immersed the deposits of accumulated bat shit from cave walls and soaked them in water for a day. I then filtered and harvested the crystals from the filtered water. I called these crystals "saltpeter" and much later other people called them potassium nitrate. I mixed saltpeter with yellow rock called "sulfur" that I found near hot springs and volcanoes. Then I mixed in charcoal obtained by the very slow burning of wood under piles of ash. Whenever I could not find enough bat shit, I mixed normal shit with wood ashes, earth and straw and kept it moist with urine for an entire year to make my saltpeter.
The mixture turned out to be deadly. When heated, it exploded with a great deal of heat and force, killing anyone unlucky enough to be near it. It was called "gunpowder" in honor of my name.
For many hundreds of years, my powder was used to make very impressive shows in the skies. They appeared to be like very loud and colorful exploding stars that suddenly filled the sky with fire. I called them "fireworks". To make fireworks, gunpowder was mixed with colorful materials and packed into a cylinder with a wick, just like a candle. This special candle was then tied to a stick and the wick was lit. When the wick burned down, the candle ignited and propelled the stick high up into the air. They were called "rockets". When the entire candle exploded in a big bang, it gave off very colorful sparks that looked especially beautiful with a dark night sky background. These shows were performed on special nights of celebration, like the Emperor's birthday.
500 years later, someone had an idea of packing gunpowder in long and straight metal cylinders that were closed in one end and open at the other end. Then they put small balls made of lead called "bullets" and bigger stones called "cannon balls" into the metal cylinders and lighted the gunpowder behind the balls. When the gunpowder exploded, it propelled the projectiles out of the cylinder at very high speeds, to very high heights and over very long distances. The smaller metal cylinders were called "guns" and the larger cylinders were called "cannons".
1,000 years later, a man named Mr. Alfred Nobel discovered a much more powerful explosive called "dynamite". Mr. Nobel started out as an iron and steel producer but he change to the more lucrative business of manufacturing cannon and other armaments. He produced the highly explosive and dangerous to handle shock-sensitive liquid called "nitroglycerin" by treating the sweet alcohol glycerol with nitric acid. He then very carefully poured the nitroglycerin into an inert absorbent material such as clay with a wick, just like a candle. And when this special candle was lit, and the wick was allowed to burn down to the clay, it exploded with such a force that it was able to split apart very hard rocks and stones.
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Han Bank Poo (971-1047)
I was born the son of a paper manufacturer. My father made a soft but strong and resilient paper from the bark of the mulberry tree for the Chinese Emperor to wipe his bum with. The Emperor bought a lot of it and gave a lot to his friends and family. He always paid my father "on delivery" but once he was not able to do that because he did not have enough gold left in his vaults. I suggested that because he was the most trusted person in the land, all he had to do was to put his seal of trust on one of the sheets of paper as a method of documenting the promise of payment with gold at a later time.
The Emperor was very thankful for my idea. It allowed him to continue to buy things he wanted and needed to buy even when he was out of gold. He bought 5,000 sheets from my father and I printed all of the sheets with his face that he signed as promissory notes of future payment to all his clients. We called the printed sheets of our paper "paper money".
People started to accept the emperor's paper money notes as payment for their products and services because they were so much easier to carry and hide than gold. To discourage people from printing their own counterfeit copies, the emperor promised anyone who disclosed a counterfeiter a very large reward. They would receive all of the counterfeiter's wealth and property. To prevent any reprisal for whistle-blowing, the counterfeiter and anyone who helped him would be executed. I became very wealthy and was able to marry a very wealthy lady. We opened up a store to sell the Emperor's money. We called our store "The Emperor's Bank".
The paper money we issued did not last very many years. The Emperor got greedy and printed more paper money than he could backup with his gold reserves. In effect, he was counterfeiting his own money. People lost confidence in our money and soon no one would accept it as payment and it became as worthless as shit. People, especially those who hated the Emperor began to use the money with his picture on it to wipe their bums with.
I was the son of William the Conqueror who was descendant from Viking raiders. My father was called the conqueror because he invaded, defeated and occupied England from the Anglo-Saxons who were in control. The decisive battle known as the battle of Hastings occurred in 1066, three years before I was born. To control his new kingdom, my father gave lands to his followers and built castles throughout the land to command military strong-points. He introduction French as the language of the noble elite, the court and government, and changed the composition of the upper classes by giving people land in exchange for a pledge of service.
I was 31 when my father died in a hunting accident. I immediately seized the English throne. I was a harsh but effective ruler, skillfully manipulating the barons in England and Normandy.
I initiated the use of the split tally stick as a form of currency for payment of taxes. I had sticks marked with notches and then split lengthwise. The natural irregularities in the surfaces of the sticks where they were split ensured that only the original two halves would fit back together perfectly and prevented forgeries. The two halves of the stick were of different lengths. The longer part was issued by the king to pay for products or services. The shorter part was held by the king. The longer part could be then used for paying taxes.
If one party tried to unilaterally change the value of his half of the tally stick by adding more notches, those notches would not be on the other tally stick and would be revealed as an attempted forgery. If you trusted your customers who wanted to pay for your products and services with their sticks, then you could always use those sticks to pay your own taxes. This system was used for 700 years after I died. When this system was abandoned and the tallies were ordered to be burned in a stove in the Houses of Parliament 700 years later, the fire went out of control and destroyed the Palace of Westminster.
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Genghis Khan (1160-1227)
Having such fond memories of my life as Attila 700 years ago, I reincarnated into a Mongolian boy again.
I learned how to ride horses when I was 3. I could hunt and fish before I turned 6. When I was 9, my father made arrangements to have me wed a girl from a neighboring tribe. My father took me to her family and left me there to be raised up by them until I was old enough to marry her. They killed my father and treated me very harshly, like a slave. They tied me up at nights like a dog so I would not escape, but at 18 I managed to break away. I killed my guards before I fled. I kidnapped the wife promised to me who I had never seen before. She was very beautiful. We managed to get away and I forced her to marry me.
With time I acquired respect from her family and was eventually accepted by her tribe. The leaders of her tribe were afraid that I was getting too powerful and they threatened to kill our family. We were too weak and too few to protect ourselves so we fled and moved far away. As we were moving, we were able to unite and organize many nomadic tribes who started to regard me as their leader.
I organized my troops into different groups: gangs of 10, bands of 100, and battalions of 1000 called "quarans". I commanded a league of 10 quarans considered the most powerful and feared warriors of the times.
One of the Chinese emperors hired my army and we grew and prospered and became famous for our fierce fighting power. We went back to our homeland and after unifying the Mongols I returned to China, breached their Great Wall, and conquer the entire country. I let the Chinese live as they had been living, imposing on them only a light tax.
After conquering the Chinese I turned my attention to trade. When the sultan of Persia killed my ambassadors and refused to trade I went to war yet again conquering almost all of west Asia so that my empire covered almost all of Asia. After restoring the trade route in the west I returned to my home only to die of illness on the way. They found me dead, riding on my horse.
I was buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in Mongolia at an unknown location. My empire called the Mongol Empire stretched from Eastern Europe to the Sea of Japan, covering large parts of Siberia in the north and extending southward into Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Iranian plateau, and the Middle East. My empire connected the east with the west and allowed trade, technologies, commodities and ideologies to be disseminated and exchanged between China and Europe. We were like bakers baking bread to nourish humanity and raise it to great new heights. Caravans and ships carried many new products and new ideas from the east, including rats that carried new deadly diseases. My empire began to split as a result of wars between my grand-children over succession.
About 100 years after I died, a lame man called Timur and known as Tamerlane attempted to restore my badly split empire. As a means of legitimating his conquests, Timur relied on Islamic symbols and language, referring to himself as the Sword of Islam, patronizing educational and religious institutions. He converted nearly all the Khan Clan leaders to Islam during his lifetime.
During his lifetime Timur emerged as the most powerful ruler in the Muslim world after defeating the Mamelukes of Egypt and Syria, the emerging Ottoman Empire and the declining Sultanate of India. Timur's armies were feared throughout Asia, Africa, and Europe, sizable parts of which were laid to ruin by his campaigns. Scholars estimate that his military campaigns caused the deaths of 17 million people, amounting to about 5% of the world population at that time.
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William Wallace (1280-1314)
I was born in a land called Scotland and we were called "Scots". My family had a lot of hope for me that one day I would be an influential man for our countrymen. My Uncle even sent me abroad to Rome to be educated. I witnessed the treachery of the English king, but I survived while my father and brother were killed.
Scotland was ruled by King Edward I aka Longshanks of England. He was very arrogant. He wanted to sleep with all of prettiest ladies, so he enacted a law that gave him rights to sleep with any newlywed bride.
When I returned from Rome, I fell in love with Murron, my childhood sweetheart. A few English soldiers tried to rape her. I tried to stop them but they captured and killed her. In retribution, I and several sympathizers slaughtered the entire English garrison and execute the sheriff. This greatly annoyed King Edward. We slowly built up a reputation for fighting the English that attracted very many sympathizers, but unfortunately not enough. Our own king feared King Edward too much to help us and we were defeated.
9 years later, our king's son Robert the Bruce became king and was inspired by my bravery to fight and break the English rule. He was able to defeat the English and drive them out of Scotland.
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John Wycliffe (1320-1384)
In my next life I was born in England into a very large family. I received my early education close to my home. I was very interested in natural science and mathematics, but instead studied theology, ecclesiastical law, and philosophy. I became deeply disillusioned both with scholastic theology and also with the state of the church, at least as represented by the clergy.
I was a philosopher, theologian, lay preacher, translator, reformer and university teacher at Oxford in England. I was an early dissident in the Roman Catholic Church. My followers were known as Lollards, a somewhat rebellious movement which preached anticlerical and biblically-centred reforms. The Lollard movement was a precursor to the Protestant Reformation and I was later called "The Morning Star of the Reformation". I was one of the earliest opponents of papal authority influencing secular power. I was also an early advocate for translation of the Bible into the common language. My fundamental belief was that the Church should be poor, as in the days of the apostles.
When I was 41, I became head master in the university in Oxford and was given a parish. I busied myself with natural science and mathematics, and taught philosophy.
At the ripe age of 45, I entered politics defending the political interests of England against the demands of the pope. I concluded that there was a great contrast between what the Church was and what it ought to be, and saw the necessity for reform.
I welcomed the thought of the secularization of ecclesiastical properties in England and began to express my thoughts in writings. In my first book, concerned with the government of god and the Ten Commandments, I attacked the temporal rule of the clergy. I claimed that in temporal things the king was above the pope, and the collection of indulgences to forgive sins was bribery. I strongly criticized the papal system with its commissions and squandering of charities by unfit priests. I claimed that it was the business of the State to change this system and that if the clergy misuses ecclesiastical property, then it must be taken away. I further claimed that it was the duty of the king to do just that.
When I was 56, I set these ideas before my students at Oxford. Rather than restricting these matters to the classroom, I wanted them proclaimed more widely and wanted temporal and spiritual lords to take note. The first to oppose my ideas were monks of those orders that held possessions. A year later, I was summoned before the Bishop of London "to explain the things which had streamed forth from my mouth". A crowd gathered at the church and at the entrance an angry exchange started between the bishop and my protectors. Most of the English clergy were irritated by this encounter, and they began to attack me charging me with blasphemy and scandal, pride and heresy.
I openly advocated the secularization of English church property. Pope Gregory XI responded by sending 5 copies of an order against me denouncing me as erroneous and as a danger to Church and State. My opponents charged me of being a political revolutionary because I tried to gain public favor by presenting my ideas before Parliament, and publishing them.
A noisy mob gathered with the purpose of saving me. The king's mother also took up my cause. The bishops satisfied themselves with forbidding me to speak further on the controversy. At Oxford the vice-chancellor, following papal directions, confined me for some time but I was later released because of threats from my friends which resulted in the vice-chancellor being confined because of how he treated me. I laid open the entire case and in a way that it was understood by the laity. The masses, some of the nobility, and my protector, John of Gaunt, supported me. Then I wrote my most important work dealing with what I perceived as the truth of Holy Scripture.
The sharper the strife became, the more I had recourse to my translation of scripture as the basis of all Christian doctrinal opinion, and expressly tried to prove this to be the only norm for Christian faith. To refute my opponents, I wrote a book in which I endeavored to show that Holy Scripture contains all truth and, being from God, is the only authority. I claimed that the head of the church is Christ. No pope may say that he is the head, for he cannot say that he is elect or even a member of the Church. A few years after I died, my doctrine of the Church made a great impression upon Jan Hus, a priest in Czechoslovakia.
My books were concerned with the reform of the Church, in which the temporal arm was to have an influence. I claimed that knowledge of theology is necessary to the strengthening of the kingdom and because of that, the king had theologians in his entourage to stand at his side as he exercised power. It is their duty, I claimed, to explain scripture according to the rule of reason. It was also their duty to proclaim the law of the king and to protect his welfare and that of his kingdom. The books I wrote in my last 6 years included continual attacks upon the papacy and the entire hierarchy of my times. At the very end, I claimed that the pope and the Antichrist were practically equivalent concepts. The Protestants, more than a century later, preached the same doctrine.
My influence was never greater than at the moment when pope and anti-pope sent their ambassadors to England to gain recognition for themselves. I claimed that it was not necessary to go either to Rome or to Avignon, the seats of the 2 rival popes, in order to seek a decision from the pope, since God is everywhere. I claimed that our true pope was Christ. I taught that the church could continue to exist even though it had no visible leader. One must regard as a true pope one who in teaching and life most nearly followed Jesus.
In the final phase of my life in the years before my death I increasingly argued for scriptures as the authoritative center of Christianity, that the claims of the papacy were unhistorical, that monks and nuns were irredeemably corrupt, and that the moral unworthiness of priests invalidated their office and sacraments.
While performing Mass I had a stroke and died 3 days later. Shortly after my death, the great Hussite movement arose and spread through Middle Europe. 30 years later, the Council of Constance declared me a heretic. It was decreed that my books be burned and my remains be exhumed. The council prohibited translation of scripture into English by unlicensed laity claiming it a crime punishable by charges of heresy. The exhumation was carried out 13 years later. My remains were dug up, burned, and the ashes cast into the river.
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Johannes Gutenberg (1400-1468)
“Give me 26 soldiers of lead and I shall conquer the world”
It was a time of flourishing arts.
My father, a merchant and my mother, a shop keeper, I was a born businessman. I saw many interesting merchandise from faraway lands. As a child I collected any wooden printing stamps I could find. I became a goldsmith and sold polished gems as religious relics for the church for many years. I could sell anything I wanted by convincing people that they needed whatever I had to sell.
At that time, the church was selling indulgences to rich sinners who could afford to buy them. Indulgences were lengthy hand written certificates absolving the named sinner from sins. They were written on paper and all of them had the same lengthy text. All were the same except for the name of the person being pardoned and the place and date of pardon.
The indulgences took great effort to prepare and they were very costly so only the rich could afford them. I convinced a bishop that indulgences could be provided to the masses too poor to pay for them by mass printing them instead of writing them individually. I forged 26 small stamps representing the 26 letters by carving them on clay tablets. I then poured lead into the carvings to make molds of the letters. Then I aligned the lead pieces to form text on one big stamp. Now instead of a monk having to take many days to prepare an indulgence I was able to print it out in 4 seconds. Indulgences were then marketed to the masses at prices they could afford.
This business project proved very successful. I gained many contacts in the church and ended up printing bibles. They were all in Latin and except for a few priests, no one could read them.
“We are at fault for not slaying them”.
It was a time of profuse learning.
My father wanted me to be a lawyer and he got me enrolled in the law faculty of a respected university in Germany. Without his knowledge I changed faculties and studied philosophy instead. I especially liked Aristotle's way of thinking, but unlike Aristotle who insisted on testing everything by experiments, I felt everything should be tested by experience. While Aristotle claimed everything was knowable with reason, I felt that God was only knowable by experiencing divine revelation, and understanding his written word, the Bible. So I became a priest and read and studied the Bible. I developed a different view of the bible from that of my church.
I believed that sin could not be bought off by buying indulgences, nor could it be forgiven by priests in confession. The bible clearly stated that sin was always forgiven by repentance and faith in Jesus. I translated the Bible into German, the spoken language of the common people. I used Gutenberg's almost 100 year old printing presses to print the bible to be read by the masses for the very first time. I challenged the pope's authority by claiming the Bible as an infallible source from God. I made so much money selling the bible that I bought the printing presses that Gutenberg used to print indulgences and printed pamphlets to denounce them. I was excommunicated from the church.
Many people reading the bible for the first time had a differing interpretation of the bible than that held by the church. Like me, they felt that Jesus deserved more exaltation, and felt Mary his mother was unduly glorified. Like me, they also felt that luxurious temples filled with gold statues and paintings of nude ladies were not appropriate as churches. Many priests from the church did not like to lead a celibate life and wanted to openly have families. So with time priests broke away from the church and built their own less pretentious temples. They traded the nude statues and pictures for wives. They protested and were called Protestants.
At 42 years of age I married a 26 year old nun. We had 6 children who all did very well. The nobility supported me and my family by giving us a monastery to live in and introducing me to influential contacts who granted me profitable printing contracts. Whenever there were uprisings by peasants they paid me to provide anti rebellion propaganda to quell riots.
Jesus became a very powerful force in my life and I tried to convert Jews to accept him as their messiah. The more the Jews stubbornly refused to accept Jesus, the more I saw Jews as a cancer that must be eradicated from Germany. I printed many pamphlets calling for marking all Jews by making them wear a yellow arm band. Later I even proposed burning their homes to force them out from our society. Soon after I started calling for their extermination my heart stopped beating.
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Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
"Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe... It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures; ..."
It was a time of blossoming knowledge.
I was born in Italy to a famous musician. I was the oldest of 6 children. When I was 8 my father moved and left us to be raised in a monastery. He wanted me to study mathematics, but I became fascinated with the stars instead. I never married, but had 3 children. I sent them all to a monastery to be raised up like I was. I thirsted for knowledge and studied all I could get my hands on. I studied Aristotle and learned from him that heavier things fall faster than lighter things. I made experiments from a tall tower with different materials from balls filled with lead to balls filled with air and discovered that they all fell at the same rate. Aristotle also claimed that the sun rotated around the earth. When I studied the heavens, I discovered that the earth rotated around the sun, just as a polish astronomer Copernicus wrote 50 years before in an old book I found. Later I found out that the knowledge that the earth orbited the sun in a circle was known over 1,000 years before, and that its distance from the sun has been calculated using trigonometry. The pope in Rome insisted that the earth was the center of the universe. I was a rebel, rebelling against authority of science and religion and was given a difficult time by the church for my views.
I invented many instruments that later allowed scientist to explore the unknown. I developed a thermometer that quantitatively measured the temperature of objects. I played with glass, observing that light and images are shrunk and expanded by polished glass. With large lenses I was able to make a device that expanded images of very large objects that were far away. I was able to look at distant objects as if they were closer than they were. I sold this invention to businessmen in Venice who used it to see which ships were coming in so they could prepare in advance for its docking and unloading. I made a lot of money with this and it allowed me to make bigger and better telescopes to study the stars. With small lenses I was able to make a device that expanded images of very small objects that were very near. The telescope and microscope allowed people to see things in nature never seen before. Things that were too far away or too small to see.
I balanced mathematics, theory, and experimentation, and refuted many older Aristotelian claims. When blinded by old age, I made large pendulum devices that measured time very exactly in order to measure the motion of stars. I observed and theorized a law called the law of inertia, refuting Aristotle's claim that bodies in motion gradually lose their motion and eventually end up still. I claimed that “once in motion always in motion unless stopped by an external force. And once stopped always still except when moved by an external force”. I was sued by the church for heresy and was found guilty by the inquisition. My sentence was relatively mild. I had to publicly deny my life work and was prohibited to write any more. My books were banned and I was put under house arrest, barred from ever leaving it. I found all these restrictions too harsh and ten years later I died.
A few years after my death, Isaac Newton was born. He developed a new language of mathematics called “calculus”. With calculus, the motion of stars I discovered with my instruments could be described with very simple and elegant formulas that described the motion observed by apples falling, planets and stars. It was like a combination of art and poetry.
Johann Kepler soon after refined my observations and described them in mathematical forms that Newton used to develop his theory of gravity that described my laws of universal inertia and motion.
150 years later, James Watt tamed the pressure of steam to make machines more powerful than many teams of horses. This invention opened up the doors to the industrial revolution.
50 years after that, Michael Faraday tamed the pressure of electrons to make machines even smaller than steam engines. Charles Babbage used electric machines to communicate with other electric machines, to form computing machines. Mathematicians had now a tool that allowed them to describe anything they wanted with formulas. This opened the doors to the information revolution.
35 years later, James Maxwell discovered that moving electrons in wires emit a very bright invisible light much like a tuning fork emits a sound. The emission radiated in space traveling thousands of kilometers in the vacuum of space like it was sound waves in air. He built devices that were able to detect this energy. Electric machines allowed man to communicate over great distances. This invention opened up the doors to the communication revolution.
Within 300 years of my death, man would describe the motion of atoms traveling at close to the speed of light. Albert Einstein used mathematics with his imagination and intuition to refine Newton's formulas to describe the motion of protons, electrons, and atoms. He defined the relationship of mass and energy. His theories allowed man to build many very powerful machines like lasers and nuclear bombs that opened the doors to the nuclear revolution.
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Adam Smith (1723-1790)
“One worker working alone could make only 20 pins per day. But ten people working together could make 48,000 pins in one day.”
The Roman Empire that held Europe together for so long finally started to break apart. There was a worldwide movement of people seeking freedom and people were overthrowing their greedy monarchs. Empires were crumbling into nations. Many new nations formed. A new nation called America was being born at this time. It was made up of people from all over trying to flee from their greedy monarchs. At the start the quest was the freedom from being exploited. As it matured the quest turned into the freedom to exploit.
My father worked as a customs guard in Scotland and died before I was born. A band of gypsies kidnapped me but my uncle rescued me and brought me back to my grieving mother. I was a very good student and entered university at age 14 on a scholarship. I went on to many universities and met many men who had great interests in fields such as history, politics, economics, philosophy and religion. My main passion was for liberty, reason, and free speech. I became a well-respected and very wealthy lecturer. I lived with my mom, and I gave away much of my income to charities. I rejected all religions but believed in an impersonal creator, in morals, and in an immortal life after death. I became a well-respected scholar on society, its politics, its religion, and its history and economy. When I died, I didn't leave behind any children or any writings. All my personal writings were burned on my wishes.
I wrote that the marketplace needs no regulation as there is a self-regulating force which I called the “invisible hand”. I claimed that if each consumer is allowed to choose freely what to buy and each producer is allowed to choose freely what to produce then the market will settle on prices and supply that are beneficial to all the individual members of a community, and hence to the community as a whole. In nature, natural selection is also a self-regulating force that is very similar. If each species is allowed to evolve freely, then its population will be distributed in such a way as to be beneficial to all the other species.
I believed that human motives are mainly selfishness and greed, but that competition in the free market would tend to keep prices low, while still building in an incentive for a wide variety of goods and services. I was wary of businessmen and argued against the formation of monopolies that curbed competition. I advocated that the rich should be taxed at a higher rate than the poor. I claimed that the free market while appearing chaotic and unrestrained is actually guided to produce the right amount and variety of goods by this invisible hand. I married economics with morality.
My other great contribution was to claim that labor should be divided to maximize profits. The least steps each person makes in a production line, the cheaper is the labor in the long run. Soon after, assembly lines were started and people started to work like programmed machines.
Soon after I died, many countries overthrew their greedy monarchs. Many of my ideas were incorporated into their new form of governance, and to policies of many governments in the world.
My next life was quite uneventful except for the fact that my father was the accountant for Amschel Moses Bauer, the very successful Jewish goldsmith in Germany. I was sent to a very expensive school at an early age. When I was 20 I became the financial adviser of Amschel Moses Bauer's son Mayer. Mayer listened to many of my ideas which I had for him to increase his wealth, even though I was nearly 50 years younger than he was. He died 1 year after he hired me, and I died soon after that when I was just 21 years old. Despite the fact that I was his adviser for only 1 year, he listen and followed all the advise I gave him and so did his 10 children. One of my recommendations was to lend out more money than he had in his vaults. He lent to almost anyone who needed to borrow charging very high interest rates. And if they could not repay the loan, he would possess their mansions and castles that he demanded as collateral. I pointed out that his reputation earned him trust among his clients and that he should use this trust to increase his fortunes. I convinced him that the greater his own prosperity, the greater the trust that he will earn. He managed the king's estate so well that he was sought after worldwide by other kings to manage their wealth.
The store he inherited from his father had a red shield as its logo. I convinced him to change his name legally to Rothschild, the German word for red shield, as the name Bauer sounded too primitive. He set up banks and using his reputation and other people's assets he invested those riches to make a fortune of his own. Over the years his possessions were larger than those of most kings’.
Mayer had 10 children who eventually set up financial banking empires all over Europe. They became the richest men in the world. They were able to bribe leaders to do whatever they wanted them to do. Their main goal was world domination. Over time they became banks for monarchs and governments. They would make agreements to totally manage the money supply of entire nations.
They got into the printing business and started printing money for countries. The paper notes were recognized by the governments as the only legal tender for payment of taxes. Printing and managing all this money made great profits for them. The wealthier they got the more power they could exhort. The more debt a government accumulated, the more money was needed to be printed to pay the taxes. The fastest and easiest way to put governments in debt was to cause wars. They formed banks and manipulated governments into wars financing both fighting sides. They reaped even greater profits rebuilding what the wars tore down. The more debt people accumulated the more money was needed to be printed to pay it off. The fastest and easiest way to put people in debt was to cause economic depressions. The poorer the people were the richer the Rothschild clan became. Losses of people became the gains of banks.
Money had such power that eventually Mayer's grandchildren and great grandchildren ended up controlling all of the businesses in the world, from the media, to agriculture and health. They ended up being able to decide and control what people saw and heard, what they ate and how they lived.
When Mayer died I lost my position and I died a poor man soon after.
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Karl Marx (1818-1883)
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. Workers of the world – unite”.
A new breed of man was evolving under morals as espoused by capitalism. This was an extension to the beliefs of evolution of life, where the evolution is driven by a “survival of the fittest” rule. This was a time when the poor were rebelling over the rich, and society was greatly divided between the few noble rich and the masses of poor commoners.
A call was made for a Jewish boy to be born in a time of great social disruption and upheavals in Germany. I applied and got the reincarnation.
I was born into a Jewish family and had 6 siblings. My father was a lawyer. In order to practice his profession he had to convert into a Christian. In silent protest he joined the protestant church of Lutherans. I was educated at home by my father until I was 13 years old. At the age of 17 my father enrolled me to study law in Bonn. I became president of a drinking society and nearly failed my year. I wanted to study philosophy but my father refused to pay the tuition. Suspecting and assuming that I was among bad company he had me transferred to the University of Berlin.
The company I kept changed from rowdy drunks to thinking philosophers and writing journalists. I acquired a reputation as a rebel rouser and became a well-respected scholar on society, its politics, its religion, and its history and economy. At age 23, I married a daughter of a baron. Her family disowned her, leaving us in poverty with 7 children. Only 3 of our children survived to adulthood. I worked as a foreign correspondent writing articles for Engels, a journalist in England.
Engels and I wrote “The Communist Manifesto”. It caused such a revolutionary upheaval that I was arrested many times. I was acquitted each time. I eventually moved to London where I stayed and wrote as a journalist. I elaborated on my theory of value and exploitation and argued that it would ultimately lead to the collapse of capitalism. I believed that the mismatch of economy governed by the wants of the rich over the needs of the poor is a major source of the social disruption and conflict that was witnessed.
The more I studied the historical trends of economy the more convinced I became that the poor masses could be liberated from their oppressive masters only when capitalism was replaced by communism. I became a voice for the working class of all people from all nations.
Soon after I died the Russian people overthrew their greedy monarch. Many of my ideas were incorporated into their new form of governance. Soon after that, many other governments in the world also incorporated many of my ideas into their policies.
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Adolph Hitler (1889-1945)
“Those who want to live let them fight. Those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live”.
”If you tell a big enough lie enough times and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed”.
My father was a customs official in Austria and wanted me to be one as well. I wanted to be a painter instead. He greatly resented that and showed his resentment by his horrible violent temper, especially when he was drunk. I was often beaten by him until I was black and blue. He enrolled me in one of the best high schools and in spite of him I failed and dropped out at 16 without a diploma. I hated school as it was filled with rich arrogant Jewish kids. While my father beat me physically with sticks, my snobby classmates beat me down emotionally with words.
At 17, I left home and tried to make a living as an artist with my mother's support. A year later my mother died. At 21, I inherited some money from my aunt and moved to Vienna. I struggled as a painter copying scenes from photographs on postcards and selling the paintings on the street for tourists. I wanted to study architecture but without my high school diploma I was rejected. I soon ran out of money and had to live in a shelter for the homeless. I read a book by Martin Luther called “On the Jews and their lies” that influenced my thinking greatly. Martin Luther proposed to burn down Jewish houses to punish them for refusing to regret that they crucified Jesus and for refusing to convert to become Christians. Luther went as far as to call for their extermination
When I turned 24, I inherited some more money and moved to Munich. I had to return to Austria to do my military service but was rejected as being physically unfit. The following year an Austrian prince was assassinated in Serbia. It added to the already chaotic situation of the power struggle going on in Europe. While the other countries were busy expanding their influence through their colonies all over the world, Germany used this opportunity to expand their cultural influence. They declared war against Russia and France in the pretext of defending German speaking Austria who they considered brothers.
As a German speaking Austrian I felt more German than Austrian and I applied to join the German army. I was accepted as a journalist and drew cartoons for the army newspaper. I was placed on the front lines and witnessed atrocities never imaginable before. The use of the machine gun, the airplane, bombs and toxins were unprecedented in human history. The brutality of the war was so great that it turned into a world war dividing the world into two. There were many casualties and millions of innocent civilians died.
I was nearly killed many times and was awarded many medals of bravery. Our brave soldiers went into Russia and the monarchy sent unarmed Russian soldiers to fight us. When they saw how we were slaughtering them they retreated and burned everything behind them. We were left behind without food and had to eventually retreat ourselves leaving Russia in ruins – just like what happened to Napoleon 100 years before. This ruination eventually led to the fall of the oppressive Russian monarchy so in the end, we ended up liberating the Russian people from their oppressors.
I was nearly blinded by poison gas and left the war a wounded and patriotic war hero. The war at the beginning caused a great patriotism from all German speaking people. Many people profited by the war by making weapons. But as the brutality increased, Germans slowly lost enthusiasm to fight. Even though we were winning the war and regaining more of our lost territories, many Germans stopped supporting the war effort when it was uncovered that some of our weapons manufacturers were actually selling weapons to our enemies. Eventually we stopped fighting and when the world regained its previous order, Germany was punished for starting the war. Territory we regained was taken away from us again and we were left worse off than when we started.
I got greatly depressed and started blaming the weapons manufacturers for inciting Germans to stop fighting and supporting the war for a united German fatherland to its completion. I felt that they had betrayed us and stole our goal away from us when we had it in our hands. I felt that these unpatriotic Germans were the blame for our losing the war and being forced to demilitarize our army. I started drinking and when drunk I started to speak very loud full with passion about Germany's misfortune and the enemies within.
At age 30, I rejoined our disgraced and humiliated army as an intelligence spy. I was sent to infiltrate a workers union called German Workers Party to uncover any Marxists elements. I became friends with the founder of this party. I was impressed by his nationalistic anti -Semitic anti- capitalist and anti- Marxist ideas. There were only about 50 people in our group and we had our meetings in a beer hall. The party founder was greatly impressed at my oratory skills, especially when I was a bit drunk and had a very loose tongue.
I joined the German Workers Party and designed a logo for our party flag. I used the ancient Aryan symbol, the swastika, symbolizing good luck and success. My beer hall oratory attacked all Jews, social democrats, liberals, reactionary monarchists, capitalists, and communists, and attracted many nationalists.
When I was 34, influential people set me up with the idea of marching on Berlin to overthrow the government. But I was betrayed by the people who set me up and I was arrested and sentenced to 5 years in prison for treason. The trial was widely publicized and I was able to use my oratory skills to air my views and defend my actions. I gained a lot of sympathizers and admirers. I was given special treatment reserved for martyrs and war heroes. In prison I wrote an autobiography and an exposition of my ideology. I called it “My Struggle” and it became a best seller. There was soon a public outcry for my release and after serving 1 year I was pardoned. The world started to suffer from an economic depression. Our currency became almost worthless especially when we started printing money to counteract the trend.
I was elected to organize our party. I decided to launch a campaign using all the newly available mass media like movies, TV, papers and airplanes. We hired the best media experts to help us sell our party to the Germans. First we changed the name of our party by adding Nationalist Socialist to the name. The media experts advised me to keep my unique mustache. They came up with a salute for our party as a sign of loyalty to its leader – me. It was similar to how the Romans greeted Caesar. As people saluted me they would wish me good health. I felt honored. I centralized the party and asserted that party leaders were not to be elected by their group but were rather to be appointed by their superiors. I was aiming to reach the top. My goal was to be like Caesar.
When I was 43, I was elected to run in the elections for the presidency. Our party kept getting more and more popular. We started with 6 percent of the vote and in 9 years we reached almost 45 percent. I organized a campaign called “Hitler over Germany” because I used airplanes to travel during my campaign to reach as many people as I could. I was able to speak in 2 cities in one day. We organized great outdoor speeches with lots of banners and fanfare. I got 35 percent of the vote coming in second. After a few years of power struggle I became president and with almost 85 percent of votes I was given special emergency dictatorial powers. I was 49 years old.
I set up a youth program enlisting 6 million children as young as 6 years old. I dressed them up like soldiers and they proudly paraded around in their uniforms and listened about the pride of being Germans. I set up programs for workers offering 25 million adults retreats to vacation spots to hear party propaganda and to attend vocational and academic workshops. I had the parliament buildings burned to the ground and blamed the communist party for it. The people gave me emergency measures to have the communists outlawed.
I appointed myself as the military head. I started to re-militarize our army. As our currency was so devalued I created a trust company and used stocks of that company to pay for re building the ruins left behind from the war. I secretly re-armed our military with these stocks and built dams, roads, railways, schools, hospitals, and great buildings, all to my specifications. I finally became the architect I wanted to be as a young man.
There were many mentally ill and physically handicapped children and adults who were becoming a strain on the welfare programs. I was shown many facilities where I saw these unfortunate inferior and unproductive people with lack of adequate care. Many were dying of malnutrition. It left me thinking they would be better off dead, and once they were all dead, so would everyone else. Many around me agreed and despite a public outcry, a euthanasia program was set up to mercifully end their lives for the good of all.
Once our souls were hardened, the next argument that came up was that the disabled were not the only people who drained our resources. There were other people who were hindering our advancement. They were like a cancer stealing our energy. They were the Jews, alleged communists, and the political opposition, homosexuals, and gypsies. We started a campaign of cleansing and purification. The first step was to mark out these people as dangerous. As most Jews were totally integrated and were not easy to tell apart from pure Aryan Germans, they were made to wear yellow armbands so all could easily identify them.
This caused an exodus of rich Jews to leave the country. I placed a traveling ban but many escaped undetected with their wealth. The country was being drained of its wealth by the same who betrayed it by not supporting it in the last war. I started a mass campaign to arrest rich Jews before they could escape the country and confiscated their wealth. Many of my generals were overly enthusiastic with what they considered retrieving Germany's rightful wealth and it was difficult and unproductive to hold them back. They felt that it was their patriotic duty to expropriate Jewish wealth. Our Hitler Youth were especially exuberant in playing spies and they would earn Hitler points for any useful information they could about their neighbors and even their immediate families for their fatherland.
Many wealthy and not so wealthy Jews were suspected and sent to prison. Their possessions were impounded and they were fined great amounts until they were insolvent and forced to work off their debt in work camps. They worked until they got too ill to work. Then they were handed over to the euthanasia program where they were put to their final rest.
The international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe responded to how Jews were being treated by trying to financially ruin Germany. I made it clear that military action and declaration of war would be an inevitable consequence to avert financial collapse. One day, in a drunken frenzy, I promised, swearing an oath in rage to my drunken generals, that if Germany would ever be forced into war to avert financial collapse by these Jewish financiers bent on ruining Germany, I would have all Jews exterminated.
I was a very angry man. I was angry at all the oppression Germany was facing. There were 2 oppressors who were oppressing the Germans. They were the Jews and the communists. I felt Germans have evolved to the highest levels attained by humanity despite being chocked and exploited. Germany had the best trained and equipped soldiers backed by the best scientists. Germany had the best musicians, philosophers, scientists, writers, and politicians. We liberated more people than our enemies colonized and enslaved. I believed Germans deserved the right to rid their oppressors and to unite and show the world their superiority.
The situation became economically unsustainable for Germany and we were eventually forced to take matters into our own hands. I made a unification pact with Austria and started to re take the land that was taken away from Germany after the last war. It was very easy to do as there was very little resistance. All we had to do was show our might. It was as if we were liberating the people from their oppressors. The feeling of liberators of the oppressed German speaking peoples got to be such a euphoric feeling that we decided that we should also liberate other peoples from the oppression of the international Jewish financiers who were the oppressors of all humanity.
So we started on a campaign to liberate people of other countries. We were expecting that liberating the Russians from their communist oppressors would open vast sparsely populated areas that could be colonized for living space and source of food and resources for future Germans. It was about time Germany started to be a colonial power. The world once again formed 2 camps and a world war started as I predicted it would. Technology had greatly advanced since the last war. The weapons were much more powerful and much more indiscriminately destructive to innocent civilians than in the last war.
Under the code name Operation "Barbarossa," Nazi Germany invaded Russia in 1941, in the largest German military operation of WWII. The destruction of the Soviet Union by military force, the permanent elimination of the perceived globalist Communist threat to nationalist Germany, and the seizure of prime land within Soviet borders for long-term German settlement had been core policy of the Nazi movement since the 1920s.
More than 3 million German soldiers, supported by 650,000 troops from Germany's allies Finland, Romania, Italy, Croatia, Slovakia and Hungary attacked the Soviet Union across a broad front stretching from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south. Much of the existing Soviet air force was destroyed on the ground. The Soviet armies were initially overwhelmed. German units encircled millions of Soviet soldiers, who, cut off from supplies and reinforcements, had few options other than to surrender.
German forces reached the gates of Leningrad in the north. They spilled into the Crimean Peninsula in the south and reached the outskirts of Moscow. After months of campaigning, the German army was exhausted. Having expected a rapid Soviet collapse, German planners had failed to equip their troops for winter warfare. They failed to provide sufficient food and medicines. German troops, advancing rapidly, outran their supply lines. This made their thinly defended flanks vulnerable to Soviet counterattack along the 1,600km stretch from Berlin to Moscow. The Soviet Union launched a major counterattack against the center of the front, driving the Germans back from Moscow in chaos.
When my generals reminded me about my promise of exterminating the Jews should they force us to war, my life changed from a nice dream to an unbearable nightmare. They demanded I keep my word and stick to my promise. I was drunk and I was very angry just like I was when I made that promise so many years ago. All I could do was shout out “shoot and burn them all”. My generals took that as a command from me and by the time the extermination program was underway it was too late to tell them that I didn't really mean it.
For many years German scientists were working on a super bomb that would guarantee a victory to the cruel war that had gone on for so many years. Many were Jews who defected to America and the project was set back a few years. When the Americans entered the war they proved to be too strong for us and with time it was clear that we were to lose the war. So I bunkered up in my bunker, got married to my girlfriend, and ordered all German infrastructure, the dams, roads, railways, schools, hospitals, and great buildings that I built to be destroyed.
People claim that I killed 13 million civilians in extermination camps but I have never seen a civilian die and have never killed anyone. I fought 2 world wars without killing anyone.
Then I killed myself myself.
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Andrew Vecsey (1949-2049)
I came back home in utter disgrace and was given therapy for a few years. Most resident souls were very understanding. The newly returned millions who died in the war were less so. I was in shock and was not ready to reflect too much on my very disturbing life as Hitler. I was soon advised to stop brooding and recommended to get a new life. This time I chose my destiny randomly.
My father was a retired Hungarian Nazi officer persecuted after the war by the communist victors, especially because of his noble blood ties.
My great grandfather was the viceroy to the king of Austria in charge of the Ministry of Education. My father became a successful architect and married a French lady of noble descent. When the war broke out he became an officer in Hitler's army. After the war he met a beautiful polish refugee who fled Poland on foot after being sold to Nazi soldiers by one of her brothers. My father divorced the French aristocrat and married my peasant mother. When the Russians defeated Germany and liberated Hungary they started persecuting Hungarians from the noble families, especially if they were Hitler's officers. My father started to be persecuted when I was born. We fled to another city nearby and with that I found myself in a life of constant up-rooting, moving from one place to another.
I seemed to have been born with many lives. I nearly died on birth. The doctors were amazed that I survived. When I was 7 years old my father got cancer and my mother packed us and we fled to her sister in Canada. We missed our airplane by a few seconds which ended up crashing and killing everyone aboard. The plane we finally boarded developed a leak in the fuel tank in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. As if guided by angels above us, we glided to the Azores islands below us with not a drop of benzene to spare.
I was put into a boy's home for 6 years. I enrolled in a university and studied engineering. After graduation I worked a while saving enough money to travel for a few years. I went down to South America and got married in Chile. My wife died shortly after our son was born. My mother-in-law took court action to take custody of my son and we had to flee the country.
I returned to Canada and raised my son alone until I met a Swiss lady and moved to Switzerland with my son to marry her. She had 2 boys and we soon had a common son. I got a dream job traveling to exotic places all over the world. After 8 years of family life my wife demanded a separation and me and my first son were forced to move out. I became a single father again. When my son grew up and left home I lost my job and ended up unemployed and on welfare. I developed a building block toy set that later proved to be very successful and popular. It was a truncated tetrahedral shape that represented the carbon atom and allowed modeling of molecules of carbon - like diamond crystals, flowers and plants.
I wrote a book about the future called “A Short History of a Long Future – A Guide to New-man” which only a very few people read. It was a science fiction about the past, present and future that proved to be very accurate describing how mankind used technology to kill nature and re-created it, finding immortality on the way. It was in great part a story about one of my lives as Dr. Joe Ova.
I also wrote a paper proposing shapes to atoms and mechanisms for physical laws. A young girl read my paper after I died and it sparked such an interest in her that she became a Nobel Prize winning physicist. Her work eventually allowed men to travel faster than light. This discovery paved the way for mankind to reach heights not imaginable before. It allowed me later in my life as Dr. J. Ova to find my ancestors and my true home, my heaven.
When I was 75 years old, I woke up one day to find it unusually quiet. I went to my neighbors to say good morning but the doors were locked and I thought that they were either still in bed or already away. When I went outside I found the roads deserted.
It was very weird. I turned on my Internet and looked at CNN. There was a breaking news alert about a sleeping sickness epidemic that had hit world-wide during the night. It all started with night shift workers reporting unbelievable stories. Hospital workers reported that all their patients had died during the night and that none of the day time staff reported for the day shift. Similar reports were made by the energy and communication industries. It stated that initial reports claimed that everyone who fell asleep within the last 24 hours had died in their sleep. It urged people to keep awake as long as possible in the hopes that this plague eventually passed.
The reporter continued that he had been up for 24 hours covering this story and that he had nobody else to replace him. He urged that power stations be put on automatic and left running when there is nobody left to run them. He urged Internet providers to do the same. Then with a sobbing voice he said that he would put his head down for a while as he was so very tired.
I called my family but there was no answer. All I could do was leave an urgent message that they call me back. I went back to the neighbors and rang their doorbells. None of them answered. I went to the hospital nearby and there were a handful of tired night shift workers in shock. All the patients had died overnight and no one reported for the day shift.
Then I went back home and saw that the CNN reporter had set up a divided screen, with one showing a recorded and repeating message, the one I heard before. And on a smaller screen it showed him with his head down on the table. The text line ran a plea “please leave everything open and turned on... please do not lock or turn anything off...”. I cleaned my house especially clean that day and then I went to bed and fell asleep.
The next morning not a soul was to be seen outside. The village was deserted. The stores were closed and the middle of the day seemed like it was the middle of night. The only sound and life seen were house pets and farm animals starting to roam out of their territory.
I broke into a house with a Ferrari, found the keys, and drove to Bern. Bern was deserted as well. Suddenly I had everything for the taking that I had ever wanted but I somehow didn't want anything except a human being. There was no one but me. I kept driving and was able to use cash from cash registers in the stores to fill up the tank whenever I needed to. I went to all the big cities driving thru them to see if they had any life. All were deserted. I reached Zurich and found it deserted as well. All I heard were either my own honking or a deafening silence.
I stayed overnight in Zurich in a penthouse of a luxurious hotel and the next day I went to the university and walked around. There by chance I saw a young girl lying under a tree in the park. I assumed she was dead and she was just as startled as I was when she woke up and saw me. We hugged each other silently for a long time. She was just 16 and in the beginning I thought of her as a daughter.
Anne and I wandered around Zurich and found it deserted. We went to the library and looked at all the knowledge that was beyond our grasp. We wondered if there were more people who were alive at the moment. We wondered what would happen to humanity if it was just us who survived. We immediately set priorities to have as many children as we could. We made wonderful love under the tree that we met each other.
We got all the books we could get on farming and found a small farm on the outskirts of Lucerne on the lake. We raised chickens and milked goats. We didn't have a garden because we could get frozen vegetables and fruit any time we wanted to.
Electricity continued to be supplied and freezers and machines needing electricity continued to function. We used cash to fill our car with fuel at any gas station we went to. The Internet continued to function as well and we regularly checked our email only to find the usual spam.
We scanned the Internet for any signs of life anywhere and found 100 people logged on to skype. We tried to speak with them but found that most spoke languages we could not understand. All were too far away to visit and all were alone looking for survivors. Some made a great effort to meet other survivors. One girl whose father was a ship captain took her father's cargo ship across the ocean to meet a man. She spent her life as a match-maker arranging partnerships via the Internet.
One day we found a listing on Wikipedia for the sleeping death epidemic. It claimed that out of every 100,000 people world-wide only one person survived. The cause was a genetically manipulated virus that induced deep sleep. The virus leaked out of the labs and for a while it used fungus spores to spread. Within months the virus had spread world-wide and had infected everyone. It lay dormant for a few years and during a very active phase of the sun and a full moon the virus was activated. The host falling asleep triggered the virus to release arsenic cyanide causing instant death.
The virus did not attack animals other than humans. It was indifferent to race, religion, wealth, or nationality. People immune to this man made virus had a gene that allowed the body to bind the arsenic cyanide in a harmless form.
Our worries of what would happen when the Internet eventually shut down and things stopped working slowly started to materialize about one year later. Up to then the gas machines worked most the time and accepted cash for gas. Then they slowly stopped working and we had to break into the tanks underneath to pump gas out of them.
Anne and I went on many excursions to try to find other survivors. Every week we drove in one direction as far as we could. We honked our horn along the way. Most the time we found no one. After a few years many cities were taken over by aggressive dogs and I had to carry a handgun for protection.
In 10 years we found over 50 people. Most were young women who ended up coming with us back home. Most of them wanted to have children and they asked me if I would father their child. How could I refuse. Anne agreed to be present and to help.
The Internet had long stopped working. We lived a life raising children and looking for survivors. Many survivors that we found decided to come back to our farm and settle nearby. I fathered many children and we formed a very large community. When our first son turned 10 I gave him a broken car with a garage filled with manuals and tools. I told him that if he wanted to drive he would have to learn how to fix the car. By the time he was 13 years old he was able to get the motor running.
We had years of anything and everything we ever wanted and much more than what we really needed. We documented all of the people we found listing their location, their needs, and their skills. The communication services had long ago stopped working lacking necessary maintenance. Pigeons started to be used.
We found Priska who raised pigeons. We revisited all of the people we had found and gave them all pigeons. Priska offered to act as a communication switchboard relaying messages with her pigeons. Most of the messages were good news - like a birth or the finding of a survivor.
We continued our weekly excursions looking for survivors. We went further up into the mountains and one day we found a group of 20 children ranging from newly born to young men with sprouting beards and young expecting women.
They were all naked. When the children first saw me they all ran to me and surrounded me and hugged me. The oldest and tallest was named Adam. He ran up to me and grabbed me and gave me a hug and a kiss and called me dad. He cried when I told him that I was not his dad. He told me sobbing that his dad went away one day many years ago to look for other survivors and he never returned.
He had an interesting story to tell.
After my mom died my father told me of how he had found her with my sister Eve and me a few years before everyone except himself, Eve and me suddenly died. I was only one year old. Father described a very strange world before the people suddenly died. Streets were filled with cars and people and a family lived in every house.
Then one day my father drove away for a day to look for survivors and never came back. We are still waiting for him to return. He taught us many things. My father told my sister Eve that she must one day take over the role of our mother. And he told me that I must take over his role when he gets old and dies.
Father taught Eve and me that the role of a man was to love his wife and have children with her, to provide shelter, and nurture her and their children with food. He told us that the role of a wife was to have children with her husband, to be tender, and nurture him and their children with love. When my father died I was 7 years old. I told Eve that I would take over my father's role and she told me that she would take over my mother's. We moved into our parent's bedroom.
Then one day Eve grew a fat stomach. It grew bigger and rounder until she gave birth to a baby girl. The next year she gave birth to a baby boy. Within 16 years we had 16 new children and we taught them everything that our parents taught us - to read and write, to count and sing, and to play music and dance.
The community of children were thriving as a farming community. They had a school and a clinic. They had 2 soccer teams, a playing field, a community hall, and a choir. They never went farther than the next city where they found solar panels, books, movies, and computer games.
Just before I died two very fat armed Chinese men flew into our commune in what appeared to be one-man helicopters. They landed nearby and when they saw we were not armed they put away their weapons. They looked like spacemen with laser guns. They gave us a leaflet in 36 languages, scanned us with machines and flew off as fast as they landed.
We come to save you. You are no longer alone.
We are from China and found you by infrared technology. We are here to help you. In a few weeks your power system will be restored and your Internet connection will be available. Please use it to receive further instructions at
Priska’s pigeons were busy that week. People didn't know whether to be happy or sad.
A few days later on a cloudy night the entire sky turned bright and began to show a movie. It was like the entire sky was a TV of exceptionally high definition. And then the sound began very gently like a soft wind forming into a crescendo of drums. The vision was that of man surrounded by what looked like angels. The speech was in German.
“You are saved. You are not alone............”
I suddenly sensed a sinking heaviness in my heart and a lifting lightness in my head as I felt my soul being torn from my body. Then I died.
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2100AD->9000AD Fat man, new money, nuclear batteries, nano-beads, robot body, traveled back to the past, man in love with a robot, too poor to enter Heaven Inc., Dr. Joe Ova
