Chapter 35 February 407 AD Paulsland-Assassination Attempt

            When Michael, the Bishop of Rome, told Emperor Trajan about his plan to create turmoil in Paulsland with political assassinations, he wasn’t telling the Emperor what he was going to do; he was telling the Emperor about a plan that was well underway.

            Across Paulsland, several agents of the Universal Church were attempting to make attempted assassinations happen, but in a way that did not lead back to the Universal Church or Rome. That meant that whoever attempted the assassinations could not be members of the Universal Church. In fact, they could never have been members of the Universal Church. This meant that the priest of the Universal Church couldn’t just send out a zealot who would do whatever their priest told them.

            Although this sounded like it would make the priest's job very difficult, it actually just made the job more time-consuming. Perhaps if things had been more stable in Paulsland, this would be an impossible job, but for the last several years, the political factions had been publicly splitting the nation of Paulsland apart. People for various reasons, were taking different sides. Worse, with the ongoing and recent war, various people had paid in blood or health, so the people of Paulsland were on edge.

            With people on edge, the Universal Church needed to find some foolish young men who were of the right political persuasion, easily to manipulate, and angry. Once they found some people of the right character, surround them with Universal Church agents who told them what they wanted to hear and spent months telling them that Paulsland needed a hero to take out one of these bad political figures. The Universal Church was well aware that almost no one would take up a suicide mission if they thought they were doing it for their glory, instead they told these young men that if someone took out a particular political figure that the foolish young man just so happened to hate, then the assassin would be a hero saving tens of thousands, perhaps millions of lives. It wouldn’t even be murder; it would be self-defense.

            Rome had three people they needed someone to attempt to assassinate to create the most internal turmoil. First King Shimbir, who lived on Flattop Mountain. Second was Malkia, who lived near the capital. Finally, Jinka, who was currently building fortresses near the border of Kush and Paulsland. In each area, the Universal Church’s agents were feeding the anger in those who were unsatisfied with Rome’s targets and creating delusions for them. In each area, the Universal Church’s agents were feeding the delusions of half a dozen individuals waiting for one to crack.

            Near Flattop Mountain Mjing was the first to crack. He was just seventeen years old and had a permanent limp from an injury he sustained fighting Kush several years ago when they marched into Paulsland. As far as he was concerned, Jinka was the greatest person in the world since he used the steam weapons to crush the Kush armies when they attempted to siege the capital. His opinion was reinforced when Rome capitulated land to Jinka, and further enforced when that stupid general Kitako lost his army and steam weapons to the Kush. Mjing was convinced that Jinka would have defeated Kush if he had led the army.

            After leaving the army, he began looking for friends who felt the same way he did, and found some friends, mostly from the Universal Church, who felt the same way. Mjing had gone to various churches when he was a child, so he didn't hold their religion against them, but he didn’t hold to religion. He figured that if he ever found a wife and had kids, he would take them to church, but beyond that, religion didn’t hold much sway in his life, and he was grateful that his religious friends didn’t discuss religion with him, just politics.

            One of Mjing’s points of contention, one that his friends strongly agreed with him on, was that King Shimbir made the graduating class his guards. Everyone agreed that king Shimbir should have waited until those soldiers served their two years before making them his guards. Guard duty was very safe, and Mjing was bitter that he had to go into battle, lose his friends, and lose his health, but Shimbir’s guards got to safely watch after the king, thousands of miles from the front lines. It was unprecedented. For three hundred years, soldiers were not qualified for better jobs until after they served two years.

            To make matters worse, Shimbir was a moron. He was made the king as a small child and was spoiled rotten. Unlike the rest of the children in Paulsland, he knew nothing, at least according to most of the news released by the various papers in Paulsland. Worse, Shimbir stole the steam machine company that Jinka started, and was running it into the ground. Jinka wanted Paulsland to rise into a new era of technology, and Shimbir was going to destroy it because, like any spoiled brat, he had to take other people’s toys and break them.

            Unfortunately, Shimbir was endangering people’s lives, including the lives of the brothers Mjing fought with. If Shimbir didn’t stop acting like a brat and start doing what was good for the people, then Paulsland would die. Every single one of Mjing’s friends agreed that if Shimbir died, then Paulsland would be better off for it.

            After long consideration, Mjing decided he would sacrifice his life for Paulsland, and for his brothers in arms. He could no longer fight next to them, but he could help them by taking out Shimbir and allowing Jinka to have control of his company once again. If Jinka had control of his company, he would use it to wipe out the Kush and maybe use that victory to force the two halls of representatives to make him King. King Paul was the greatest in the history of Paulsland, but the royal line no longer had his greatness. It was filled with drug addicts and brats. Jinka put Paulsland first, unlike that last handful of kings.

            Mjing talked to his friends about where Shimbir was, and they told him that he was living a life of lavish luxury on top of Flattop Mountain. A mountain that used to be used to train the next generation, a mountain that Mjing trained at personally, a mountain that the Illuminati used to perform experiments, was now being wasted on the brat king. Worse, he was taking the steam weapons made at the nearby steam factory, weapons that should be going to the army, and using them as toys, toys that should be helping his brothers survive on the front line. Mjing talked with his friends about how to get a meeting with Shimbir, but they were insistent that he was too much of a brat to meet with someone as lowly as Mjing, but they did mention that Shimbir ate the same food as his guards. Apparently, Shimbir had enough forethought to act like he was humble by eating guard food, but the reality was that Shimbir fed his guards gourmet food so he could look humble when he ate their food. That meant that money that should be going to the front line went to expensive food for the guards who didn’t face the dangers of real soldiers like Mjing.

            When Mjing heard this, he was glad that he found a way to cut the cancer of Shimbir out of Paulsland, while also getting rid of some of the soldiers who were not fulfilling their duty, like Mjing had. He would poison their food. He hoped that it would set a trend for those who didn’t do their duty.

            Once Mjing had the idea to poison the young king and his guards, he applied for a kitchen job at Flattop Mountain. With so many young men gone to fight in the war, he was easily given the job. He felt he was given the job despite his limp, not realizing that injured veterans were always preferred hires when it came to any army or government job. When he applied for the job, he wasn’t sure if Shimbir’s guards were still eating in the cafeteria he ate at when he was at man camp, but on day one of his job, he found out they were, which in his mind meant he had access to the king’s food. The day after he had access to the king’s food Mjing bought arsenic, supposedly to make his own paint, for a house he claimed to be building. He bought it from a smelter, as arsenic is one of the byproducts, and the smelter even gave him four recipes of paint to make with arsenic.

            Once he had his arsenic, he put it with several other supplies and made his way to his new job. As he limped to work, he considered his future. If he poisoned the king and his guards, he would die. If he didn’t poison them, then he would live a meaningless life. He couldn’t get a great job because of his injury. Even though most of the men his age were at war, the girls didn’t look at him twice. Some of his battle buddies were better men than he, and yet they died protecting him. He didn’t like living with the guilt. If he killed the king, then it would go a long way to protecting his battle buddies who were still fighting with Jinka. The only honorable thing for Mjing to do was kill king Shimbir, and save lives.

            Once he reached his job, he helped the other cooks. Most of their jobs consisted of pulling out jars of food, stored years ago, putting them in pots with various spices, and making stews out of them. As a cook, he saw that the food that the guards and king ate were not better than the people’s, but he had convinced himself that Shimbir and the guards were somehow eating better. If he was in the right state of mind he would have realized some of the jars of food he was using to prepare their meal were prepared the same year as the food he ate when he was in man camp, but his emotions blinded his reason. With hate, fury, depression, and other evil emotions swirling, he added arsenic to the food along with other spices to cover it up. Arsenic had two great qualities as far as he was concerned. It was tasteless, and activated charcoal did not heal it. Furthermore, a gallon of arsenic was enough to kill thousands of people. Anyone who ate even a spoonful of this food would die. Anyone who had a drop of it would get very sick and probably die.

            In Mjing’s mind, he figured that he would make plates of this food, and the guards would immediately take it to the king, as the king was a spoiled brat, and only once the king ate would he allow his guards to eat. Despite what he had seen working in the kitchen, reality did not overcome his preconceived notions and hate, no matter how obviously wrong they were. He was like a man who had feelings for a girl who found him repulsive. Logic couldn’t overcome the feelings he had. Feelings in humans were far more powerful in decision-making than logic, facts, or evidence.

            When lunch time rolled around, the king’s guard lined up and began filling their plates with food. Not every soldier took Mjing’s poisoned food, but a few hundred did. In Mjing’s mind, they would rush up Flattop Mountain and give Shimbir his share of the cooked food, which was far from reality. If someone moved quickly, it took nearly an hour to go up the mountain, and unfortunately for Mjing’s unhinged plan, soldiers began throwing up half an hour after lunch started. It didn’t take long for them to figure out that it was from arsenic poisoning, and unfortunately, all they could do for those affected was give them morphine so their death wouldn’t be horrific.

            With someone poisoning food, everyone who was in the kitchen was detained and questioned. It didn’t take long to find Mjing’s bottle of arsenic, and only a few hours to link it to Mjing. Mjing should have committed suicide, but he was a terrorist; he wanted his perspective to reach the world, so he told everyone who listened that king Shimbir the brat should die for the good of Paulsland.

            Paulsland believed in fast trials. The twelve people who were scheduled to be on the next jury all arrived within three days, and none of them had ever met Mjing, or were familiar with any of the soldiers who were murdered, so the trial started four days after the murder. The trial was over in less than an hour. They found him guilty and sentenced him to execution, one piece at a time, with the clarification that his lips and tongue should not be cut off. They felt like Paulsland needed to know what a crazy person sounded like, and the cost of becoming crazy.

            The same minute the verdict was given out he was dragged to the town square at the foot of Flattop Mountain, put in a cage to small to move in, and they started by cutting his manhood off, and searing the wound shut. At first he told the world it was worth it to help Jinka become King, but that didn’t last too long as everyday a guard came out and cut off another small piece of Mjing, and seared the wound shut. If an infection developed, it was cut off and seared shut. It took three weeks before Mjing begged for them to stop, but his cries for mercy were music to the guards' ears. It would take Mjing two years to die, and each day his cries of regret sounded out.

            As for the papers of Paulsland, they were filled with stories about the attempted assassination of King Shimbir, and that a Jinka loyalist was the culprit.


Authors notes-This is a chapter where I hope my google search history doesnt lead to a police officer knocking on my door.