The Judas Bird

The Judas bird is a fish.

But you wouldn’t know that. Few people do. The only reason I know of the Judas bird is that I have more money than everyone else does. I have so much money that my money makes more money than almost anyone else has on the planet, so I get to know things that other people don’t and I get to do things that other people don’t.

The natural question people have at this juncture is somewhere along the lines of why? All of the questions centre around why I have this money and underneath it all is greed, jealousy and envy. It isn’t fair that I have this money and they don’t. It’s ridiculous really. Why get like that? Do zebras look at lions and ask similar questions? Maybe there are species that got all uppity like that, but they’re all extinct now. Nature doesn’t let its tenants dick about like that. Survive or be killed. Moaning is a waste of time and energy and some people are really inefficient when it comes to this sort of thing.

They need to get with the program!

I’ll tell you this because you’ll be interested to know it. My grandfather got with the program. He really did. First it was an internet program when those things were blowing up, and boy did his gig blow up! Then he took the concept of alternative energy and gave it wheels, and as that was taking off, he got involved in a space program designed to perpetuate the human race come what may. Multi-planetary living was his vision, he really did aim for the stars and he didn’t settle for a lump of rock orbiting the Earth either.

Grandfather was so busy going bigger, better and farther that he didn’t have any time left to be a father. There was no succession planning. He would get rockets full of people to other planets, or it just wouldn’t happen. 

This was a stroke of genius from a genius. 

You see, grandfather knew about people, and he knew that the best way to secure his legacy was to go it alone and take it as far as he could, working tirelessly even when all he had left was how tired he was. He pushed and he evolved and he built until he had nothing left. He was so busy living he didn’t notice when he’d stopped living. There was even a delay in the acceptance of his demise from those around him. For a moment, it seemed like he was pausing to reflect before he issued forth with another progress bomb. He stood there and he went silent and as the silence carried on for longer than it ever had done, it gradually became obvious that he’d ceased functioning. 

Grandfather died as he had lived, busy, on his feet and with an adoring audience. Not many people die standing up, but then grandfather was not many people.

Mother was a different kind of genius. She had watched and she had learnt and she was standing in the wings to take over as soon as grandfather vacated his position as the most intelligent and innovative person on the planet. 

My mother took the space mission and she made it work. She really did. Grandfather would have been proud. 

Kinda. 

It’s funny, because grandfather was portrayed as a bit of a freak and as someone who was detached from the people around him, but nothing could have been further from the truth. He was a visionary and his special power was to build up the people around him and as they ignited and flew, so did his dreams. He made people believe and he never, ever let up. You want a guy like that spotting you at the gym. You always have more in the tank. He made people realise that and realise more of their potential than they thought possible.

Despite her watching and learning, mother was the real freak. She had a mean streak a mile wide and longer than an octogenarian’s memory. She was, as they like to say, task oriented. This is a lovely euphemism that really means that a person like mother chews people up and spits them out. Everyone she encountered was worse for having spent time in her company. If she was an element then she was radioactive mercury. She was walking insult and injury in a smiling package.

Still, she drove grandfather’s space mission to the finish line. There was enough of him in the project for it to work despite her inflicting herself upon it. Her skill was being bright enough to know that it would work and not giving anyone any shadow to hide in. 

I was thankful that work was all consuming for her. I was a minor miracle in her life and my origins are shrouded by both mist and veil. I should care more about how I came about, but I have multi-trillion reasons not to give a flying monkey turd about such things. All that counts is that I am, and that while you’ve been listening to me, I have bought your entire life. You, everyone you know, your workplace, your everything. And now I have you. I have you in a way that no one else can.

That’s both powerful and interesting.

To a point it is anyway.

I have to admit that after a while it gets boring.

That’s why I am here in a godforsaken part of the world. One of the only places where the mainstream gods have failed to go viral. I have bought the knowledge and now I’m buying the experience and that experience is that I will be the first person outside this place to have an audience with the Judas bird.

I mean, you have to know about it first and the people here, where the Judas bird resides, really don’t get out. Their language is unique in its structure and almost undecipherable. There are ways and means though and I have the means that create ways unavailable to anyone else.

All I needed was the gist. 

The name of this unique creature got me right from the off.

“Hold on! Back up!” I said, and when I say something, people listen. I pay them to listen. If they don’t then they suffer for it. By suffer, I mean job loss as a start. Then they are processed. Please refer to my aforementioned purchasing of the entirety of a life. I’ve become quite sophisticated in the wholesale destruction of a life. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t kill people. I go one better than that. I take everything from them and allow the vacuum I have created around them where once there was a life to do the rest. I don’t even bother watching the end game, so total is the vacuum, “Judas bird? What’s that?” I asked

“It’s a fish.”

Normally, (yeah I am aware of normal and what it entails, we all need a baseline, a referent point to measure things from or against), this statement would be said with a degree of uncertainty. Not in my presence though. I will accept nothing other than total conviction. I cannot and will not countenance anything other than total commitment. We have already discussed the consequences of someone delivering anything else other than what is required.

I recapped, “the Judas bird is a fish?”

“Yes, and no one has ever seen it.”

This last was not strictly true. With some very simple deductive reasoning it could be demonstrated not to be true, or else how were we even talking about it? The people who knew about the Judas bird were so removed from the importance of society that they may as well have been the trees that they lived amongst, and it is well documented that when trees fall in the forest, they only make a sound if someone of some import and note hears them. 

So here I was, hearing them for the first time. There may have been others, but they were of no account. None of them were alive and the tale of the Judas bird had never been told.

Time for me to do something about that.

The location of the Judas bird is a secret and the few people who know of its existence guard the secret well. The general location, even with today’s tech, is not accessible by anything other than on foot. 

From what we could discern, the people native to this location would fight or die rather than give up the secret. I had another option open to me, but I did take advice. I pay well for advice so I do consider it. I went in with a minimal number of personnel. Any more and the game would be up. Any less and we might not make it.

Some of us made it.

I am adept at disclosure. Many things are on a need to know basis. I need to know. I need you to know what I need you to know. The night before we made contact with the people who safeguard the Judas bird, the remaining members of my team went to sleep for the very last time. I’ll spare you the details. You don’t need to know any more than that.

The following morning, I made my own way down the remainder of the valley and made myself known to the small band of people who are the guardians of the Judas bird.

I had a translator app that allowed me to converse with them. They seemed happy to see me and all went well in those first stages of contact. They were still smiling as they rushed me and took all of my tech away. That is why I have had to resort to pen and paper to write this account.

By the time they took everything from me, we had discussed terms and they had promised me what the translation app called an audience with the Judas bird. They even showed me where this audience would take place. 

Ever since I first heard of this exotic creature, I envisaged a wide, shallow river of a crystal blue hue. I saw myself wading out to meet with the rarest of species. The meeting held a symbolism for me that I could not adequately explain. I am unique and isolated and no one will ever know me. The walls of my wealth encase me and hold me prisoner. To discover a similarly unique and isolated being was something that drew me and infused me with energy like nothing ever had.

The place of our meeting is nothing like that which I envisaged, and I fear that I have got this badly wrong. I have tried to communicate with these people in an attempt to negotiate another outcome, but without the translation app I cannot convey sufficient meaning to them and in any case, they do not seem to care.

Without my possessions I cannot contact the outside world, and for the first time in my life I am cut off from my wealth and everything it has afforded me. I am freed from the walls of its prison, but now I realise that those walls also protected me and without them I am weak and vulnerable. This feeling of vulnerability is alien to me and I seem to be experiencing other, novel feelings. I think I am afraid and lonely. I always thought I was lonely, but this loneliness is a different animal. It stalks me and it makes me feel very small indeed. So small that were I to shrink any further I would become nothing, be nothing.

Tomorrow they will put me in the well that they showed me this morning. I have no way of knowing whether they will cast me down there or lower me down gradually. One thing I have a growing certainty over is that this is a one way trip and I am not coming out of there.

Will I see the thing that is called a bird, that is really a fish? 

Should I fear the creature that awaits me in the bottom of that well?

I have had a vision and I have no way of knowing whether it is a premonition, a precursor to my fate. I fall from a great height and I land in deep water. The water breaks my fall, but I feel no pain despite the long drop. I struggle in the water at first. Struggling to keep my head above the surface, but then a feeling of serenity sweeps over me and I stop moving. I stay above the surface for what seems like a long time and then, ever so slowly I sink into the water and I am forever changed.

A bird that is not a bird will fall from the sky, and if it falls into the water, then it had better be a fish…