Little Big Horn

The history of the colonization of new territories in the `new world` is above all a history of a clash between dramatic differences in the technology of killing. Usually military operations ended with a massacre of the indigenous population due to a clear technological superiority, (the famous Gun, Steel and Germs by Jared Diamond). But every rule is not a rule if there is no exception like Isandlwana. Or the Little Big Horn...

Opponents: US Army (7th Cavalry Regiment, 678 soldiers under the command of Colonel George Custer) vs. Indian group (Cheyenne, Sioux, and Arapaho, about 3,000 warriors led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse.)

When: June 26, 1876

Where: Little Big Horn River Valley, Montana

The U.S. Army was tasked with finally driving the stubborn Indians into the planned reservations, if necessary by force. According to the agreement between the U.S. government and Chief Red Cloud, several Indian tribes were to completely relocate from their territories to those assigned to them by the U.S. government, in order for the land to be inhabited by white colonists. Many of the tribes rejected the agreement and began to resist. Especially the aforementioned tribes grouped under the leadership of the Sioux chiefs Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. The American administration, under pressure from the hordes of white settlers, decides to lead a military expedition and herd the Indians into a reservation, and if it cannot do so, to exterminate as many of them as possible.

After several massacres of Indian tribes, mostly women, children, and the elderly, not warriors (atrocities later renamed "battles" by Hollywood), American forces, primarily the 7th Cavalry Regiment, decide to take a final offensive in the Little Big Horn River valley, where scouts locate a large group of Indian warriors. Colonel Custer is eager to gain military glory, since the massacres of women and children he has committed in the previous months could not bring him any glory or honor. He decides to attack alone with his regiment, decides not to wait for the infantry, and refuses to take the Gatling machine guns offered to him by the commander of the 20th Infantry Regiment because he believes they will only slow him down in the attack...Divided into four squads, the regiment is to attack the Indian forces according to Custer's plan, the first squad directly, the second and third on the flank, and the fourth to cut off the Indians' possible escape route.

Although the scouts report a concentration of a large group, according to their estimates at least 1500-2000 people, Custer arrogantly decides that the numerical superiority of the Indians is not a big problem...Around 3 p.m., the attack begins. The first squad galloped directly at the group of Indians, who were armed mainly with firearms, with the popular Winchester repeaters that held 7-15 rounds in the magazine, depending on the model, unlike the standard US Army rifles that had to be reloaded after each shot. Naturally, the Indians had purchased the rifles from whites, for a good price. In a bizarre twist of circumstances, technological innovation was on the side of the native forces this time. At the same time, the second and third squads pressed on the flanks in order to outflank the Indians. However, Crazy Horse easily anticipated this and led a large group of warriors (about 1,000) to outflank the second and third squads using numerical superiority, speed, and superior riding skills.

In a classic encirclement pincer maneuver, three-quarters of Custer's force walked into a trap. The fourth squad, which was in the background, hearing that a major battle had broken out, headed towards the scene in order to unblock the three squads. During that time, completely surrounded and with the balance of forces clearly in favor of the Indians, the three squads were destroyed to the last man in less than two hours. Custer fell on the battlefield and was later scalped. The fourth squad was powerless to do anything more, it was only drawn into the debacle and completely defeated like the remaining three, thus giving birth to the legend of the masters of the rural guerrilla, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, and George Custer, who nevertheless entered history through the back door, also finds his place on various rankings of the most incompetent commanders in military history...

The losses of the Indians are estimated at around 130 dead and 160 wounded. From the  American side what survived was - one horse...

(Roger Mortis, 061)

The Man from Japan

Forget Dan Brown and company, the real plot twist surrounding Jesus comes from...Japan...because the Son of Man was buried there! Jesus, contrary to the popular belief that his name was Yeshua and that he came from Judea, was actually called Kirisuto and lived in the village of Shingomura in Aomori Prefecture, until he was 21 years old when, together with his brother Isukiri, he set out to spread his shiny new religion, a mixture of local versions of Buddhism and animism (!?) throughout the world. After various adventures through Siberia and Central Asia, he arrived in Judea, where his teachings, for some reason, met with great response from the local people, but also hostility from the local rabbis and the Roman authorities, who, as we know, `tailored his hat`...

Pontius Pilate sentenced him to crucifixion and all that, but here Isukiri (who supposedly looked a lot like his brother) bursts into the story and offered to sacrifice himself on the cross so that Kirisuto could survive and continue God's mission. As we know, there is a gap in the biography of Jesus in the Bible, dating back some eighteen years, which has motivated many to speculate about the actions of Jesus (Kirisuto?) during that period.

Kirisuto survived thanks to his brother's sacrifice and headed back to Japan. After many ups and downs, he finally got home and decided to practice spirituality in a more down-to-earth way, dedicated himself to growing rice, got married (sorry Dan Brown, there were people before you with such a theory) and had three daughters. Later, he started preaching again, but these were calm and gentle sermons, traveled throughout all the Japanese islands and passed away at the ripe old age of 106. His lineage supposedly continues to this day in Japan, where the Sawaguchi family still cherishes the tradition of their famous ancestor and tells the legend to the rare visitors and tourists.

On their property is the grave of Kirisuto himself, and nearby is buried an ear of his brother Isukiri (!?) which he managed to obtain in an unknown way from the Roman legionaries (perhaps from Longinus himself who was hanging around on the Calvary ​​hill at the time) and they even have a place where a lock of hair from Mary Magdalene is buried, a certain Jewish woman with whom Kirisuto had a short but intense relationship during his stay in Judea, although it is not known how it all ended...

The documents that the Sawaguchi family had were taken for testing in Tokyo in the 1930s but suffered during the war when Tokyo was bombed with napalm, killing more civilians than in the explosions of the two atomic bombs combined - and many objects of state importance disappeared along with many archives full of writings and documents that were there.

Which is...quite convenient.

(Roger Mortis, 060)

The Christmas Truce

Last Christmas marked exactly one hundred and ten years since an incredible event that is as important today as it was then and that always restores faith in humanity, at least for a brief moment that lasts no more than a blink of an eye...

Christmas, 1914.

The Western Front, death and suffering, attacks on barbed wire across no man's land, from the English Channel to the Swiss border, a mass slaughter was taking place. To make things even worse, if that were possible, nature joined in on the human evil by sending the lowest winter temperatures since they were measured. Snipers were waiting for an opportunity to kill some careless soldier or, better yet, an officer of the enemy. In such an atmosphere, Christmas Eve arrived.

On both sides of the trenches on the front line, people were slouching, freezing and waiting for dawn.

Suddenly, strange sounds began to reach from the German trenches. With each note, more and more intelligible, through the fog and the stench of rotting corpses, through the craters full of poisoned water, rats, blood and mud, through the murky night, across no man's land - the verses of Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht began to reach British and French ears. First individual voices and then more and more German soldiers began to sing. Soon, along the entire line, tens of thousands of throats were singing the most famous Christmas carol.

The first tears appeared on the cheeks of the frozen and shocked Allied soldiers. It was probably the last thing they expected in the world at that moment. Death was certainly expected with much greater certainty. The song began to be shyly sung in both English and French, in both versions.

One song, three languages, one night.

After a while, the guards noticed German soldiers with white flags and without weapons appearing in no man's land and saying something. A few more desperate, more runaway or more humane soldiers from the Allied side (for whom how) arbitrarily rushed to meet their `enemies`. The first peaceful contact between people on both sides occurred. Soon the meeting became massive and cigarettes were exchanged, those who knew the enemy's language started chatting, and modest meals were shared among themselves. The British also had a completely British idea at dawn, several improvised footballs appeared and several football matches began. That day, no one fired a shot and orders were almost ignored everywhere.

The officer cadres on both sides were shocked and concerned by such outbursts of humanity and the senior generals decided to put an end to such deviant and unpatriotic phenomena as playing football and sharing a portion with yesterday's opponent. The first death sentences for treason were handed down and people were shot for sharing a cigarette with a man mobilized and brought to the front - from the opposite side.

In the following days, young men were taken out to be shot, made to sit on a chair at dawn after having been isolated in barracks all night, probably to contemplate their `sin`, tied to the chair and unable to control their bladder and bowels from fear, screaming and crying - only contributing to the curse of the situation, scenes that are impossible for any film, but which served as a warning that the state expects you to kill the designated peer, the `enemy`, and not to sing Christmas carols with him. The event, as expected, remained on the margins of history, although it is more important than all the disgusting battles and military operations that wiped out an entire generation...

That night. That morning. That Football.

That night atoned for all the sins of humanity in one magical moment.

(Roger Mortis, 059)

Life Saving Nightmare

Some people are said to have been lucky if they bought a winning lottery ticket. And some who avoided the grim reaper thanks to impulsiveness or even a dream.

Of the 213 passengers and crew of the S.S. "Warratah", a passenger ship that traveled in the opposite direction from the then popular route for settling the South land, that is, from Melbourne, Australia - to Britain in 1909 - 211 people disappeared without a trace or a sound, except for two who we will come back to later.

There was a passenger ship that carried emigrants to Australia and was returning with a new round of passengers who were going to visit the ``old country``, a brand new ship, although not particularly exceptional, displaced some 16,000 tons of water - quite solid dimensions for the time. That ship had already made one trip to Britain and back. The second voyage will remain recorded as another in the series of inexplicable mysteries that fill the ocean expanses. Departing from Melbourne, the ship stopped in Durban, South Africa, among other ports, to refuel. The next stop was Cape Town, another in a series of ports on the way to Europe.

One of the passengers, tormented by nightmares the previous day in which he clearly dreamed that the ship would sink - decided to disembark in Durban. Another, completely impulsively decided to shorten the trip and try to find work in Durban. This would save their lives because the next day the ``Warratah`` set sail on a journey, on which it would be spotted by several ships, before disappearing totally, completely and irrevocably.

At least two ships passed by the ``Warratah``, the second even exchanged Morse signals using the ship's searchlights. Everything was in order, the sea was relatively calm although the weather forecast was not the best. The last ship to spot the `Warratah` was 180 nautical miles from Durban. The `Warratah` was expected to arrive in Cape Town in a few days...which turned into a few weeks, which gave way to months...never to arrive and to this day after 116 years the fate of the ship is unknown.

The usual culprit was sought in the heavy seas but the "Warratah" was a large ship with powerful engines and the conditions were far from threatening for such a ship. Others speculated that the ship's center of gravity in relation to the metacenter was allegedly miscalculated which reflected in the ship's construction with incorrect statics and accordingly impaired buoyancy and stability... but this is unlikely since the ship had already traveled from Britain to Australia, the longest sea route in the world. An unstable ship would have a hard time doing that, especially since ships always have ballast to maintain stability. In 1999, there was a rumor that the sunken ship had been found, but later examinations indicated that it was nothing of the ``Warratah'' but a completely different sunken ship from World War Two.

The team that was searching for the ship in 2004, after 22 years of research and searching, finally gave up on it all because the ship was nowhere where, according to all the laws of logic, it should have been. The passenger who had the dream about the sinking tried to warn several passengers to get off. No one listened to him...

(Roger Mortis, 058)

Now you see it, now you don`t!

Disappearances have always been a timeless phenomenon, if one can say so, because no matter how much conviction and consensus there is that the worst has happened - there always remains the hope that somewhere out there, somehow, some... managed to cheat death, what's more, that they may be living better than before the disappearance, a diluted version of the myths of an afterlife in which, unfortunately, too many people believe, to whom pre-mortal existence brings only misery.

A Boeing B-707 in a cargo version of the Brazilian company Varig took off from Tokyo to Rio on January 30, 1979 with six crew members and no passengers. Communication with flight control was normal, the weather conditions were ok, there was nothing special... until half an hour after takeoff, all communication abruptly ceased, which was actually the pilots' last contact with this dimension. There are similarities with the case of the Malaysian plane from last year, except that there were other factors at play here.

The investigation quickly reached a dead end, and a statement was later issued that it was a case of cabin decompression - without any evidence, absolutely nothing to support such a claim. The factor that was unofficially significant was the presence of 153 paintings by Japanese painter Manabu Mabe, estimated at $1.3 million at the time (more than $4 million today).

Was that amount enough for the crew to see a way to secure a carefree future? Maybe. Considering that rumors later emerged that some of the paintings had surfaced through private collections and auctions for closed-door clients, it is possible that the crew had made a calculation.

The problem with this theory is that it is unlikely that all six would agree to separate themselves from their families, friends, careers, and their entire lives up to that point with a total cessation of communication with anyone. Another problem is the landing. The B-707 is a first-generation long-haul jet airliner and required a fairly long, concrete runway. Not that it couldn't have landed on an improvised one, especially if it was a one-off situation, but it's still unlikely. And where would that runway be?

Other theories followed later, such as custom and order, for example that the KGB made a deal with the pilots to land in North Korea, probably based on a similar case when Japanese citizens, members of the (then) infamous urban guerrilla group known as the Japanese Red Army, hijacked a passenger plane and landed in Pyongyang (to the usual interdimensional creatures and the on-duty aliens who love airplanes and ships, because they are collectors of retro technology from planet Earth. Nothing definitive was revealed, the official report declared war on elementary logic and the case remains another in a series of mysteries.

(Roger Mortis, 057)

The Sad Boy

The strange and sad story of Kaspar Hauser - "the man who came out from nowhere":

On May 26, 1828 in Nuremberg, Kingdom of Bavaria, a shoemaker named Georg Weichmann saw a young man of about 15 to 20 years old, all in rags, limping and making incomprehensible screams, approaching him. Weichmann asked the man if everything was okay, if something had happened to him, but in response he only received an indeterminate mumble - when the young man gave him a letter addressed - To the captain of the 4th squadron, 6th cavalry regiment, Nuremberg. Feeling sorry for the young, starving and apparently disoriented man, Weichmann decided to try to help him. He takes him home, gives him food and sees that something is wrong with the child, he is panickingly afraid of various objects and runs away from the light...

The only thing they receive in response from the unknown person is - ``Weiss nicht'', I don't know anything. After some time, the shoemaker finds the captain of the 4th Bavarian squadron Wessenig, who opens the letter in astonishment and reads in it that the child's name is Kaspar Hauser, that he was born in 1812 and that for his entire life he was locked in a basement underground where he had contact with light once a day (when they brought him food), he was never let out of the basement where during the 16 years of captivity he was kept company by rats and a few wooden toy horses. It is also stated that he was the unwanted fruit of someone's passion and that it would be best if Captain Wessenig took care of him (!?) and enrolled him in a military school. Wessenig, not intending to care for Kaspar - takes him to the police where the case should be clarified. People consider Kaspar an imbecile because he cannot compose at least one sensible sentence. He is put in prison, where it becomes obvious that Kaspar is used to solitude and darkness. Even his constitution is strange, like someone who has spent his whole life in a low cell, hunched over.

His fate intrigues several people who try to solve the mystery. With the first contacts with people with better intentions than ridicule, Kaspar denies the claims that he is mentally retarded - on the contrary, he very quickly learns to read and write, and after a while comes under the guardianship of Georg Friedrich Daumer, a professor and philosopher. Here, a complete transformation of Kaspar takes place, who in a few months from being illiterate and half-mute manages to read philosophical works and talk with his mentor Daumer. Which represents an unprecedented speed of intellectual development in known history. Kaspar learned to draw in a few weeks, painted his first landscapes, engaged in composition, used both his right and left hands (ambidexterous) and began writing his autobiography.

In it, he said that he did not know who he was, who his parents were, where he was from, or how he ended up in Nuremberg. He knew that he lived in a basement, that someone fed him food through some kind of opening, that from time to time the water he was given had a strange taste that made him fall asleep, that he had never seen a fully human face until the day he appeared in Nuremberg, and he did not even know who gave him the letter in which he asked a completely unknown man (Captain Wessenig) to take care of him...

This autobiography made him a celebrity throughout Europe at that time. The public became interested in the bizarre fate that befell Kaspar Hauser. The city of Nuremberg offers a reward for information that will solve the mystery, but no one takes it. There is no Hauser family. An investigation is opened, which after a while becomes bogged down, because the facts cannot be separated from the speculations that claim that Caspar is of royal descent from this or that dynasty.

Little by little, Caspar hopes to return to a normal life, but on October 7, 1829, an attempt is made to assassinate him. Caspar is found with a large wound to the head caused by a hammer. The assassination attempt takes place in the house of his mentor Daumer. After this event, other people who want to help him appear, Anselm von Feuerbach and the English millionaire Lord Stanhope, who decide to protect Caspar's life. A mercenary is hired to guard Caspar, but everything is in vain.

On December 11, 1833, Kaspar Hauser was murdered not far from his new home. The murderer was never found.

Whether it was a sadistic experiment, the continuous maintenance of a tabula rasa over a span of 17 years, imprisonment due to belonging to an aristocratic hereditary right, or something else entirely, is unknown. Kaspar Hauser's latent mental superpowers that came to the fore after he was rescued from the cellar are also a reason for speculation about his fate and death.

Only sadness remains...

On his tombstone in Ansbach were the words :

"In this place,

for reasons unknown,

an unknown man,

was killed by another unknown man.

In this place lies,

the riddle of our time,

Place and time of birth - unknown,

Cause of death - unknown."

(Roger Mortis, 056)

Harry's Spiritual Twin

The so called PR China in the year 2008 immediately associates with the global event known as the Olympic Games. But at that time of world obsession with the sports ritual, a much more significant event went completely unnoticed - and that is the mission of Yang Jia, a young man of 28 years who repeated the feat of his British counterpart Harry Roberts and with twice the effectiveness.

A man with dubious socialization skills, on the margins of the competitive megalopolis of the Olympic Beijing - Shanghai, tormented by the demons of poverty and the brutality of bureaucracy, experienced the peak of misery in the form of arrest and severe beating accompanied by humiliation and suffering in a police station. And the reason for the arrest is incredibly dystopian - that he was riding an unregistered bicycle. I use the word bicycle because its standard equivalent - bicycle sounds nonsense. Or was it irrelevant. In a country where the tax rate is so high that even bicycles have to be registered (probably due to their mass and thus a phenomenally large tax base) - there was no room for characters like our Yang.

But Yang was not one to stifle his suffering in silence. As the spiritual child of the cult Harry - he decided to take revenge. First he tried through regular channels, with a lawsuit, but the regular channels were clogged with the garbage of the cop's legal untouchability. After exhausting the ``legal'' options, he decided on a drastic step. There are differences in the facts here, there are several versions about the DIY Damocles Sword that was supposed to be a tool of righteous anger... according to some, it was a cheap replica of a samurai sword (Katana), according to others, a somewhat longer kitchen knife, and still others - a crudely made homemade blade by Yang Jia himself.

Anyway, Young, armed with the aforementioned blade, hammer, gas mask and a whole crate of Molotov cocktails, headed to the police station where he was tortured. At least twenty cops stood in the way of Justice, but Young, carried away by a vengeful trance, butchered six, seriously wounded three and slightly wounded several more of the guards. One can only imagine the tension of that situation in all its bloody drama and beauty...The Olympics brought Young a few months of life because the trial was postponed to some `different` times, when the cameras of the world media would not be so present. The legal upheavals were unusually short and unlike Yang's lawsuit when he was tortured - this time state `justice' came down with all its weight on the defendant - in the form of a lethal injection in November 2008.

The similarities with Harry's case are striking (although Yang had twice the score) - a song about Hero Yang began to be sung among the people, various dissidents and enemies of the regime began to use him as a symbol of class division, and a certain Chinese Punk-rock band named Pang Gu recorded a song about Yang Jia with the (loosely interpreted) title Knife at Home ... for which they later had to go into exile...The legend of Yang Jia as a Far Eastern variant of the legend of Harry, flourishes in the Far East and besides it, Comrade Yang also partly flourishes, not as a ghost or zombie but in a completely different context.

One truth makes me happy, no one returns from beyond the veil? The cops certainly won't return, albeit neither will Yang.

Yang's organs are now living a second life, transplanted into wealthy Chinese citizens whose lives were saved through involuntary organ donations from people sentenced to death in the hyper-capitalist oasis enabled by the Chinese Communist Party...

(Roger Mortis, 055)

The Man from Republic of Taured

The concept of national and ethnic belonging is an extremely religious phenomenon that has recently been put to the test through the creation of so-called Micronations consisting of a small number of people. Sometimes, even a territory is not needed on which the unfolding of the ethno-national idea into the ultimate symptom known as a state will take place. And there have been nations that materialized through the existence of only one person, or even only in someone's head...

One such case and also a good mystery is ``The Man from Taured``.

June, 1954, an unknown character landed at the airport in Tokyo. At customs control, the officer became suspicious of the name of the country on the passport - Taured. The passenger, a white man in his mid-forties, did not give away anything that something was wrong, and agreed to be examined without any problems. The passport seemed legitimate to the extent that it even had stamps from various customs and border services. Which proved that he traveled without any problems with that passport. There were even stamps from the Japanese authorities stating that he was not entering Japan for the first time with that passport. He had a decent amount of money in various European currencies in him. What shocked the Japanese officials was that the traveler spoke fluent Japanese with ease.

He was asked for additional documents, and the mysterious guy produced a driver's license and other documents officialized by the country of Taured. And even business correspondence with Japanese companies that cooperated with his company from Taured...

Not knowing what to do, they brought him a map of the world to show where that country was, and the traveler pointed to the Pyrenees, somewhere on the border between France and Spain, near Andorra. The traveler was shocked that Taured was not on the map and seemed totally confused. Having no diplomatic relations with the non-existent country and not knowing what to do, the authorities sent the traveler to a hotel with an "escort" of a policeman and a customs officer. The guy settled in, the guards parked in front of his door on the fifth floor of the hotel and that was it. In the morning, they knocked on his door. Not getting any answer, they entered the room where there was no trace of anyone, the room seemed as if no one had entered it and there was no trace or sound of the guest. From then until today, nothing has been heard of the man from Taured or his fate. He simply disappeared.

Various theories began to emerge, from the fact that he was a traveler from another dimension to the fact that he was a simple fraudster, but none of them held water. Perhaps the man took advantage of the ignorance of the officials from various border services who stamped his passport, but why would he do that at all? Why would he make a fake passport from a non-existent country when he could already make such a passport from an existing one and thus avoid the risk? Because no matter how ignorant they were, it would have occurred to some official that there was no such country, at least in Europe. His knowledge of Japanese was as bizarre as his disappearance. If he were from another dimension where there was a state of Taured in the Pyrenees and where he was a frequent collaborator with Japanese businesses, it wouldn't be bizarre that he knew Japanese and traveled the world. Then again this is so far fetched that it hurts, it is true that theoretically there is a possibility of the existence of other dimensions, but a jump from quantum worlds to the macrocosm with states and passports is...on the border of the probable, if not something more.

Or maybe he just wanted to create his own state, to realize the centuries-old aspirations of the Taured people for freedom, independence and statehood...

(Roger Mortis, 054)

Spooky

Returning home from a party at around 2:00 AM on February 24, 1957, the famous American actor Telly Savalas (famous for his role as Detective Kojak) runs out of gas on a highway far from his home.

He waits for a while for another car to pass and possibly hitchhike to the nearest gas station. However, Savalas does not meet any cars, only heavy rain. He decides to go in search of a gas station - on foot. After a few hundred meters, luck smiles at him, he hears the sound of a car behind him, although the car was driving with its lights off, which seems stupid or at least strange to Savalas. A black Cadillac stops and the driver asks Savalas if he can help him. The actor accepts and gets in the car, although he is uncomfortable with the whole thing with a guy driving without his lights at that time of night.

Savalas tells the driver to take him to the nearest gas station. He agrees and drives. Telly tries to start a casual conversation but the man doesn't answer anything except the question 'Where are you driving at this time of day?' to which he gets the answer - 'at the crossroads of my destiny'. Savalas doesn't try to make small talk after this, thinking that the driver is crazy or drunk...

Arriving at the first gas station, Savalas reaches for his wallet and with horror remembers that he left it at the party. He is pulled out of the uncomfortable situation by the strange interlocutor who gives him money for gas and finally speaks up to not worry because he will return the money when he is able. Savalas, who has to go to the studio to record in the morning, cannot afford to be absent from recording because he is still at the beginning of his career and accepts the money, but before that he writes down the address and name of the man who, hesitating, still tells him who he is and where he lives. After a few days, Savalas wants to repay the favor and shows up at the given address.

He rings the doorbell and asks the woman who answers if Harry Aganis lives here. The woman asks what the matter is and Savalas explains why he is coming. The woman starts behaving hysterically and tells Savalas to leave. The actor, intrigued by the whole situation, gives the woman his Actors' Union membership card, explains who he is and describes Harry Aganis, her husband, who helped him on the highway. The woman tearfully gives him a picture of her - deceased husband - and Savalas recognizes the guy who lent him money. He also learns that Harry Aganis died in 1954 in a car accident on the same stretch of road where he met him. Harry Aganis, returning from a graduation anniversary, collides with a truck and dies on the spot.

Telly Savalas recounted this incident until his death in 1994, unable to rationally explain what happened that night, and on two other occasions when, driving later on the same road, he passed a black Cadillac driving without its lights on.

(Roger Mortis, 053)

Larger than Life

This is one of those wonderful larger than life mysteries, surpassing even the most daring movie scripts, that remain unsolved even after decades and only fuel the fame of the legendary perpetrator, an obvious devotee of the doctrine of ``individual expropriation``...

On November 24, 1971, a character with a completely random face, expression, and appearance bought a one-way ticket from Portland to Seattle under the name Dan Cooper. He sat down in his seat along with 35 other passengers and after a while called the stewardess to give her a message put on paper. The stewardess, accustomed to guys who let themselves in in various ways, paid no attention, so Dan had to insist. To the stewardess's surprise, there was no invitation for a drink but a bomb threat. Dan showed her the bomb (or at least something that looked like a bomb), mentioned that he had a contact lighter in his hand and that the message should go to the pilots.

It turned out that Cooper was a modest hijacker of a plane, demanding $200,000 (about 1.2 million in today's money) in $20 bills, 4 parachutes and refueling the plane when it landed in Seattle. In return, he would release the passengers. The pilots were notified of this and informed the air traffic control, which in turn informed the FBI. They were advised to act according to the hijacker's demands. There was not much time to fulfill the hijacker's demands, about two hours of flight, but despite this - the police managed to record the serial numbers of the banknotes and send one fake parachute among the four.

After landing, Cooper proved to be a true hijacker, a true man, and freed all the hostages. Not sure if they even knew they had been kidnapped. That's what you call a hijacking with style.

The plane was refueled and took off again, this time to Reno, Nevada, at Cooper's request. The hijacker gave very strange and specific instructions, the plane's speed was 320 km/h (slightly above the minimum required to maintain flight), an altitude of 3000m, he requested that the artificial pressure not be activated and that the wheels be lowered. The pilots had no choice and agreed.

Later it became clear why he requested those things at all and why he chose a Boeing B-727 for the hijacking. Namely, that type of plane, due to its engine configuration, had an auxiliary exit with steps in the back, quite suitable for Cooper's intention to jump with a parachute. Cooper ordered whiskey and cigarettes and calmly sat down in his seat. After some time, he put on two parachutes, took the money, ordered the emergency exit to be opened and jumped - into the legends...Several F-106 fighters were already following the plane at that time, but in vain, they saw nothing except that the stairs to the emergency exit of the passenger plane were open. Later, the media would call the hijacker D.B. Cooper because that name seemed somehow sexier to them.

The plane landed, all the crew members were in good order, and somewhere in the forests of Washington state, the most impudent hijacker in the world had probably landed. Despite hundreds of police, federal agents, soldiers and volunteers combing the area day and night, no trace was found, not even a parachute or anything else.

To this day, it is not known who the hijacker was and how he ended up, despite the exhaustive investigation, the detailed search through the forests and mountains, and the media hysteria. Various theories emerged over time, there were many suspects but nothing concrete. The only clue appeared in 1980 when three packages with a total of 5,000 dollars were found on the bank of a river and the serial numbers matched the stolen money. That proved that... nothing proved, it only fueled speculation that continues to this day.

It was claimed that Cooper was an ex-special agent because of his knowledge and courage, others that he was an amateur, others that he died during the jump, others that they saw him in a random place years after the event... whatever the truth is, one cannot help but wonder why in such cases one simply ``roots`` for the criminal. Personally, I am a fan of the version in which he lived a long and comfortable life without dealing with everyday stresses and in which ``over conversation, coffee and a cigarette`` at a bar he argued with those present about who D.B. Cooper really was...

(Roger Mortis, 052)

Legend of Harry Roberts

The history of British crime is rich with types who, with their ``creations'', secured a place for themselves among pseudo-legends, semi-myths and local folklore. From Robin Hood to Ronnie Biggs (sung in the ballads of the Sex Pistols), among the multitude of colorful characters, Our mate Harry stands out.

Harry Roberts, a petty criminal from the London underworld, entered history a month after England's 1966 World Cup title. Just like Geoff Hurst, Harry was a marksman, but unlike Geoff, he did not shake nets but precisely shot uniformed people.

And three such people in a police car were patrolling the Wormwood Scrubs prison in London. Driving around at the taxpayer's expense, the three members of the security forces noticed a parked van with three, as it seemed to them - suspicious persons inside. And most frightening of all - the van did not have a paid registration sticker! Shocked and shaken by the crime, the uniformed officers immediately moved to identify and document the three men in the van. Later, stories emerged that the van had been parked near the prison in order to provide transportation for a prison escapee, apparently because the myths of brave law enforcement officers allegedly preventing prison escapes were needed to avoid the dry banality of the situation. There is no heroism in dying for checking an unregistered vehicle, is there?

The aforementioned banality of violent toll collection, mixed with the justifications devised by the van driver, was interrupted by a 9mm Luger shot and a direct hit on one of the cops in the eye, killing him on the spot. The second cop tried to escape to his car but was stopped by two shots from Harry Roberts, the second of which ended in the victim's head. The shocked third cop who remained in his vehicle tried to start the vehicle and escape, but Harry was faster and with four shots to the head and body, he also killed the third license plate guard and matching stickers.

Harry and his company fled the scene (Shepherd's Bush) and hid in different places. After three months of massive manhunt, Harry was caught and, as a result of the case, he did not receive the death penalty, which had been abolished only a few months before the incident - but was sentenced to thirty-to-life, the second most severe sentence in British justice after the life-for-life sentence, which, for example, the Yorkshire Ripper is still serving. The media and the official narrative tried to give the story a heroic spin in which the cops are heroes and Harry is a maniac, but miraculously after a while, the song Our mate Harry began to be sung among the crowd, which with its lyrics sends an unambiguous, albeit unpleasant message.

One Harry Roberts

There`s only one Harry Roberts

One Harry Roberts

There`s only one Harry Roberts

Harry Roberts is our friend

is our friend

is our friend

Harry Roberts is our friend, he kills coppers.

He lines them up two by two

two by two

two by two

Harry Roberts is our friend, he kills coppers.

Let him out to kill some more

kill some more

kill some more

let him out to kill some more, Harry Roberts

He shot three down in Shepherd's Bush

Shepherd's Bush

Shepherd's Bush

He shot three down in Shepherd's Bush, our mate Harry

Harry Roberts is our friend

is our friend

is our friend

Harry Roberts is our friend, he kills coppers.

This expression of urban folklore is sung to this day, less often in pubs and more often in the stands of football stadiums which in themselves have always been a microcosm of a society. The question remains why Harry did it. Maybe because of unresolved scores with the cops, maybe because of traumas from Kenya where he was sent as a late colonial soldier, maybe he simply hated the state racket, and maybe only Harry knows.

Finally, it should be noted that Harry did not serve thirty years but a full 48 and was finally released last year, at a time when England was experiencing its worst ever footballing slump. Wayne Rooney is not Geoff Hurst and the Maracana is not Wembley. Needless to say, the release from prison was met with a divided public response, ranging from utter disgust at the event to celebration among certain circles of London society.

(Roger Mortis, 051)

Eternal War

Death is most often completely anonymous, especially in the silent class war that has been going on for a long time and continues with unabated intensity. `Today a construction worker died after falling from scaffolding.` is a typical headline in the media, if there is a headline at all. And much more often there is none than there is.

Another one of the army of dead who lose their lives at work due to poor working conditions, lack of protection, exhaustion or a loss of concentration...

It is difficult to say how many dead there are because the statistics are kept by the state and the state and its preferred economic model are the cause of death and it would be very naive to expect the murderer to accurately document his crimes. When it comes to the number of disabled workers, then that number can be multiplied by some speculative multiplier and suddenly the unpleasant reality of the thousands of dead and wounded in the silent war of the state against the people becomes difficult to perceive.

These people are not in the service of regimes, they do not beat and kill children on the streets, they build buildings and houses that will be someone's homes, sewers and water pipes, installations and everything that makes life more comfortable. But despite this, they are terribly anonymous, their death does not exist, it is registered with two lines on page 23 of a newspaper at best, there is no individualization of the victims, no daily wisdom, no one remembers them.

There is no honor shooting, no TV cameras, no statements from family and friends.

There is nothing.

And so the silent war continues to eat human flesh and grind human destinies. From the mobile phone that is in our hands because of the death of millions in Congo to the guy who was buried in your city digging to install a water pipe, an endless stream of sad destinies and an endless stream of paradise that transfers its anonymity from this world to the next.

(Roger Mortis, 050)

STENDEC

Even after a decade, nothing is known about the fate of the missing Malaysian passenger Boeing B-777. Despite countless speculations and theories, it is very likely that the real situation will never be known, and if it is ever known, it could only be by chance. As in the case of a long-lost plane about which many stories have been told...

In 1947, a British passenger Avro Lancastrian (for those who are fans of flying machines - an adaptation of the numerous Lancaster bombers, famous for their nightly visits over German cities) of the British South American company on its way from Buenos Aires to Santiago in Chile - disappeared without a trace.

This case became famous among mystery lovers because of the pilot's last message, which was ``STANDEC,'' a word without any particular meaning that was repeated at the request of air traffic control several times. Later, this word was interpreted in various ways, from the pilot's escape to the good old little green aliens who abducted Paradise. The ambiguity of the last communication only added to the mystique of this case. Adding fuel to the mysterious fire were statements by radio amateurs that after the last registered contact with control, they received `SOS/Mayday` signals.

The search yielded no results and the case remained unexplained. For decades, there was speculation about the fate of the plane, until 1998 when the first trace of the plane (part of one of the engines) was found by mountaineers in the Andes. Later, soldiers of the Argentine army found some remains of corpses, so that in 2002, a full 55 years after the event, DNA identification confirmed the identity of the passengers and the fate of the plane that hooked its tip with the lower part of the fuselage and crashed into a glacier.

The heavy snow covered the plane and left the rest of the work to the glacier. The glacier, acting in accordance with its unstable nature, completely covered the plane with ice, simply swallowed it and launched it into the legends...With the subsequent melting of the ice, after half a century - from the frozen mountain bowels the sad reality emerged into the light of day. For descendants and some still living contemporaries of the passengers - the case finally got an epilogue.

It is possible that in the case of the Malaysian plane some kind of freak scenario like the one mentioned above occurred, which would leave the truth in the realm of speculation until a counter-freak event would provide some answers.

(Roger Mortis, 049)

Underground

It is strange, the need of the authorities in almost all the offsprings of evil known as states - to build underground shelters where they would hide in a case of loss of power or in a case of natural or anthropogenic disaster. Most of the countries in the world had underground shelters ranging from a simple bunkers to entire underground cities. A nuclear holocaust or Zombie apocalypse must not catch politicians unprepared...

In the USA, the NORAD center Cheyenne Mountain and the Ravenrock base are known, where there are huge underground complexes, in the first case carved into a granite mountain, where the American government and the main headquarters were supposed to hide in case of incoming nuclear missiles. In addition to the underground cities, they also have several aircraft, seriously modified Boeing B-707 and 747, not only the popular Air Force One but also many others, the E-4 Nightwatch for example, the most expensive aircraft in the world after the B-2, there are also appropriate ships that allowed for the continuation of operations after the `first strike`.

The Soviet authorities also had such wonders, as the continuity of underground tunnels and buildings since the time of Ivan the Terrible, it is said that under the Kremlin there was supposedly a special metro line that led to other underground centers or airports and it required high clearance to access. Most of these buildings were started during Stalin's time, and how many and what they exist is a subject of speculation. Another center was under Mount Yamantau in the Urals.

At one time, Hitler, as an uber-evil but impressive person, had his own underground city under Berlin and there was also the Wolf's Lair in East Prussia. Perhaps the only example of putting into operational use a typical Doomsday dwelling in order to protect the government, although we know how it all ended (or do we?). In Bavaria there were abandoned salt mines that the Nazis modified into underground bases from where the Nazi guerrilla forces, the organization Die Werewolf, were supposed to operate after the signing of the capitulation, committing atrocities in the Allied occupation zones. Nothing came of it, the world was tired of wars...but the legend of the Nazi secret bases in Antarctica (!?) remained where Adolf, Mengele, Bormann and other fine gentlemen and ladies found refuge from the ruins of the Third Reich and, of course, worked hard on the creation of the Fourth Reich (and what else would they do after spending whole days in Antarctica).

This theory is based on real expeditions before the war in Antarctica where New Schwabia was declared on a certain territory of the white continent. And that`s not so strange, which continent would be more suitable for Aryans than - a white one?

In the ex-Yugoslavia, the most famous are Tito's underground city, "D-0" near Konjic in Bosnia and the underground airport (no brainer, but still...) Željava in Croatia. In Romania, Ceausescu built an underground network under Bucharest, especially around his palace which was the second largest building in the world by square footage after the Pentagon. Unfinished at the time of the beautiful shooting of Nicolae, the building had not yet been sufficiently explored and supposedly there was even a raja who got lost exploring the tunnels.....and was never seen again. In Macedonia, there is talk about Mount Jasen where there was an ex-JNA underground base which today was intended as a refuge for politicians in case of trouble and some talk about a similar building on Krivolak.

The basic idea behind such bizarre structures is the so-called state of continuity of government, the continuation of the rule of state authorities even after a cataclysmic event. In other words - authorities around the world are announcing that they plan to take action in a post-apocalyptic world of nuclear winter that can become a reality only through their fault...

(Roger Mortis, 048)

El Psicopata

The phenomenon of serial killers has long been embedded in popular culture. To the extent that members of the `elite` of perpetrators of the ultimate crime - murder - are perceived with fascination by the broad masses of the people, such creatures are given disproportionate attention, the media are full of the `exploits` of individuals who, by definition, have killed at least three people with an intervening period of `cooling off`.

Let`s jump into the bandwagon then...with a hip twist of course, let`s go to Latin America.

The case of the `Zodiac` serial killer who operated in the USA in the 60s and 70s (and perhaps longer) is well-known; films and documentaries have been made and books have been written.

Outside of everyday life, a maniac with a similar modus operandi and the same ability to "disappear" and leave no trace killed in Costa Rica, specifically killing 31 victims from 1986 to 1997. Called El Psicopata, the killer mostly killed couples who went to secluded places to have sex. But over time, that became insufficient for his appetites and on one occasion he massacred six schoolgirls along with their teacher who were on a nature trip, in the area that became known as the "Triangle of Death" between the cities of Alajuela and Cartago.

He most often used an M-3 Grease Gun for the murders themselves, and in most of his victims he continued by cutting off body parts, usually the girls' breasts which he probably collected as souvenirs. Costa Rican authorities turned to the FBI for help, but despite the joint work, the maniac remains at large to this day. Whether he continued to kill is unknown, as the killings in that area stopped after 1997. It is not impossible that he could one day appear in public and live carefree, because in Costa Rica, unlike many other countries, murder as a crime was subject to a statute of limitations.

There are many theories about who the killer is, from an ex-guerrilla who got the ball rolling on a downhill course, a rich and spoiled son of influential parents who satisfies his maniacal appetites with the help of corrupting the police, and perhaps even the Zodiac himself, who emigrated to Costa Rica after the investigation in the United States got close enough to escape to the tropical paradise and continue his bloody habits.

It is a mystery why so many maniacs kill couples in love, what drives them to rage at the sight of a couple kissing or having sex?! Does their inability to form any real connection with a human being drive them to murderous madness?

In any case, a sticker album titled "The Greatest Serial Killers of the 20th Century" is expected to be released in a few years. Children will be able to swap duplicates with their friends and cheer on their favorite serial killer in a live broadcast of the latest reality show "The Murder Corner".

(Roger Mortis, 047)

Just like that

Apathy is one of the greatest evils in these parts.

How many dead people there are, they have no idea. And one would think that deadness comes with death. Not really, the dead are everywhere, you meet them every day, some you see and some are completely invisible despite their certain physical form.

The only thing is that no one has informed them that they are dead, so they have not yet left this reality.

Every joy, initiative, enthusiasm has been killed.

Joys and sorrows are also dying.

Weddings, graduations, engagements, birthdays, baptisms...for the sake of decency, somehow, for the sake of faith, so to speak, to get through the queue.

And funerals are of the same kind...anyway.

I used to think that people hide their emotions and control themselves. But these days I have realized that they have no emotions to hide them at all. Nothing separates emotion from its simulation anymore. Simulation out of habit. Or because of the expectations of others.

Just like that. Loosely. Life for the sake of convenience. "I consume, therefore I am"

Regards from Sector Northeast, Earth 4, Quadrant 75 of the Multiverse

(Roger Mortis, 046)

Seven two seven to the end

Is it possible for a person to go undetected when wanted by the CIA, FBI, Homeland Security, and the General Staff of the US Armed Forces, after several years of detailed search, with the engagement of all available means at the disposal of the most massive and technically most equipped military-intelligence machinery?!

Maybe it is, and maybe not.

And is it possible for a person to hide - not alone, but in the company of a Boeing B-727 passenger plane in all its size & glory, in case the above-mentioned organizations are looking for him?

Quite possible!

That was done by a certain Ben Padilla, an American pilot, together with mechanic John Mutantu from Congo-Kinshasa. Mutantu has to one of most amusing surnames ever. Anyway...

In May 2003, from the runway of the international airport in Luanda, Angola, the two characters boarded a veteran B-727 that was without any markings on it, turned off all the signals (lights, transponders) and despite the shocked air traffic controllers who did not give them permission to take off - they took off. And of course - from the moment of takeoff to this day - their fate and that of the plane remain unknown.

In the midst of the panic over the events of 9/11, the American authorities spared no resources to find the plane and the thieves. In vain, after two and a half years of extensive search and several possible scenarios that turned out to be incorrect - they gave up the search. Considering today's technology, it is strange how such a plane could disappear without a trace. No one anywhere saw or reported a crash or landing, nor did the plane fly over any territory.

All that remained were speculations, rumors, theories, and assumptions - from insurance fraud, to secret sale of the plane, to a crash into a parallel dimension, to alien abduction. But even if it was about insurance or sale, at some point, somewhere, some trace, anything, would have come to light. To this day, there has been absolutely nothing...

(Roger Mortis, 045)

For a fistful of rice

There is an ingenious solution to the problems that plague the suffering working class, the working peasantry and the intellectuals in the Republic of Macedonia: the formation of a Maoist guerrilla organization in the Prespa jungles, which will be called `Red Hunzas` - after the shining example of comrade Salot Sar in Indochina.

The Red Hunzas, with self-sacrificing work and educational activities aimed at forming class consciousness among the rural population (with an emphasis on pretty young men and women) should form an armed force that will create the conditions for starting a revolution. After they have gained a sufficiently large number of revolutionaries - a showdown with the forces of the regime, the clergy and petty-bourgeois psychology follows. In a few months, revolutionary fervor will sweep the entire country and at the end of spring, the Red Hunzas will triumphantly enter Skopje.

Next comes the erasure of 2025 from the calendar and the announcement of `Year Zero`, which will begin the countdown from the moment of the triumph of the revolution. Next step - AGRARIAN REFORM!

In order for the revolution to succeed, funds will be needed. And they lie in exports.

That means zero imports and a lot of exports. It is said that rice was in great demand on world markets.

The Red Hunzas will evacuate the entire urban population and distribute it to rural areas where it will engage in agriculture, with the main emphasis on growing rice crops. This decision will also have a purifying effect, since cities are already a potential hotbed of counter-revolutionary activity.

Members of the old regime, the bureaucracy and religion will be given special tasks, for example, digging and emptying septic tanks, canals and ditches. For starters...Everyone will have to earn their bread, in this case their fistful of rice. Parallel to that, there will be real, popular education, young men and women will learn to handle AK-47's, SKS's and RPG's, because the enemy never sleeps!

Maybe not everyone will survive, but those who survive will enter directly into the bright future of a classless society.

And if they don't, they didn't deserve to anyway.

(Roger Mortis, 044)

The Flying Dutchman

Of the many mysteries of the deep sea, the mystery of the ship that appears and disappears around the Cape of Good Hope (on the tip of South Africa) is one of the most enduring.

The Dutch frigate "De Fliegende Hollander" set sail for the East Indies in the mid-17th century under the command of Captain Hendrik Van Der Decker. Reaching the cape, which is not known for being very easy to navigate, especially at a time when it had become a grave for many sailors, Hendrik decided to sail around it at all costs, and as quickly as possible in spite of the stormy weather and currents that were against the "Flying Dutchman". Having failed on his first attempt, the persistent man that he was tried again...and again...and again...all in vain.

Persistence did not always pay off and the sailors were exhausted and angry, and that combination at that time often resulted in a mutiny and the captain being hanged from the windlass swinging the rope on the mast. The captain, aware of this, decided to reach out for help in a slightly... unorthodox way - calling on the Devil to personally assist him, after God had not done much to answer his prayers.

The Devil, being the devil, helped but demanded a signature, naturally - in blood.

Some sailors, disappointed by the captain's pro-satanic agreement, in keeping with their time - cursed the captain to never arrive in any port until the end of the world and the end of time. It did not occur to them that by doing so they themselves would not set foot on land until Judgment Day, and they were probably not the brightest...

Anyway, after passing the cape, the ship, the captain and the crew - disappeared. Their fate has remained unknown, though through the centuries and to this day - the sight of the Flying Dutchman is a common occurrence, for the more superstitious sailors a sign of impending trouble or facing sinking and death. Many famous people have seen the phantom ship wandering trapped in the region around the cape (and sometimes a little further), including the British King George V who, during a voyage on a cruiser of the British Navy, clearly saw the Dutchman together with the crew sailing in front of their ship at a short distance, a creepy appearance with torn sails and red lights on the deck.

Many writers and poets were obsessed with this mystery, the most famous being the composer Richard Wagner who immortalized the ship with his opera - "The Flying Dutchman". There is also a story about the most unfortunate sailor ever who, sailing for centuries on the Dutchman - after many vicissitudes, somehow managed to escape from the cursed ship, jump into the water and hope for salvation. And salvation came after a few hours when another sailing ship noticed the sailor and rescued him from the water. Finding himself safely on deck and thanking the sailors who noticed and saved him, the sailor asked for the name of the ship that had found him.

The answer was - Marie Celeste...

(Roger Mortis, 043)

Cult goes Atomic

What do a runaway cult and an atomic bomb have in common? Perhaps more than one might think at first glance.

One of the most creative cults in recent decades, the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo, famous for numerous murders and suicides and of course their "five minutes of fame", the Sarin nerve agent attack in the Tokyo subway in 1995 that claimed at least 12 lives and injured over 6,000.

Their theology consisted of a toxic mix consisting of Christian Revelation, dubious early Buddhist interpretations, the inevitable Shiva and a few passages from Nostradamus, all combined with the charisma of the leader and the expectation of the end of the world around the end of the Millennium.

However, the most shocking thing is the realization that they also experimented with a nuclear option.

The mysterious seismic event when seismometers registered a tremor as a result of an explosion in the Australian outback at the Banjawarn location on May 28, 1993, which would be the equivalent of a 2 kT detonation, together with the testimonies of Aborigines and farmers about a large explosion - suggests the possibility that the sect's scientific team created some kind of device that would place them in the nuclear club as the only non-governmental organization with nuclear potential in the world. Or that they brought a ready-made bomb from somewhere. Witnesses confirmed that the sect acquired protective suits, machinery, laboratory equipment, mechanical diggers, chemicals and mysterious boxes with unknown contents declared as `hydrochloric acid`...

t has been confirmed that the sect, which had a huge fan base in Russia at the time, was trying to acquire tactical nuclear weapons from the arsenal of the zombified Russian state. Whether they actually acquired and test-detonated such a weapon is difficult to say, but there are serious indications that point to such a conclusion.

The authorities did not react to the event because the sect did not yet have the reputation that it would gain with the attack in Tokyo, and the sect sold the 200,000-hectare ranch before it was ``celebrated`` with nerve gas. It was later discovered that, among other escapist activities, the sect members mined uranium ore on the ranch...One would think that such a creative cult would quickly disappear from the scene after the Japanese authorities' showdown with it and the death sentence of its leader Shoko Asahara - and they would be exposed.

The sect members are still as hardworking as ants and have rebranded themselves under the new name "Aleph", so they probably continue to dream of a new end of the world triggered by their atomic bomb, which would be the third to be detonated on Japanese soil.

(By Roger Mortis, 042)

First Love of a Freak

Trajko was a simple, let's say village kid.

He studied at a high school with city kids and didn't do well in all that urban hustle and bustle of boiling hormones, rapidly growing breasts and unannounced erections. In the village, everything was simpler and more appropriate for a village kid, tall and strong as only a cattle herder can be.

He had a sympathy for a girl. She wasn't overly beautiful, even less bright. But there was a certain cuteness, an attraction in her, which acted like a magnet for the village kid. Trajko didn't know how to approach her, no one had taught him how to behave with women, what he saw in the village seemed too rude to apply to her. And the cattle he was guarding weren't exactly a model of seductive abilities.

One fine day, Trajko decided to approach her anyway. He forgot what he was planning to say and just asked her if she would like to come to the schoolyard an hour and a half after classes ended. He had a vague plan to sit on the bench, and that was it.

After that, he couldn't think of what he would do. The girl agreed, further confusing Trajko who expected to be rejected. And so that class came, the opportunity for their first intimacy was very close. That fact only made Trajko even more nervous. They sat on the bench. They were silent, she expecting him to start a conversation first, he not knowing what to say. After a while, even Trajko's slow brain felt uncomfortable because of the silence, and that, combined with the strong erection, provoked him into action. He grabbed her breast.

A little harder than usual.

Although she expected something to happen, her mind was still more focused on trying to kiss her. She pushed his hand away and turned her head nervously. Trajko was in a daze, it seemed to him that it would be better to return to the village or collapse into the ground. But when will he have such an opportunity again, he thought to himself. Of course, the term `thought` is an overly optimistic assessment of his mental processes at that moment, but one should not judge too harshly.

Without much ceremony, he grabbed her vagina. She made a strange sound, previously unheard by Trajko, who could not decode what it all meant. Is it nice? Or does it cause her pain?

The girl again became defensive and roughly pushed his hand away. Trajko was already in a trance, namely, he grabbed her pussy!...literally, if not figuratively. And still not knowing what to do next, how to act, Trajko reflexively punched her hard in the face!

Not because he was a bully, but because he didn't know how to act differently. Trajko's hopes for sex and her hopes for getting a boyfriend ended in a pool of blood and a broken nasal bone. Tears were flowing uncontrollably, which is completely expected when you have a nose injury. The horrible mix of blood and mucus was flowing down her face like a faucet. Even Trajko knew this time that he had screwed up. He got angry with himself, and as we know, that anger is the most terrible of all. And he punched her a few more times, broke her from the swing and ran off somewhere in the distance...

Trajko never married and had no children. He was last seen on an Interpol wanted list.

The girl is now a government minister without portfolio.

(By Roger Mortis, 041)

The Greatest Wanderer

He was a nice guy named Roald Amundsen.

And so he wandered around the world, what we would call him today, he was an adrenaline junkie. He didn't really like talking to people, he was more understood by albatrosses and penguins. And just as his mother had given birth to him, unscathed, he set out across the seven seas to find work, and not like all male housewives, to get to work, to have nine children, to pay his bills on time, to plant something in the garden - as is proper, because tomorrow's house is not built, no man is made by wandering, he should have come to his senses, to work, to organize a family celebration and invite relatives and friends to prove his house holdership, and even to wait for a wedding from his sons, as the head of the family.

Otherwise a seriously elusive phenomenon, Roald managed to be the first to sail the Northwest Passage in 1906, a route that for 400 years sent all those who dared to try to conquer it - to their death.

After that, he headed south, where he was the first to set foot on the South Pole in 1911, and later returned north again, where he became the first to reach the North Pole in 1925, although this was later confirmed. What has never been determined is - where did the last great hero of planetary exploration disappear to?

In order to help and save a fellow wanderer and explorer from Italy who was trying to fly over the North Pole with a Zeppelin and experienced a disaster on the way - he organized a rescue expedition with another Norwegian and three Frenchmen. The group was supposed to search for survivors through the vast Arctic expanse with the help of a Latham L-47 seaplane, equipped to withstand flying through the harsh conditions of the far north.

Amundsen and company took off in June 1928...and no one ever heard or saw anything from them again. To this day, the cause and manner of Roald's death are unknown. Rescue and research expeditions later tried to find some trace, but in vain. Amundsen went into the dimension of the missing pioneers who were breaking the path for the rest of humanity.

The Italian Nobile, who was the target of the rescue expedition that led to Amundsen's disappearance, was found alive (although not very healthy) by another rescue team. Half of the members of the Italian expedition died. Amundsen was never found physically, just as he was never found psychologically - no one can say where the need for a lifetime of wandering in areas where no human foot has ever set foot comes from. And perhaps it is for the best that it is so.

In honor of Roald Amundsen, the patron saint of dreamers and wanderers.

(By Roger Mortis, 040)