Wine, Bombs, and the Microchip Conspiracy

November has come again and the hour has changed and now when I go out walking in the evening it's dark and lonely in a way that this little town in Baja has never been before. I have to be careful when I walk in the dark because sometimes I fall down. The other night I fell in the street only a block from the house and five Mexicans from five different points on the compass ran over to help me up.

Sometimes I stop at the bar at Vincent's fish restaurant. There is standing room for three people at the bar. There's one chair. Last night I was there drinking wine and reading Blaise Cendrars' memoirs when a waitress came to the bar to order a drink. When she turned to take the drink to her table her long hair brushed ever so lightly across the back of my bare neck. Memory filled instantly with pictures of other women in other places in other times. I ordered another glass of wine. I reminded myself to not have more than three or I would be at risk of breaking several bones before I got back to the house.

After awhile a Mexican came to the bar, ordered a beer, and we fell into conversation. He told me that he had grown up in the U.S., served twenty years in the U.S. army, but had not become a citizen. He was planning to sue the U.S. Government, charging that its agents had planted a microchip in his body and used it to give him commands that he must obey. Only the year before he had been commanded by his microchip to shoot and kill a Black guy who had become something of a bother. That's why he's in Mexico now. He can't go back.

He told me that his story is not unique. The U.S. Government plants a microchip in every baby born in America. That's how the Government is able to program Americans to do what it wants. The war in Afghanistan is only the most recent example. It is a crime against humanity, what our Government does with its microchips, but no one is willing to speak out. He is determined to expose those who are responsible for the microchip program. Local law enforcement officials would not give him the time of day. He had to go straight to the top. He is writing to all the top agencies in the U.S. Government, and while he has received a few replies he understands he is being strung along.

While he was still in America he had tried to get doctors at the Veteran's Administration to cat scan his whole body so they could locate his own microchip. The VA would not do it. He went to mortuaries and asked permission to observe autopsies so that he could point out the microchips embedded in each corpse. No mortuary would allow him to observe. He decided he would make the ultimate sacrifice for Americans and for humankind. He would offer to kill himself if his autopsy would be monitored by the Department of Justice, two television networks, and journalists representing six major daily newspapers. What more could he do? He was waiting for a reply from Justice now.

I know a good story when I hear one. I order another glass of wine, then another. I lose count. My new friend is willing to elaborate on his story for as long as I'm willing to drink. At ten o'clock the gods of time intervene and Vincent's closes for the night. I pay the bill and we part, promising to get together another time. Outside, the night is black and starry and at the same time the street is awash with the moon's white light. I begin walking carefully along the dirt and broken brick walks. I put my hands in my jacket pockets, then take them out again in case I fall. My heart feels like it's floating in some inner space. And thought, a little surprised, says, “So — it's the microchips then?.”

But of course! That's it! It has always been the microchips. Thoughts, commands to react to stimuli in specific ways, implanted in every individual by his culture, his nation, his family. President Bush bombs the Afghans because Saudi radicals bomb Americans because Americans bomb Iraq and pay Israeli Jews to bomb Palestinian Arabs because Palestinians will not agree to the conquest of their lands by European Jews even though at the beginning the United Nations said it was okay because Germans had holocausted the Jews because Hitler didn't like Jews because – well, maybe because he just didn't like them, who really knows? — so what choice does President Bush really have after what Hitler did? There is only one choice. He must bomb the Afghans.

Microchip thinking. We can choose to go with the program, or we can choose to figure it out for ourselves. On this black and star-filled night awash with wine and white moonlight, I swear to try to figure it out for myself. Each time.

© 10 November 2001