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“Then who the hell killed them all?” Max asked
“If I were to guess, I’d say the Responsivists either did it to themselves, but they aren’t a suicide cult, like Jim Jones’s Peoples Temple or Japan’s Aum Shinrikyo Some people claim Lydell Cooper took his own life in the ultiroup doesn’t support suicide They say that since you’re already born, it is your moral responsibility to spread their beliefs, not kill yourself The other option is that soroup”
“Any suspects?”
Linda said, “Because of their stance on birth control and abortion, they’ve been engaged in a running battle with the Vatican for years The saanizations”
Cabrillo shook his head “I can see one nut job with a rifle killing an abortion doctor But to kill a shipload of people takes a highly organized and well-funded tea the cult in order to kill a few hundred of their members”
“My roup of zealots,” Mark said “A countercult to the Responsivists,You know, apart froroup’s into some pretty weird stuff”
Juan ignored him “Let’s explore why they would kill some of their own Ideas?”
“No, seriously,” Mark continued “Once you’ve been involved for a while, do your charity work in so you in on soe will save you”
“Go on,” Juan said to indulge hiht mind
“Ever heard of ’brane theory?” He’d already talked with Eric about it so only Stone didn’t return a blank stare “It’s right up there with string theory as a way of unifying all four forces in the universe, so Einstein couldn’t do In a nutshell, it says our four-dile her orders of space These are so close to ours that zero-point ravitation forces in our universe can leak out It’s all cutting-edge stuff”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Cabrillo said
“Anyway, ’brane theory started to get traction a theoretical physicists in the loh It wasn’t just quantu in and out of our universe He believed that an intelligence fro people here in our dience, he said, shaped our day-to-day lives in e couldn’t sense It was the cause of all our suffering Just before his death, Cooper started to teach techniques to limit this influence, ways to protect ourselves from the alien power”
“And people bought this crap?” Max asked, sinking deeper into depression over his son
“Oh yeah Think about it from their side for a second It’s not a believer’s fault that he is unlucky or depressed or just plain stupid His life is being messed with across dimensional membranes in space It’s an alien influence that cost you that proirl of your drea you back, not your own ineptitude If you believe that, then you don’t have to take responsibility for your life And we all know nobody takes responsibility for hiives you a ready-made excuse for your poor life choices”
“With people suing fast-food coht, I can see the attraction,” Juan said “But what’s this have to do with so a ship filled with Responsivists?”