December Pulse

Chapter 3

.Flashback — The Day of the Incident

The Electromagnetic Pulse | The Return of Larmenia to Primitivism

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December 31 — One day before I entered the prison hospital

10:00 a.m. — Republic of Oranko | Ministry of Interior

So… finally, it has reached your hands.

You have no idea what I went through just so I could end up inside your grasp. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that I am now on my way into your mind.

The human mind is a strange thing.

Do you know how many neurons in your brain are moving right now between my fingertips? I can shift them left and right like chess pieces. I can exhaust them with thought until they surrender—and then I can convince them of any idea… even a false one.

I won’t take long.

Tell me—are you holding the pen on your desk? Yes… the one you’re looking at now.

Do you know how it was once advertised?

They said it was a magical pen that writes underwater. Only the wealthy could afford its expensive versions.

And yet—after computers, cars, and airplanes—man still reacts to discovery with the same old awe.

Strange, isn’t it?

From the discovery of fire until today, humanity has never stopped being amazed by what it invents… yet it has never once been amazed by the mind that invented it.

We discover. We marvel. Then we drown in our discoveries—while neglecting the atomic, creative mind behind them.

I irritate you because you do not value your own mind. You do not give it a chance to speak.

What if I sent you back now to the Stone Age? An interesting adventure, isn’t it?

You would see that everything you built over centuries could vanish… while the greatest tool you possess—the mind that never stops creating—remains ignored, unappreciated, and unamazed by itself.

As unappreciated as the generation of the late nineties once was when the ballpoint pen was invented.

Minister of Interior Yassin could not endure the man’s arrogance any longer. He ended the call abruptly:

“What does this mad, fat, ugly man want? Return me to the Stone Age? Has he invented a time machine? Damn him—and damn whoever made him president.”

I don’t know whether Yassin’s anger came from that call… or from his quarrel with his wife the night before.

As his old colleague and assistant minister, it was my duty to reassure him that nothing serious was happening—that the country was stable, and that no one would remove him from his position.

Yet I never felt at ease about him.

Not once did the conversation pass through my ears without leaving unease behind.

It wasn’t Yassin’s dismissal that troubled me. Nor his dull marital problems.

It was him.

The man with a bloated face, a mind saturated with madness equal to 150 psychiatric hospitals combined.

Our leader.

“Bachus.”

We had attended many meetings with him over the past months.

Meetings about striking the nation of Larmenia with an electromagnetic pulse—returning it to a primitive age.

For my own sanity, I told myself he was merely delusional. That it was a joke. Nothing more.

Yassin and I opposed the idea repeatedly. We insisted it would not remain contained—it would escalate into a global war.

But he would not listen.

I still remember that day.

We were summoned to the presidential palace.

A four-hour documentary was presented to us—ministers, engineers, military officers—explaining the electromagnetic bomb and its mechanism.

The weapon designed to erase Larmenia, our enemy for fifty years.

The presentation began:

An electromagnetic bomb is a weapon designed to disable electronic systems through an intense electromagnetic pulse, disrupting circuits and destroying devices, vehicles, and infrastructure. Its effects can extend up to ten kilometers unless combined with a nuclear detonation.

High-altitude nuclear explosions can generate powerful electromagnetic waves capable of crippling electronic systems across vast distances.

After four hours, the presentation ended.

Then came the vote.

I was the first to oppose it.

I spent a long time explaining my reasons. Yassin opposed it as well.

And so, when the leader called Yassin afterward, I felt a deep unease.

Even though time had passed since that meeting, I never trusted his intentions.

That day ended.

I returned home.

But before reaching the door, I remembered something—

It was my daughter’s birthday.

Hania.

And I had to go to my ex-wife Dana’s house.

I don’t know when exactly we became strangers… but I knew we would never become close again. Not even if the seas between us separated into two lands.

Still, I went.

I would see my daughter.

For a moment, everything faded—work, fear, suspicion.

Only her remained.

My little queen. Five years old.

Her round face. Her wide eyes. Her laughter—worth more than all the treasures of earth.

I bought toys. Balloons. Candy.

I filled my car with gifts and drove toward Dana’s house, smiling at a red light I usually hated.

And in truth… that night was not Hania’s night.

It was mine.

I remember nothing after that.

Only a black truck.

A violent impact.

My body crushed inside the car.

Time stopped.

Sound faded.

Life dimmed slowly like a dying echo.

Then—nothing but darkness.

I woke up fifteen days later in the hospital prison.

Memory gone.

Fragments missing.

And soon after… I found myself inside Hantenmas prison.

Then came the escape.

Return to Escape Night — February 5 | Late Evening

After escaping prison, I went to a friend in the Fifth District.

I borrowed clothes.

Changed my hair color.

Made poor attempts at avoiding recognition.

Then I left without telling him anything.

No destination.

No identity.

Only movement.

Only confusion.

Only the desperate need to remember what had been erased.

The city around me felt like noise without meaning. Protesters filled the streets—I didn’t know why, and I didn’t care.

All I wanted… was the last point my memory had erased.

Because I felt like a child abandoned in the middle of a road, told to continue alone.

“You are strong now.”

But what strength is given to a child of eight?

Perhaps the fully amnesiac is the lucky one.

Maybe forgetting everything is a mercy that prevents madness… or suicide.

If the remembering self truly remembered everything, perhaps he would not survive his own thoughts.

Sometimes a knife to the mind is gentler than a knife to the soul.

Perhaps in our diseases lies our cure… and in our fate lies a strange kind of wisdom.

But partial memory loss…

is never mercy.

It is torture.

Like being handed a pen and paper…

and told to finish a story you don’t remember beginning.