Reinke Faces Life

Thou Shalt Not Murder

The fat old white man sat alone in the dim light of his study, feeling the full weight of his years. Some would call what he experienced depression; others might recognize it as the Final Enlightenment—that clarity that comes only after a lifetime of seeking.

He settled into meditation, and the lessons of his years rushed forward unbidden. In his youth, he had studied religion with the fervor of a true believer. Later, science had captured his mind with its elegant proofs and quantifiable truths. Now, in the twilight of his life, he saw how they intertwined.

The insights cascaded through his consciousness:

“The Universe—uni-verse—means one song. We each have a part in the chorus.”

“Heisenberg: The observer affects that which is observed.”

“Everything is created twice: first in the mind, then in the space we call reality.”

“God’s metaphoric faculty of speech, being one and the same as action, is mirrored in man’s ability to affect his surrounding reality for the positive or negative.”

From these fragments, he forged his own principle: Man’s heart connects to his mind and determines the physical reaction.

Philosophers would argue for eons about whether humanity’s collective consciousness discovers reality or creates it. But the fat old white man, in his meditation, had moved beyond argument. He constructed a new understanding: inanimate objects were never truly inanimate. They drew animation from the higher-order mover—the intention, the heart, behind the hand that wielded them.

And in understanding this truth so completely, in grokking it at the deepest level of consciousness, he changed reality itself.

The Universe acknowledged his enlightenment and set a new Law into place.

The Wave

A disturbance radiated outward across the sea of human consciousness.

Most people felt nothing. They went about their days unaware that the fundamental rules governing existence had shifted.

But some knew.

The Dalai Lama paused in his private meditation, his breath catching. He felt the change ripple through him—something vast and ineffable, beyond words. He gathered his acolytes immediately. “The world has changed,” he told them, though he could not explain how or why.

In Trappist monasteries where monks kept their eternal silence, the change registered as a sudden lightness, as if a great burden had been lifted from the world.

In Shinto temples, priests performing their morning rituals felt the kami shift and settled into new patterns.

Jewish rabbis in their seminaries looked up from ancient texts, sensing that a new interpretation had just become necessary.

Amish communities gathering for worship felt it in the very air—a fundamental alteration in how things worked.

In meditation centers, yoga studios, and quiet rooms across the globe, seekers paused and wondered at the sudden sense of rightness that had descended upon the world.

The odd-ball press picked up on it. “Mass Meditation Event,” one headline read. “Millions Report Unexplained Feeling of Change.” But no one could put the sensation into words that made sense.

No one understood what had actually happened.

Not yet.

Three AM

The bar closed at three AM. A drunk stumbled to his car, fumbled with his keys, and turned the ignition.

Nothing happened.

He tried again. And again. The engine refused to turn over. Cursing, he got out and kicked the tire, then slumped against the hood. Eventually, he called a friend for a ride.

The car started perfectly the next morning when he was sober.

The Detonator

She had been promised paradise. Forty virgins. Glory. A place in heaven for herself and her family.

The young woman strapped the vest around her torso in the safehouse, fingers trembling. Her handler recited prayers and reminded her of her duty. She thought of the nightclub, the music, the people dancing in defiance of everything she’d been taught was holy.

She walked through the door. The bass thundered in her chest. Strobe lights flashed. Bodies pressed together on the dance floor.

She closed her eyes and pressed the detonator.

Nothing happened.

She pressed it again. Again. Panic rising, she fumbled with the mechanism, trying to understand what had gone wrong.

Someone bumped into her, smiling apologetically. A security guard glanced her way but saw only a nervous young woman overdressed for a club.

After ten minutes of standing frozen in terror, she stumbled back outside and tore the vest off in an alley, sobbing. She would later turn herself in, unable to explain why the device had failed. The bomb squad would find it perfectly functional when they examined it.

But they weren’t examining it with murder in their hearts.

The Missile

The dotty old dictator inspected his prize: the nuclear missile that would finally fulfill his dream of wiping Israel from the face of the earth. His Chief Scientist provided all the necessary assurances. The weapon was operational. The targeting was precise. Success was guaranteed.

“Launch it,” the dictator commanded. “Now.”

The Chief Scientist gave the order. Technicians initiated the sequence.

Nothing happened.

They tried again. The systems showed green across the board, but the missile simply would not fire.

The dictator, apoplectic with rage, ordered the Chief Scientist’s immediate execution for sabotage.

The firing squad assembled. Seven men raised their rifles, took aim, and pulled their triggers.

Seven weapons jammed simultaneously.

The Stoning

The religious mob dragged the young girl to the rocky field outside the village. She had been raped, but that didn’t matter to them. In their eyes, she had brought dishonor. The law was clear.

They chained her to the stone pillar. The crowd gathered, men picking up rocks with righteous fury.

The first stone was thrown with all the force of zealous hatred.

It fell to the ground three feet from the thrower’s hand.

Confused, he tried again. Same result. The rock simply dropped as if his arm had gone limp.

Others joined in, but no matter how hard they tried, no one could propel a stone toward the girl. They flew from hands with force, then fell straight down as if hitting an invisible wall.

One man, determined to see justice done, lifted a massive stone over his head and carried it to stand directly above her. He would simply drop it on her skull.

He opened his hands.

The stone remained affixed to his palms as if glued there. He shook his arms, pulled, pried. It wouldn’t budge.

Finally, exhausted and frightened, the mob dispersed. The girl remained chained to the pillar, weeping in disbelief, until a sympathetic woman came after dark to free her.

The Dealers

The drug dealer’s phone wouldn’t stop ringing. Angry customers. Panicked customers. Some threatening violence.

“What did you sell me?” “This stuff doesn’t work!” “You trying to cheat me?”

He couldn’t understand it. Same supplier, same product, same everything. But somehow, none of his product was getting anyone high.

Within hours, hospitals across the city were flooded with addicts in withdrawal. The drugs they’d taken had simply… stopped working. Medical supplies—morphine for pain, methadone for treatment—those still functioned. But recreational drugs, drugs taken to harm oneself or escape reality, had lost their potency.

Some desperate addicts got the idea to rob hospital pharmacies. They burst in with weapons drawn, demanding opioids.

The pills they stole were inert in their systems.

The Knife

The fight had started over something trivial—he couldn’t even remember what now. But the rage had built and built, every grievance of their marriage surfacing in a torrent of screaming.

He grabbed the kitchen knife without thinking. The red haze of fury clouded everything.

His wife’s eyes went wide. She tried to run but he was faster.

He drove the blade toward her heart with all his strength.

The point touched her blouse and stopped. Not with the resistance of fabric, but absolute resistance—as if he’d struck a steel plate.

He pushed harder, leaning his full weight into it.

The knife grew hot. Then burning hot. He screamed and dropped it, the flesh of his palm sizzling.

The force of his own push, with nowhere to go, reversed through his arm. The crack was audible. His wrist and forearm broke cleanly, as if he’d punched a granite wall.

He collapsed, cradling his burned, broken arm. His wife stood frozen, untouched, a single small tear in her blouse the only evidence of what had almost happened.

The Pornographer

The pornographer logged into his server’s admin panel, ready for his daily ritual of counting his earnings. He ran a network of subscription sites—nothing illegal, technically, but exploitative in ways he preferred not to think about.

The number that greeted him was zero.

Worse than zero: his credit card processor was showing thousands of chargebacks. Subscribers demanding refunds. Claims of fraud.

Impossible. He clicked through to the sites themselves.

Every image showed as a black square. Every video file refused to play. The content was simply… gone.

He rushed to his backup drives. Terabytes of content stored across multiple redundancies.

All black. All corrupted. All inaccessible.

Heart racing, he clicked on his personal photos folder. The images of his wife were fine. His kids at the beach—perfectly clear. His dog catching a frisbee—pristine.

Only the content created to exploit, to degrade, to reduce human beings to objects—that had been wiped clean.

The Embezzler

Marcus straightened his tie in the car mirror before walking to his office. Today was the day. Six months of careful planning, of moving money in small increments, of setting up the offshore accounts.

Today he would transfer the final sum and disappear. His partners would be left holding the bag. By the time they figured it out, he’d be on a beach somewhere with no extradition treaty.

He slid his key into the office door lock. It turned smoothly.

But the door wouldn’t budge.

He pushed harder. Threw his shoulder against it. The lock had clearly disengaged, but it was as if the door had been welded into its frame.

Frustrated, he returned to his car. He’d go to the bank directly, make the transfers from there.

The car wouldn’t start.

He sat in the driver’s seat for twenty minutes, turning the key over and over, until finally he walked home in his expensive suit, confused and beginning to feel the first whispers of existential dread.

The Gun

The police officer had been struggling with the teenager for thirty seconds—thirty seconds that felt like hours. The kid was high on something, superhumanly strong, and they were both fighting for control of the officer’s service weapon.

The gun fired. The bullet went wide, shattering a car window.

Then the kid twisted it free, the barrel now pointed directly at the officer’s chest.

“Should have just let me go,” the kid snarled, his finger tightening on the trigger.

Click.

Click. Click. Click.

The kid’s face went from triumph to confusion to panic. He turned and ran.

The officer, hand shaking, drew his backup weapon and gave chase. When he tackled the kid two blocks later, the adrenaline had worn off enough for him to realize what had just happened.

The gun had been loaded. He’d checked it himself that morning.

It should have fired.

It should have fired.

The News

“We begin tonight with a developing story that has law enforcement and technology experts completely baffled. What started as isolated reports of vehicle malfunctions has now grown into a nationwide—possibly worldwide—phenomenon that defies explanation.”

The news anchor’s face was grave as footage rolled of cars stranded on highways, of mechanics scratching their heads, of angry motorists demanding answers.

“But it’s not just cars. Reports are coming in of weapons malfunctions, computer systems failing, even simple tools refusing to function—but only for certain people, and only in certain circumstances. The pattern, if there is one, remains unclear.”

A security expert appeared on screen: “We initially suspected some kind of electromagnetic pulse or cyber attack, but the selectivity of the failures doesn’t match any known technology. Some devices work perfectly fine, then fail when specific individuals try to use them.”

“It’s like stuff has a mind of its own,” a bewildered engineer told a reporter.

The Mechanic

Honest Joe’s Auto Repair had never been so busy. The phone rang off the hook. But when Joe arrived at each service call, ready to diagnose the problem, the car would start perfectly.

“I don’t understand,” the customer would say. “It wouldn’t start for me. I tried twenty times.”

“Get in and try again,” Joe would suggest.

The customer would climb into the driver’s seat, turn the key, and… nothing.

Joe would lean in, turn the same key, and the engine would purr to life.

It happened again and again until Joe, a devout man, called his minister.

“Reverend, I need guidance. I’m being called out to help people, but when I arrive, the problem’s already fixed. I’m not doing anything. What should I charge them?”

The minister was quiet for a moment. “What does your conscience say is fair?”

“My hourly rate for the service call. Nothing more, nothing less. And I should probably start telling people I don’t think I can fix their problem—because I’m not the one fixing it.”

“That sounds right, Joe. Follow your conscience. I think that’s what’s being asked of all of us now.”

The Criminals

Within a week, a pattern emerged that governments didn’t want to acknowledge but couldn’t ignore.

Politicians who took bribes found their bank accounts frozen—not by authorities, but by the systems themselves, which simply refused to process their transactions.

Bureaucrats who approved contracts for kickbacks discovered their signatures wouldn’t take on documents. Pens skipped, ink wouldn’t flow, digital signatures failed to authenticate.

Crooked cops found their squad cars wouldn’t start when they were headed to meet dealers or shake down businesses.

Corrupt judges’ gavels felt heavy as lead when they tried to render unjust verdicts.

It wasn’t universal. It wasn’t perfect. But there was an undeniable trend: the tools of harm were refusing to cooperate with harmful intent.

The Understanding

In university physics departments, emergency meetings were called. The laws of physics hadn’t changed—exactly. But they had become… conditional.

“It’s as if intention matters now,” one physicist said, drawing equations on a whiteboard. “The same object, the same force, the same energy—different results based on the mindset of the person applying them.”

“That’s metaphysics, not physics,” a colleague objected.

“Then metaphysics just became physics. Because the data doesn’t lie.”

Religious scholars, meanwhile, found themselves vindicated in ways they’d never expected. The ancient texts that spoke of karma, of reaping what you sow, of the power of intention—they weren’t just moral guidelines anymore.

They were operational manuals for the new reality.

The Departure

The fat old white man died peacefully in his sleep, a slight smile on his lips.

No one mourned him because no one knew him. He had lived quietly, studied deeply, and in the end, through nothing more than perfect understanding, he had changed the world.

His body was found by a neighbor three days later. There was no funeral. His ashes were scattered in a municipal garden by a bored city worker who didn’t know he was spreading the remains of the man who had saved humanity from itself.

Like the great mystics throughout the ages—the enlightened ones who saw clearly and changed reality through the purity of their vision—his name would never be known.

But his legacy would be eternal.

The New World

Peace didn’t reign immediately. Humanity had to learn the new rules, had to understand what had changed.

Murder weapons wouldn’t work. Theft required tools that refused to cooperate with thieves. Vehicles wouldn’t start for drunk drivers. Explosives wouldn’t detonate for those with hate in their hearts.

It wasn’t magic. It wasn’t divine intervention in the classical sense.

It was simply that objects now drew their animation—their willingness to function—from the intention of the wielder. The universe had always been one song, but now the instruments wouldn’t play for those singing out of tune with compassion.

Wars sputtered and died. Armies found their weapons inert when ordered to attack.

Crime plummeted. Police found themselves with less to do as tools of harm simply stopped working for those who wished harm.

Accidents still happened. Disease still existed. Natural disasters still struck.

But the harm humans inflicted on each other—that ancient curse of violence and cruelty—had been hobbled.

Not eliminated. Humans were endlessly creative in their capacity for cruelty.

But checked. Limited. Constrained by a universe that now required good intentions for tools to function.

Some called it EMP for bad guys.

Others called it TEOTWAWKI—The End Of The World As We Know It.

The old world, where intention didn’t matter and a gun fired the same whether held by a murderer or a defender, was gone.

The new world required something harder: that you examine your heart before acting.

Because the universe was watching.

“Thou Can Not Murder”

And it would only help those whose hearts were aligned with the one song.

Peace.

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