We live in a world of rules and laws.

There are immutable rules that govern the physical world, like entropy that describes the randomness of the world, and the preservation of energy. Then there are natural laws that define the framework in which the world functions. These include laws of attraction, polarity, and cause and effect amongst others. Added together there are just a handful of laws that make the universe work.

Humans require a lot more governance. Over time society established many laws that aim to control human activity and interaction. In the USA alone there are so many laws that they have been classified into more than twenty groups. Common, contract, constitutional and civil law are a few examples, and these are just the C’s! The rest of the world has its own classes of law.

Another set of unwritten rules also exists where certain events or actions are considered customary. These customary laws are diverse and differ greatly between various groups of people.

Then there is a final set of fluid, ever evolving rules that define socially acceptable behavior. These ‘ad populum’ rules evolve faster than any other category and causes the most conflict. You can’t be arrested for ignoring these, but you can earn the ire of the world. These rules gain traction when people come to believe that everybody supports a certain way of thinking, usually due to copious TV coverage and social media proliferation. Anyone who breaks these rules automatically sins against society, and risks being alienated and ostracized. Common sense, which is no longer very common, usually becomes the first victim of these fad-like beliefs.

***

Aaron has no desire to blindly follow any rules. He prides himself on doing what he wants but understands this needs to happen within the boundaries of the law. He is not a lawyer, and has no desire to become a lawyer, but he studies the law so he knows how to bend it to his advantage. Some laws can even be broken without consequence given the right circumstances, and when you know what these are, you can create the circumstances.

He accepts that laws are a human construct, arbitrary things that came to being to address a specific social problem or too right a wrong. In themselves they mean nothing without enforcement. The fact that rule of law requires enforcement really made him suspicious of its purpose. If enforcement is required it means that humans naturally tend to live outside these laws, therefore these laws are bullshit, and stand in the way of progress and evolution.

Aaron admires nature and how in nature the fittest survive. There are predators and prey and still life thrives. There are no laws or cops and no jail, and no group of deer has ever successfully protested publicly against their position on the food chain. They knew their place and stayed out of sight.

Aaron is a predator at heart, and he wants to have his way with the world. If ever caught and convicted while breaking a serious law, he will be known as a criminal. Once branded a criminal you are fucked. This is one of those unspoken, unwritten rules of society. You can fuck and maim with abandon, and as long as you are not caught. Once caught and marked like Kane from the bible, you are no longer a member of the judgmental public, but one that caused harm and have to be discriminated against.

From a very young age Aaron boxed and wrestled, and switched over to kick boxing and Brazilian jiujitsu when MMA made it mainstream. He absolutely loves Judo and studied that also. When he was young his parents signed him up to learn how to fight, hoping he would not fight. It did not work initially.

Aaron always knew where he fitted in on the human food chain, and he did not suffer fools, but broke them. Like he broke 9-year-old Jake Chandlers jaw and left arm when Jake tried to take his lunch at school. Aaron was 8 at the time, and he understood enough of the aftermath to get an appreciation for the layers of regulation that govern our lives. He vowed to learn and understand that aspect of life so he could live in the grey areas between these laws.

***

Aaron first killed another human being in Afghanistan. After graduating high school, he joined the marine core and immediately felt at home. He relished the routine of being a soldier, and absolutely loved the focus given to becoming a killing machine.

While deployed in Afghanistan, his squad was tasked with clearing homes, looking for insurgents and weapons. In his first week they entered a home and found a hole in the wall, hidden behind a hanging rug. It connected to the house next door, and that house was occupied by 6 heavily armed insurgents.

One of Aaron’s squad members lifted the rug, and was immediately shot in the face, neck and chest. Aaron was right behind him, and he could hear the bullets hit the core man, and the other bullets pass by hitting walls behind him. He dove to the side of the hole, and the rest of his team fired into the rug. Aaron tossed a grenade, and rushed in after the explosion, weapon at the ready, hoping he does not get shot in the back by friendly fire.

It felt like playing a video game. He was totally relaxed and punched two bullets into everybody that crossed his sights. He took out two dazed and obviously injured men with four well placed rounds. Aaron prefers to use the semiautomatic setting on his weapon, making every round count. The two still bodies he encountered also got two rounds each, just to be sure.

When the rest of his squad entered the room Aaron was already pursuing the two survivors. He found them in a room, franticly trying to arm an explosive laden vest. It was an older man and a boy, maybe thirteen or fourteen, and the vest was on the boy. Aaron shot the boy in the head, and the man got two rounds to center mass. The boy released the dead man trigger he held, and the vest exploded. Aaron survived the blast because he was taking cover outside the room next to the open door. The blast pressure still knocked him out.

Aaron got the Army Commendation Medal with combat device for this episode. As a civilian you may not go onto another person’s property and kill them when they take offence, but as a soldier you can go into another country and kill its citizens when they resist. War made perfect sense to his predatory mind, its kill or be killed. Kill those that oppose your objective, knowing they plan to do the same to you. Perfectly fair and acceptable Aaron thought. He only wishes he could do the same back home, like a gunslinger from the old Wild West. People were way more respectful then because a careless tongue could get you killed.

***

Aaron encountered Sharia law during his deployment. He admired its simplicity and brutality. It had fewer laws when compared to the multitude used by the west, and easier to manipulate. Once his squad came across two girls that were hung for being raped. The men that hung them gang raped them to make it legal. Another time a young man committed adultery with a woman, and he could not be punished because he was the eldest and will carry the family name. His oldest sister died in his place, stoned to death with his lover. Since woman are basically considered as factories to make men, they often are the victims of manipulated Sharia law.

Even in western countries laws have been used to persecute people for doing the right thing. Recently a German politician was found guilty of inciting hatred when she mentioned a known fact that Afghani immigrants are 10 times more likely to commit rape. The judge that sentenced her stated that the factual nature of her statement was not relevant, and that she is guilty of using facts to incite hate. She was marked a criminal for telling the truth! This might just be the first step to reestablish the blasphemy laws of old for which you can be killed when speaking against current thinking. The punishment for blasphemy was to be stoned to death, just like those Afghani women!

Another example of using the law to force change onto the world, is the USA government’s idiotic push to force consumers to adopt electric vehicles. Even choice in a so-called free market can be curtailed with laws!

Aaron believed that human nature has not evolved much at all, and we still do terrible things to each other in the name of the law. When you add ignorance, stupidity, religion and HOAs on top of that you have all the ingredients for conflict on many levels. He believed that people needed to be governed with an iron fist.

***

When his deployment ended Aaron came home a decorated war veteran. Nobody cared, they were all too busy scratching a living from the world within the bounds of the law, or protesting nonsense pushing the boundaries of the law. This suited Aaron well, he prefers to remain unnoticed.

Aaron used the GI bill and studied criminology and after obtaining his degree joined law enforcement. Life is ironic! He joined the police force to help enforce the very laws he despises.

***

Eventually Aaron concludes that he must believe in something, and he embraces Islam. He is radicalized from the start and spends much time studying the application of Sharia law. Here is a set of laws he can live with. It has only five categories, is simple and requires swift and harsh punishment for those who do not conform. It can be used and manipulated for your own purposes, just like he saw in Afghanistan. Best of all, those who do not follow Islam are branded infidels, and are outside the law and subhuman.

Aaron becomes involved with radical Islamist extremists, and assists in planning an attack on the infidels, the target being Manhattan New York. The Manhattan borough has a population of 1.6 million, and on weekdays the number of commuters into the city pushes the number to 3.9 million.

***

The attack was planned for many months. The terrorists avoided using cell phones and the internet, and everything was done off grid. All maps and plans were memorized, nothing was written down on paper. Tactics were drawn and considered using a blackboard and erased as soon as possible. They bought the vehicles they needed from all over the country, 7 Mercedes Sprinter vans and 6 Dodge cargo vans. These vehicles were driven to 1 of 4 warehouses where they were preparing for D-day.

All the vans were packed with high explosives and bags of USA pennies. It took months to create the large quantities of HMX they required. The Mercedes vans were also loaded with military weapons.

On D-day two vans headed for the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges, and two others targeted the Holland and Carey tunnels. Times Square and the NY stock exchange were selected as the two main targets, and the remaining Dodge cargo vans were sent there.

These six cargo vans were carefully driven to the chosen targets where their divers martyred themselves exactly at 7:30 am on a Tuesday. HMX is one of the most explosive non-nuclear substances in the world. It releases tremendous amounts of gas, more than 12 times its mass, creating an incredibly destructive shock wave capable of shattering steel and concrete. Each van contained 2500 pounds of HMX surrounded by bags of US pennies. The huge explosions collapsed the tunnels that subsequently flooded, and large sections of the two bridges fell into the rivers below. Pennies rained down all around.

Times Square and the NY stock exchange blasts took the most lives. The blast waves destroyed all life within a radius of 300 yards, shooting penny shrapnel into buildings and bodies at supersonic speeds. It displaced so much air that windows facing away from the shockwave blew out of buildings, spilling their contents over the sidewalks, furniture and people and plants. Manhole covers were blown into the air when the air pressure above grade dropped to nothing.

The destruction and loss of life was tremendous, and the cost of the damage and loss in the billions. The attack has just begun.

Seven more teams stormed malls, hotels and tourist spots across Manhattan using automatic weapons with grenade launchers. They jumped from the vans and walked into the city in pairs, and others left with the vans looking for targets that will yield the most casualties.

The teams of shooters were masked and wore heavy armor. As they advanced into the city they shot people indiscriminately, and lobbed HMX loaden grenades into buildings and subway entrances.

Aaron is amongst them, again enjoying the video game like quality of the action. The police and swat teams arrive, and fierce gun battles erupt. The terrorists never stop, they keep moving, using their grenade launchers to punch through police blockades. They fire improvised HMX grenades that are powerful enough to toss vehicles like toys and turn anything that is not bolted or cemented down into shrapnel.

Eventually Aaron and a few other terrorists go down into the subway. They murder a group of people hiding in a restroom, remove their armor and put those on booby trapped corpses. They disappear into the pandemonium, mingling with the hysterical people running in all directions, making a clean getaway. The rest of the terrorist group destroy themselves with suicide bombs when they run out of ammunition.

***

After the attack the authorities had the expected knee jerk reaction. They declare war on Iran, and then they agree to install more rules and regulations. These laws will be enacted on their constituents, the very victims of this senseless violence. Most of the public gladly sacrificed more freedom to feel safe. This hands the attackers another victory; the very people they terrorized will now be watched and monitored by their own government.

Aaron and his fellow terrorists were already planning the next attack. They are heroes to some for obeying their laws, and criminals to others for breaking their laws. They are not the government, but they indirectly change the rules and laws enforced on those they terrorize.

They will not stop until they are neutralized, and they have an endless supply of bodies and money. Already there is a flood of trained soldiers crossing the southern border into the USA, making their way to various destinations on their very long list of targets.

They will continue to murder innocents, forcing their leaders to make even more restrictive laws, until eventually all the laws in the world are as restrictive as theirs, making the adoption of their beliefs much easier.

Or until nobody that opposes their way of life is left alive.