Don't Go Beyond The Ocean Poem by David Welch

Sabati was eight years old on the day
that his grandfather told him to sit down,
there was a story that he had to share,
that he was finally old enough now.

Sabati looked up to Grandpa Kaahbli,
had heard from rumors he fought in the wars,
even had met the first True Man himself,
so Sabati was eager to learn more.

"Now boy, sit down, there's much I need to tell
about how we came to be on this Earth,
how us Better humans were created,
I want you to understand your full worth.

"Why we're better than these peasants we rule,
and how it was that things turned out this way,
it started two decades before my birth,
it was in China, back in savage days.

"The same people who birthed the Corona
got reassigned when the hub-bub died down,
to a lab in Inner Mongolia,
far away from all the cities and towns.

"The tyrants back then were very upset
that their scheming did not conquer the world,
they believed that they had heaven's mandate,
that their conquest would forever unfurl.

"So they took samples from all of the Earth,
blood and DNA from women and men,
brought them all back to that same, lonely lab,
started to make new embryos from them.

"They wanted the best that mankind could give,
to make a soldier that no one could beat,
even would splice in stray animal strands,
nothing less than perfection did they seek.

"Most of those first embroys didn't last
when implanted in the Uighur women,
some even died from the complications,
but China always could find more of them.

"After seven years a child was born,
that was the True Man, the first of our kind,
the first human who could be called Better,
much blessed with great speed, strength, spirit, and mind.

"And while he grew up, others came along,
the First Fathers who would breed a new race,
twice as fast as men, and three times stronger,
one-thirty IQs for them were disgrace.

"The Chinese thought we would be their Spartans,
when old enough we'd defeat all their foes,
but True Man could see his masters' design
and in his own mind countless plans did grow.

"With others he schemed, while playing along,
while being trained with weapons of the time,
until on the day True Man turned nineteen,
when he would rise up with all of his kind.

"The guards at the lab were killed quite quickly,
they killed the eggheads and burned it all down,
fled north form the border, and kept going,
to Siberia, where they went to ground.

"There they found a small Evenki village,
settled down there, took the women as wives,
True Man thought they would live there quietly,
but very soon a strange fact they did find…

"It seemed their genes were hyper-dominant,
and as they wives gave them daughters and sons,
they inherited their fathers' great strength,
not just a few, but every single one!

"Ninety percent of their kids' DNA
were a copy of what their fathers had,
that's not how it works for the peasants, boys,
a savage child is born half-and-half.

"When True Man realized what his children were
the calculus of his existence changed,
if their children were Better humans too
then they would not just survive, they would reign!

"The first fathers took up multiple wives,
had as many children as they could make,
for twenty years grew their population,
until at least a thousand they could claim.

"Then True Man began expanding his land,
with all the Betters they conquered freely,
locals and police were no match for them,
and corrupt was Russia's military.

"By the time that nation saw the true threat,
the First Fathers has seized an army base,
with peasants as fodder for their advance,
they struck out and attacked all that they faced.

"Before long they had seized nuclear arms,
threatened destruction to all who'd resist,
this made the response fractured, half-hearted,
none of the peasants had known fear like this!

"And where Betters went, they would take move wives,
then give them children who were strong and proud,
these Betters grew up to rule their home towns,
loyalty to the True Man they avowed.

"By the time he was sixty all Asia
had been conquered, and lived under his rule,
by seventy Europe had collapsed too,
the whole world saw him as vicious and cruel.

"Africa did not resist all that much,
and when True Man had reached eighty years of age,
he looked only forty, and could proclaim
more than half the world did live by his say.

"Old orders and nations lost to the winds,
not realizing that they had helped his cause
by schooling the people to obey the state,
to just grumble and then accept the laws.

"What was one tyrant compared to the next?
To many peasants thy didn't much care,
they were not elites, would not know power,
why should they bother who's ruling up there?

"It was only when it was much too late
that they realized things were not like before,
Betters had no need for peasant advise,
they're our inferiors, to be deplored.

"They screamed that they should have a say in things,
we destroyed all who would question True Man,
until those who were left stopped their shouting,
since then we have ruled all with a firm hand.

"That will be your destiny, my grandson,
as a Better, you have been born to rule,
you're stronger and smarter than those peasants,
next to you they are nothing but dumb fools."

And with that Kaahbli nodded his head,
Sabati looked on with pride in his eyes,
to hear how his people reformed this world…
but there was something left out, he realized.

Sabati looked with a perplexed face,
then said, "Grandfafther, I've heard from Laashun,
that peasants live savage across the sea,
that there are more lands across the ocean? "

The look that came to his grandfather's face
struck young Sabati deep down in his core,
he said, "How did you come to hear of that? "
"My friend told me, and I want to know more! "

Kaahbli scowled, and sat a long moment,
then turned to the boy with a cold resolve,
"Yes, boy, there is land beyond the ocean,
but it's not a place where we go…at all."

But Sabati's young mind would not relent,
and Kaahbli saw it in the young man's look,
he sighed and sighed, "Well I guess you should know,
but listen closely, it's for your own good.

"I was a young man, when we first went there,
in massive ships to cross the endless waves,
the peasants there are called ‘Americans, '
and they are not of a mind to behave.

"We had to battle clear across the sea,
lost countless ships to their vessels and planes,
tens of thousands of peasant troops were lost,
five First Fathers killed by their missile rain.

"And when we finally beat their navy,
when what was left of us got to their shore,
their army was waiting, showed no mercy…
never had I seen such slaughter before.

"Half of us were dead when they were pushed back,
we took the cities they'd built by the sea,
True Man himself seemed shaken by it all,
never seen such a costly victory.

"But we had a foothold, we'd go from there,
the Americans were battered and bruised,
and we'd make them pay for their insolence,
yes…at the time that was our point-of-view.

"Yet every time that we left the cities
gunshots would come in, scattered everywhere,
we're fast, but we can't outrun a bullet,
and wherever we would go, one was there.

" ‘A rifle behind every blade of grass, '
an old peasant said that of them back then,
Americans, it seemed, did like their guns,
right down to everyday women and men.

"For two years we tried, but ambushes came,
they hit and run, would not stand up and fight,
the meadows were deadly, the forests were hell,
wherever we went, we were in their sights.

"Imagine one hundred million peasants
as well armed as a soldier of the line…
add to that an army not defeated,
shelling their own cities, time after time.

"Just so that they could deny them to us,
leave us with no conquests but the rubble,
our losses were heavy, reinforcements far,
even True Man knew we were in trouble.

"Some say that he was planning to retreat,
but his intentions were never realized,
because one day a damn peasant postal clerk
put a fifty cal round right through his eye.

"I was quite young, but I remember well
scrambling back to our remaining ships,
retreating across the cold Atlantic,
most of our own men not believing it.

"They were to try America twice more,
and each time it just became a bloodbath.
Their southern neighbors copied them quickly,
you won't find a house there where guns are lacked.

"The horror of savage, armed peasantry…
I hope that you never know such despair,
there is a reason we keep ours helpless,
a reason why we don't go over there."

Kaahbli stopped there, he could not go one,
since Sabati was not even a teen,
couldn't tell the boy that without peasants
the Americans relied on machines.

That with those machines, they'd took to the stars,
spread to every planet around the sun,
that they could carpet the Earth in fire,
that it was so much worse than just their guns.

For all his strength, his breeding, his brain,
for everything that he'd been evolved to,
Betters were trapped on just three continents,
and with a flip-switch they all could be nuked.

But those words were for when he was older,
a young Better had to be raised just right,
he'd seen young minds learn too much truth too quick,
anger like that was not a pretty sight.

So he just turned back to his young grandson,
said, "Enough of that boy, come, listen here,
you want them to work, whip them once a month,
and kill at least one peasant every year.

"It helps a lot to make them live in fear…"