So, it was when Hulio changed trains at Munich, that he immediately went to one of the restrooms on the carriage. It was a rather simple contraption consisting of an aluminium bowl and trap door to the railroad gravel below.

  As the train departed the Munich station, a pungent pile of purple memento was left behind – a gesture of grudge.

  For the remainder of the trip, Hulio ate mothballs from an emptied packet of Mints and amused himself by doodling on his tablet and watching YouTube videos. When he grew bored of technology, he pulled out his copy of Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Hulio loved to collect texts, especially works that explored political ideology, nihilism, atheism, and other such ‘ologies’ and ‘isms’. The comical value of such texts could not be understated.

  He was on the trail for the rumoured to exist, revised edition of The Communist Manifesto. Apparently, only one copy was printed. In this alleged revised edition, Karl Marx supposedly included a preamble in which he explains how the political pamphlet was not a serious work. It was all made up, the by-product of a binge drinking session with Friedrich Engels.

  Apparently, after several dozen steins and a bottle of banana schnapps, the two decided to put their drunken ramblings into a political pamphlet for a joke. Hulio wanted that revised edition. He desired that revised edition. He would do anything for that revised edition.

  It was sinister how the sinister wielded ideologies to manipulate the masses. Just once he wanted to show the sham behind a sham ideology. Any ideology would suffice because after all, they were all just shams.

  The train arrived in Amsterdam. CCTV footage recorded Agent Hulio leaving the station and crossing a field of cobblestones towards the nearest hardware store that sold an assortment of industrial strength cleaning products. He was then detected leaving the store with a rather large bottle of Drano, heading towards some more questionable establishments.

  Hulio was detected standing across the alleyway from a quaint little steak house. He appeared to have noticed something or someone. The agent appeared startled. As if he had subconsciously spent an eternity searching for his soul mate, only to be struck with the sudden realisation that here they were, waiting at this particular moment in time, for Hulio to arrive.

  Switching CCTVs showed Hulio staring at perhaps the most wondrously handsome and youthful looking man in all of known existence. He had long and wavy brown hair with a short and well-kept beard. His radiant looks were only matched by his perfectly proportioned, bodybuilder physique. His arms were like chiselled dugongs. His eyes were filled with the purest purity of joy, radiating a warm and loving, fatherly light. A warm form of the purest white glow imaginable, enveloped this gorgeous giant like a graceful aura. To his left sat a goofy looking, googly-eyed brown bear.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  This glorious giant of an unbelievably attractive man, put down his triple beef patty burger with the works (of which a stack of such burgers was piled upon his plate) and stared back at Hulio.

  The two seemed to share the same elated astonishment. They smiled lovingly at each other. Hulio could hear Glory of Love by Peter Cetera. It played from the wall mounted speakers inside the steak house.

  Hulio spoke…

  From analysing CCTV footage, the Primordial Earth Protectorate’s SI, lip synched what Hulio said. It deciphered the agent’s final words. Hulio mentioned something about ‘Freud was right about old mate’ and then some rambling which it determined to be a bastardised quote from Dostoyevsky’s Demons…

  “Due to my ultra-terrestrial biology, my immortality is an unfortunate by-product of my cellular regenerative properties,” Hulio whispered, “all whom I loved, be they asexual, male, female or both or one of the other octillion-odd genders known to exist amongst species across the known pan cosmos… Every one of them grew old and grey, faded and died, to decay and rot and return to the elements. An innumerable millennium of lovers lost to the sands of time, lost until now … and now found, in this radiantly beautiful man.”

  Hulio increased his pace towards this gorgeous burger munching, beer guzzling giant, “I don’t know how but I know, I know with all of my cardiac circulatory system, with all of my embittered and time wearied soul… I somehow know with immeasurable certainty, that this man is an immortal as well.” Hulio smiled, “If only because the Uber-Pan-Cosmic-Big-Fella would not want to commit an injustice and utterly quench the flame of love that I have for him, once it was firmly kindled and ignited in my cardiac circulatory system.”

  Hulio smiled and waved at the man, who continued to radiate in his own light of joyous ecstasy, “And what is more precious than love? Love is higher than existence, love is the crown of being, and how is it possible that existence is not subordinate to it?”

  Hulio took steps towards the man who at this point had finished his current burger and now sculled a stein of beer (of which a dozen empty steins littered his table), “And if I have come to immediately love him and have taken joy in our profoundly instantaneous love, is it possible that the Uber-Pan-Cosmic-Big-Fella should extinguish both me and my joy and turn us into nothing?”

  Hulio paused for a second, halted by contemplation, “No,” he said, reassuring himself, continuing to walk onwards towards his true love and source of all future happiness, “if the Uber-Pan-Cosmic-Big-Fella truly exists, then he, she, they or whatever this great unified field of awareness might be, must be by definition, all that is good, all that is love … all that is the glory of love. If this be so, which I feel in all of my fabric of being to be true, then this love at first sight, like a radiant wave of pure and joyous lovingness, that has struck my cardiac circulatory system and reignited my passion, passion for this man and only for this man, this immortal, is by definition, immortal … for I am immortal too.”

  Soon after, Agent Hulio fell off the grid. The pan cosmic tracking chip inserted in his nasal cavity fell silent. Hulio went missing … in Amsterdam.