Free LoveStar by Andri Snaer Magnason Page B

another to the west. Two blazing red extra suns in the sky, like a burning sunset reflected in the western windows. “Three suns,” thought LoveStar.
    â€œAre you still there?” asked Ivanov.
    â€œ Three suns in the sky: a sign that evil is nigh, ” thought LoveStar.

IDEAS
    Not many people fully understood LoveStar, not even his closest colleagues. Sometimes they couldn’t tell whether he was joking or serious, but he got things done, whatever it took.
    When asked about his ideas, he claimed he wasn’t responsible for them. He did not get ideas; it was the other way around. The ideas got him. The ideas took over his body and used him as a host to launch themselves into the world, leaving him empty, worn, and tattered (and disturbingly rich and powerful, as those who had less sympathy with him pointed out). He said he had no control over the consequences when an idea took up residence in his head. “An idea is a dictator,” he maintained in one of his best-selling books:
    An idea hijacks the brain, pushes away feelings and memories, makes you neglect friends and relations, and drives you toward a single goal, that of launching the idea into the world. An idea takes over the speech centers, allowing access only to itself, it steals your appetite, reduces your need for sleep, and induces the brain to produce a chemical that is stronger than amphetamines and can keep you going for months at a time. Once the idea is born, the person it possessed is left empty. Even if he tries to hang on to the idea, basking in its limelight and taking care to link his name to it, even naming it after himself, he will not enjoy the same sense of fulfillment. He who has felt an idea growing inside him, he who has been its slave for months and years, knows that there is no point in having once had an idea. To be content with having had an idea is like being content with having once had an orgasm, being content with having once eaten or drunk. Once someone has acquired the taste, he desires nothing more than to be enslaved by a new idea. Nothing is more pitiable than a man who has hit upon one tune, one story, one idea, and then no more. He will never be anything but a spent shell. It would have been better if he had never acquired the taste. Ideas are drugs. Someone with a predisposed weakness is doomed to put aside his nets or computer, throw away his wealth and belongings, and put everything at stake. When an idea says: “Follow me!” he follows it all the way.
    He who is infected with an idea is not responsible for his actions. His only thought is to launch it. The idea permits no contradiction or doubt. The man is not responsible because he does not own the idea. The idea already existed. The atom bomb existed before it was worked out and built. It was imminent. It was biding its time. It had to be built. And it had to be detonated. Even though people calculated a 20 percent risk that the explosion would set off a chain reaction that would ignite all the oxygen in the atmosphere, they still had to try. It wasn’t enough to calculate. They had to take it out into the desert, and, once they had seen its power, other people were seized with an uncontrollable urge to see it explode over a city. It was enough to do it once or twice. Someone who is possessed by an idea is beyond good and evil. His thinking is not on that scale. An idea is an uncontrollable hunger. An idea is a long suppressed lust. Those who get ideas are the most dangerous people in the world because they are ready to take the risk. They just want to see what happens; their thinking goes no further.
    â€” The Ideas by LoveStar
    LoveStar was not dangerous by nature. He sometimes said crazy things but that was only because they entered his head, not because he meant what he said. He just wanted to see what would happen.
    LoveStar directed his binoculars away from the halo around the sun to watch the Statoil helicopter vanish over the