I
It happened rather suddenly.
Time struck the Earth still, overhauling its inhabitants skin-side out.
He walked into the tiny tavern, apprehensive of His audience but conversely confident in His purpose. He was completely oblivious to the reception He would receive but was perfectly willing to wait for the one He wanted. The crowd was small and merry in that naïve, frivolous manner that only crowds can be. They would have to do. The best beginnings were always humble.
He would make something of this rabble. Of that He was absolutely certain. So He approached the nearest table and sat opposite a desolate looking youth who seemed almost as lost as his age demanded of him.
“Incomplete, isn’t it?
“What?” the youth murmured sullenly.
“Everything.”
II
They were a number now, twenty nine to be exact. It was always easy to spot when an idea was catching on. A tangible buzz simmered silently in the atmosphere as every head bobbed up and down in unison, acquiescing without reservation to everything He put in it. Yet, He still approached with caution ... knowing all too well the cosmic consequences of a hasty entrance. He was well aware that real allegiances always sprung from that one ephemeral triumvirate: courteous courtship, supercilious sagacity and carefully cultivated fear. They were still raw and sceptical, frequently hounding Him with ‘why’s’ and ‘whens’. That would all soon change but this, this was the time to keep it simple… true even.
“You are all equal and you all deserve to be treated the same.”
He neglected to mention that ‘equal’ and ‘same’ were not exactly the same thing. Equal was how They ought to be treated and sameness was a state contrived to conveniently keep Them under control. Luckily They never really bothered with semantics. That was what made His job easier than even He could have anticipated. It had always been there and now He could practically taste it: a desperate yearning to be part of something that would allow Them to escape their own little worlds. That was what really made Them so easy to manipulate: They were always waiting for an out, any out. And all it took was convincing one of Them - truly, deeply planting the seed. It would sow and scatter itself.
He had picked a good host.
Humble, quiet, intense and ….not at all easy to dismiss.
Soon enough, however, the host began to develop his own ideas. It had always been a problem with operating from among Them. They couldn’t help but improvise and place Themselves in every equation. Much of it had to do with Their blasted call for constant attention. Some might argue that He sponsored the sentiment from His own desperate need. This was why He was inherently incapable of indulging any argument...ever. So far, however, the only changes He could detect were relatively minor. A mere matter of the Man confusing his own mortality with the Voice's omnipotence. It would have to do.
At the end of the day, They all had an innate capacity to take what He gave Them without question. Programmed as They were, to receive more than give. It prevented Them from having to figure it out for Themselves. It saved on time and responsibility and it motivated Them. It worked. And there was absolutely no conceivable reason to question it. He loathed curiosity. Always struggling to identify that infernal congruent where the first ‘why’ cropped up in their vocabulary. He figured that He had managed to stamp it out of most of Them but like a virulent habit of mind it always had the power to arbitrarily pop up in some. Still, He gathered that the ones that stuck with ‘why’s’ would be bred out eventually.
Humble, quiet, intense and ….not at all easy to dismiss.
Soon enough, however, the host began to develop his own ideas. It had always been a problem with operating from among Them. They couldn’t help but improvise and place Themselves in every equation. Much of it had to do with Their blasted call for constant attention. Some might argue that He sponsored the sentiment from His own desperate need. This was why He was inherently incapable of indulging any argument...ever. So far, however, the only changes He could detect were relatively minor. A mere matter of the Man confusing his own mortality with the Voice's omnipotence. It would have to do.
At the end of the day, They all had an innate capacity to take what He gave Them without question. Programmed as They were, to receive more than give. It prevented Them from having to figure it out for Themselves. It saved on time and responsibility and it motivated Them. It worked. And there was absolutely no conceivable reason to question it. He loathed curiosity. Always struggling to identify that infernal congruent where the first ‘why’ cropped up in their vocabulary. He figured that He had managed to stamp it out of most of Them but like a virulent habit of mind it always had the power to arbitrarily pop up in some. Still, He gathered that the ones that stuck with ‘why’s’ would be bred out eventually.
Their presumption would never be tolerated by the rest.
III
A river of souls as far as the eye could see.
Terrifying in its magnitude.
They marched in time to the clinking and clanging of gold chains that bound Them in neat, narrow queues of thousands. The men and women were always kept separate. Only allowed to roam amongst each other on select days decided by the Man.
The men walked in front. Their chains gleaming, molten in the blazing midday sun as They murmured the Words the Man had given them. The Words helped lull Them into a complacent haze, one that now bound the land. The Words inspired a distinctive brand of drowsy comfort that was impenetrable. Some would come to call it security. They murmured incoherently under Their breath as They trudged their way up the mountain day in, day out. The women were bound in ropes behind them. They were clad from head to toe in dark drapes: their eyes shut, their minds shut and their mouths shut. They did not murmur the words, mutely following the followers.
Among the legion two had been overlooked. They scampered in and out of the Man’s presence never straying in his line of vision long enough to be given the message and handed the rules for their initiation. They were innocuous and rather easy to overlook. They were young and the Man eventually decided to just let them be. Two children could hardly be of any consequence to the grand design. Moreover, one of them was a girl.
They couldn’t change anything.
The men walked in front. Their chains gleaming, molten in the blazing midday sun as They murmured the Words the Man had given them. The Words helped lull Them into a complacent haze, one that now bound the land. The Words inspired a distinctive brand of drowsy comfort that was impenetrable. Some would come to call it security. They murmured incoherently under Their breath as They trudged their way up the mountain day in, day out. The women were bound in ropes behind them. They were clad from head to toe in dark drapes: their eyes shut, their minds shut and their mouths shut. They did not murmur the words, mutely following the followers.
Among the legion two had been overlooked. They scampered in and out of the Man’s presence never straying in his line of vision long enough to be given the message and handed the rules for their initiation. They were innocuous and rather easy to overlook. They were young and the Man eventually decided to just let them be. Two children could hardly be of any consequence to the grand design. Moreover, one of them was a girl.
They couldn’t change anything.
IV
The Girl never understood any of it. The rules, the unending routine and the eternal obedience was suffocating. And all so that They could supposedly survive something that would someday prove to be 'eternal'. She refused to believe Them when They insisted that being miserable now was the only way to be happy then. Where ‘then’ was They never knew. It was nowhere in sight.
There were so many things she felt ashamed of and she was never able to understand why. She felt ashamed for wanting to be pretty; she felt ashamed for wanting to talk to the Boy who roamed the camps and who had seen her coming out of the lake without her clothes on; she felt ashamed for not feeling ashamed that he had seen her naked; she felt ashamed for wanting; she felt ashamed for not believing the Man who stood on the Mountain; she felt ashamed for not discarding the answers he gave to the questions They never asked by avoiding the ones that They did; she felt ashamed for wanting not to believe in Him; she felt ashamed for not caring beyond today and what she hoped tomorrow would bring.
She felt.
And the feeling was always shame.
And so she did what those who ‘feel’ shame do.
She pretended.
She faked an entire existence, opinion, appearance, agreement and obedience. It was rather easy in the end. They only required appearances and cared little if those were cultivated or contrived as long as they were there. Finally, she could walk among them freely. She tread softly and concealed herself in the shadows that the mob cast as They walked along the scorching sand. As she followed in obedience, They never noticed that her hands weren’t tied.
All she really knew for a fact was that the Truth got you killed and the Lie could protect.
She faked an entire existence, opinion, appearance, agreement and obedience. It was rather easy in the end. They only required appearances and cared little if those were cultivated or contrived as long as they were there. Finally, she could walk among them freely. She tread softly and concealed herself in the shadows that the mob cast as They walked along the scorching sand. As she followed in obedience, They never noticed that her hands weren’t tied.
All she really knew for a fact was that the Truth got you killed and the Lie could protect.
She could lie and lie well.
And so she survived.
V
The Boy had observed a kind of knowing in her quiet subversiveness and it haunted him. It was quite subtle but he had managed to pick up on it. Perhaps because he had been searching for it. He felt that his hunt for another was finally proving fruitful. Being free had proven to be a rather lonely business. He observed a subtle scepticism in her stance and he had carried that around in his chest for weeks. So he nurtured the hope of her with him everyday as he shifted in Their shadows across the timeless landscape.
Occasionally They would ask questions. On these rare occasions the Man would always respond patiently “Because He commands it”. They always felt that this answered all their reservations, that it calmly polished over any itchy doubts. He never understood why They could never comprehend the blatant farce, why it simply didn't compute. Surely, so many different questions couldn’t possibly have just one answer. It wasn’t even an answer, truth be told … it was an even bigger question. The Boy knew then that the Man must be very clever to know how to answer all questions with one answer and still be believed, revered even. So he never asked his questions. His curiosity always seemed trivial when set against the Man’s infallible answer.
She was different. She never expressed any curiosity in what the Man said and seemed awfully content to merge in with the landscape. Whenever their eyes happened to meet across the crowd he saw that she didn’t believe the Man either. Neither did she care about what the Man had to say about Him. Yet the curiosity captured in her eyes could hardly be contained. It was of a different vein altogether, something he didn't think he would ever be able to fathom. A deep yearning to understand the 'underneath'; the 'root'; the 'mystery of and in everything. To scale every treacherous depth. That curiosity practically spilled over. It was too real to be taken in with one universal answer or any call to obedience. It was what had stopped him in his tracks that day by the trees when he saw her come out of the lake. It wasn’t her naked form or her beauty… it was curiosity. He had never witnessed it in anyone his age. They never looked at anything like that. The children did but they eventually always lost it, usually around the time they learned to speak. A child would ask a question and They would counter the curiosity by binding it with their chains of tradition. The frail glimmer would dim immediately until it faded completely.
It was all about Control and They all agreed that the Control was all about Power. Power had always been a problem with their kind and so it seemed the safest course to give all of it to something that was more Powerful than Power.
And so she survived.
V
The Boy had observed a kind of knowing in her quiet subversiveness and it haunted him. It was quite subtle but he had managed to pick up on it. Perhaps because he had been searching for it. He felt that his hunt for another was finally proving fruitful. Being free had proven to be a rather lonely business. He observed a subtle scepticism in her stance and he had carried that around in his chest for weeks. So he nurtured the hope of her with him everyday as he shifted in Their shadows across the timeless landscape.
Occasionally They would ask questions. On these rare occasions the Man would always respond patiently “Because He commands it”. They always felt that this answered all their reservations, that it calmly polished over any itchy doubts. He never understood why They could never comprehend the blatant farce, why it simply didn't compute. Surely, so many different questions couldn’t possibly have just one answer. It wasn’t even an answer, truth be told … it was an even bigger question. The Boy knew then that the Man must be very clever to know how to answer all questions with one answer and still be believed, revered even. So he never asked his questions. His curiosity always seemed trivial when set against the Man’s infallible answer.
She was different. She never expressed any curiosity in what the Man said and seemed awfully content to merge in with the landscape. Whenever their eyes happened to meet across the crowd he saw that she didn’t believe the Man either. Neither did she care about what the Man had to say about Him. Yet the curiosity captured in her eyes could hardly be contained. It was of a different vein altogether, something he didn't think he would ever be able to fathom. A deep yearning to understand the 'underneath'; the 'root'; the 'mystery of and in everything. To scale every treacherous depth. That curiosity practically spilled over. It was too real to be taken in with one universal answer or any call to obedience. It was what had stopped him in his tracks that day by the trees when he saw her come out of the lake. It wasn’t her naked form or her beauty… it was curiosity. He had never witnessed it in anyone his age. They never looked at anything like that. The children did but they eventually always lost it, usually around the time they learned to speak. A child would ask a question and They would counter the curiosity by binding it with their chains of tradition. The frail glimmer would dim immediately until it faded completely.
It was all about Control and They all agreed that the Control was all about Power. Power had always been a problem with their kind and so it seemed the safest course to give all of it to something that was more Powerful than Power.
Even if it wasn’t there.
VI
A day came when They had been marching for what seemed like a thousand years and was probably much more. They moaned and complained now. They no longer felt that effervescent passion for the rules that once united Them.
They weren’t changing the world anymore. They weren’t even changing themselves.
The Boy and the Girl had known from the beginning that no matter what the Man said or what the Man said He said (they could never really tell the difference) none of this had ever been about Change. It had been about not changing. It had always been about standing still for all eternity. They just did it by constantly moving...by trudging forward aimlessly. It was all about following so that They could remain in a convenient stasis-like sludge that would flow in whatever direction was demanded of it.
They never saw it. They couldn't see it and the Boy and Girl had learned to keep silent over the years. They noticed that as ritual began to lose its lustre, They grasped on to the chains even more desperately. Now wearing them like garlands, wrapped them tightly around their necks. They deluded themselves into thinking the cuffs were studded with diamonds. The women began to view the ropes as yards of silk.
Obedience was an integral part of the blind belief demanded of them. The Boy often asked the Girl, as they walked amidst the throng, if she thought that it was Them who had to believe blindly or whether the belief itself was blind? She could never comprehend the question. The only absolute she could conceive of was 'feeling'. There was simply no alternative to feeling. They always approached the Blind Belief as they would a jigsaw puzzle, gathering a trinket piece every few decades.
They never solved it.
VI
A day came when They had been marching for what seemed like a thousand years and was probably much more. They moaned and complained now. They no longer felt that effervescent passion for the rules that once united Them.
They weren’t changing the world anymore. They weren’t even changing themselves.
The Boy and the Girl had known from the beginning that no matter what the Man said or what the Man said He said (they could never really tell the difference) none of this had ever been about Change. It had been about not changing. It had always been about standing still for all eternity. They just did it by constantly moving...by trudging forward aimlessly. It was all about following so that They could remain in a convenient stasis-like sludge that would flow in whatever direction was demanded of it.
They never saw it. They couldn't see it and the Boy and Girl had learned to keep silent over the years. They noticed that as ritual began to lose its lustre, They grasped on to the chains even more desperately. Now wearing them like garlands, wrapped them tightly around their necks. They deluded themselves into thinking the cuffs were studded with diamonds. The women began to view the ropes as yards of silk.
Obedience was an integral part of the blind belief demanded of them. The Boy often asked the Girl, as they walked amidst the throng, if she thought that it was Them who had to believe blindly or whether the belief itself was blind? She could never comprehend the question. The only absolute she could conceive of was 'feeling'. There was simply no alternative to feeling. They always approached the Blind Belief as they would a jigsaw puzzle, gathering a trinket piece every few decades.
They never solved it.
VII
The Man always kept himself at a distance. He always felt that mingling with Them might somehow corrupt his purpose. Over the years he had begun to forget much of what his purpose was, although he knew for certain that if he kept them on course he would succeed in it. One thing he did remember was that part of his instructions was to make every last one of them follow the Words. Sometimes he felt uneasy about the Boy and the Girl he had lost in the crowd so many years ago. He constantly chided himself for having overlooked them, for not coaxing them into compliance as He should have done.
Over the years he had begin to notice how They would all occasionally lose sight at a moments notice and break rank. They had even begun to ask some of the old ‘why’s’ again. Whenever it happened he always thought about the two young one's he had lost. While it was true that the Boy and Girl were hardly any kind of tangible threat, he found himself unable to shake the Voice’s apprehension and rage about leaving anyone behind. He vaguely recalled something about how all of this could unravel at the slightest demonstration of disobedience.
But nothing had happened yet.
And he had to admit, if only to himself, that he could no longer see them. Over the years the Boy and the Girl had become invisible and neither he nor any of Them had been able to locate the two in their midst. Still, he was positive about their presence. He knew without doubt that they were still there, skulking silently among the legions. Their presumptuousness was a perpetual pressure choking his heart, silently mocking everything he said, did and would come to do.
VIII
A minute, a millennia: it had gone on too long now, to be traceable. The path was carved in concrete, deep and consecrated by the footprints of the following. Its legitimacy was its length. Its longevity- a testimony to its strength. They had always been susceptible to the notion that if something was old enough it ought to be kept that way, just because someone else had at sometime kept it that way. The Man became a legend of insurmountable proportions. They still followed in his tracks and left a place for him at mealtimes. Many would argue that he was more powerful as a Phantom than he had ever been alive.
They had never really been a species conducive to Change. And whenever Change came it hated having to deal with Them, because They were immune to all its beautiful intricacies. They sat and slumbered nearly oblivious to Change as it enacted its subtle dance in the backdrop of their days, always longing in vain for a rapt audience. It was nearly imperceptible through the fog of absolutes. Yet every hundred years it wafted through the land without fail because there were two who welcomed it. Two, who waited for it. The Boy and the Girl were the only ones who recognised that Change was the only thing that didn’t. And so every hundred years they were reborn in silence to counteract Change into that generation. Every hundred years they were allowed to utter one sentence of their Truth. Some listened, most turned away, others pelted them with rocks but the Boy and the Girl had only this one privilege. That every hundred years, they were granted a moment where they would speak and be heard.
They always resisted. Some were broken by that resistance but most of them were frightened by it and broke others. ‘Don’ts’ and ‘Cant’s’ were by now a habit of face, of skin and of mind. The predictability of the pattern was infallible. Even though the Boy and Girl no longer hid in the shadows they were still not openly mutinous. They waited. Waited for their sentences to collect in the well of consciousness and inimitable Time, until there were pages. And someday there would be a Book to counteract the Words.
This Book would map the span of thought...free thought.
IX
Every hundred years He would tally the numbers and there was a birth of a smile which never carried to full term. It never prospered long. Every hundred years there were those Two; always staring up at Him, blatantly defying His inevitability. Every hundred years they refused to adapt and bow their heads. Their fruitless revolt often seemed as permanent and intractable as His own assault. He felt that the Boy and Girl saw Him clearly from their pitiful position and this always made Him uncomfortable. None of Them ever saw Him or dared to even want to.
Those Two, however, stared up at Him unblinking. They always rejected Him. It usually made Him more apprehensive than angry because He had no idea how they did it. He could never spot them from his pulpit. It never made any sense. It also made Him feel somehow incomplete, cosmically lacking. And so every hundred years there was a thunderstorm and a flood and many of Them would die. As They perished, They would cling tightly to their chains and implore for His grace but those Two would rather drown than grasp the chains for support.
And yet they never drowned.
Sometimes He found himself feeling jealous of their odd brand of belief. What else were they searching for when they could actually see Him? They were not Blind. Why then did they not Believe?
Every hundred years He would ask them “What makes you think you can possibly win?” and the Boy and the Girl would smile and echo in unison “You do.”
And every hundred years He felt a terrifying twinge of Doubt.
