A Day A Century

A Criminal during a Day of Freedom

I awoke from my cage of shadows and chains.  Today was the day; a day of freedom among a century of imprisonment.  Though I was never sure if it was exactly a century or not.  But this was my reward, a day for the one testament that I could find.  One testament to good will.  The previous awakening before this one was interesting.  There was an empire that spanned the known world.  They were calling it a Permanent Peace.  I wanted to see what it was like now.  Probably a whole bunch of fragmented states, vying for power of ages long past.  I wondered for a long time why they dumped me in such a primitive place.  They could have dispersed my soul to places thousands of years apart, but instead they constructed my prison.  But I think they desired for me to rework my morality.  Not a lot of good that it has done, for I did nothing wrong in the first place.  No one believed me though.  Even my testament believed that I was good, but misguided and wrong.

The cage finally disappeared.  Maybe this would be the year that I attempt to destroy myself finally.  I knew it was a false hope.  They wanted me to serve out my entire sentence, which is for an eternity.  It’s the only proper punishment for a monster.  It’s not that I blamed them.  I find their actions entirely justifiable.  But so were my actions.  There was a reason I acted as I did, and even if it didn’t make sense to them, they should have at least recognized that I was rational.  I just didn’t follow the same logic as them.  At least my testament recognized that.  I saw the world differently.

My body finally finished coalescing from the shadows.  I wore a simple garment that would appear innocuous in most circumstances, though I have in the past awoken when particularly gaudy forms of clothing were the norm.  Usually I would steal a few petty pieces of clothing to compensate in that circumstance.  Not that I actually needed to, but I desired to test my abilities, and how well they held up.  I was never disappointed.  I wondered why, though, they allowed me to do such criminal acts, though it was well within their capabilities to stop me.  I always assumed that it was because as long as I was doing such acts, I wasn’t getting into bigger trouble.  But I was never sure.  Their methods of enforcement were odd indeed.

I started to make my way, as I do every time, in the direction most opposite my prison.  There have been days in the past where I would go the whole time of my freedom without reaching a city.  Not that I minded.  It was peaceful.  But only a few minutes into my journey this time, I was in luck.  There was a city, and it appeared to be quite large.  But before reaching the first of the buildings, I stopped.  As soon as I passed that building, the data upload would begin.  It was an updated history of the area, designed to be as painful as possible.  Another layer of torture to add to my already long list.  The first time I encountered it, I passed out for the whole day and was sent back to my prison without the benefit of my reward.  And though, I’ve come to get used to it, it still would lay me out for at least a half hour.  Not exactly how I wanted to spend my day of freedom, but then we all had to make sacrifices.  Hopefully the results would be interesting enough to warrant it.

It soon turned out unnecessary to make the sacrifice, for from an alleyway that would have led into the city, a young girl came running out, chased by two bigger kids.  They were hurling obscenities at her, giving confirmation that my translation device did not need the data upload to work.  One of them threatened to kill her, and do unmentionable things to her corpse.  They closed in on me, not particularly taking any notice.  I thought that it was time to have some fun.  They girl ran past me, and I stepped in between the two groups.  The two kids reactions were good, but they had nowhere near my experience.  One tried to counter my kick, so I just gave a punch, and they collapsed.  The other one had a knife on them, and tried to use that.  I gave a quick blow to the wrists.  A flash of pain, though, as the knife fell from their hand and embedded it into my thigh.  Ignoring it, for the moment, I gave the kid another quick punch, and the two kids scrambled away.

After they had ran off, I collapsed onto one knee.  I pulled the knife out and threw it to one side.  It was too soon after I had awoken, and the knife was going to knock me out.  It was another lost day.  I cursed myself silently.  I had been too careless with the knife.  Now I would never learn about what happened to this world since then.  I rested myself on a building side, laying my head back.  I felt a brief tap on my shoulder.  The girl whom I had inadvertently saved stood over me, and smiled at me.

I smiled back.  I always had a soft spot for children�"they weren’t corrupted by the world yet.  Or at least that was how I viewed it.  I decided to ask the girl.  ‘Hey, sister.  Have you been corrupted by the world yet?’  She didn’t respond, so I decided to forge ahead.  It wasn’t as if I would be able to move anytime soon.

‘Do you want to hear a story, sister?  It’s a good one, I promise.’  She still stood there.  Taking that as implicit yes, I continued to speak.  ‘Sister, a long time ago, there was a person.  And this person was good at three things.  Writing, being a revolutionary, and killing.  Also, it’s impossible to make a verb out of being a revolutionary.  But that’s beside the point.  Anyways, this person led a movement, to overthrow the corrupt government.  And that had them worried.  So they searched for anything that could be used against this person.  And they searched, and searched, until they came upon an odd coincidence.  Whenever this person was in town, the amount of murders increased.  They picked up this person, the revolutionary, and tried him as a serial killer.  Even though it seemed shady at first, the more evidence they gathered, the more and more it seemed that this person was not a good person.  So they the charges stuck.  Over 1000 murders they pinned on this person.  Now, sister, do you know what happens next?’

She still did not respond, so I continued the story.  ‘Sister, this is what happened.  They decided to imprison this person forever.  But, one person stood up for this person.  They stood up, and called such a punishment barbaric.  She said that the ends did not justify the means.  That such a person is not fundamentally evil, but instead sick.  She made such a ruckus that it ended up threatening their ability to punish this person forever.  So, a deal was made, to pacify the defender.  They said that for every person who would step forward to deny the punishment, they would give one day of freedom for each approximate century.  But when the time came, she was the only one to step forward.  So they packed away the person, and shoved them off far away.  But they shall forever be thankful to their defender, because she defended them, and gave them a day of freedom.’

As I told the ending of the story, I felt my consciousness slip away.  It would be time to return to my prison soon, as soon as I slipped away.  I didn’t last long this time.  The girl still stood beside me, though, until my voice last trailed off, and I returned to my shadows, still unrepentant.