Soul

110 AE
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ζ-17

Soul

 

                I have no idea where I am.  Everything is gray.  What’s going on?  I’m standing, but I can’t see anything but gray.  The gray begins to fade a little bit.  I start to see two shapes forming through the haze of grayness.  They are- no they can’t be.  It looks like two identical versions of myself.  I raise my gauntlets and point them each at one of the copies.  The copies seem to mirror my movement.  This is a fine example of radial symmetry. 

                “What is the meaning of this?” I ask. 

                “I was just about to ask the same thing,” says the copy on my left.  Wow, I sound a lot different on the other side of my helmet.  My voice is all distorted. 

                “I don’t like this,” says the copy on the right.

                “What are you?” I ask.

                “I am an assassin,” begins the copy to my left, “Zeta-Seventeen.  My only duty is to serve Polemos.”

                “Oh you’re still going by that name?” asks the copy on my right, “I swore off that name a long time ago.  I go by Atlas now.  I’m here to lead humanity to a better tomorrow.”

                “Are you two supposed to make me decide who I am?” I ask.

                “No, what are you talking about,” says the copy on my left, “I thought you two were the copies.”

                “And I thought the same about you two,” says the copy on the right.

                “Is it possible that we could all be different manifestations of ourselves?” I ask, “Like we’re all fragments of the same mind?”

                “If we’re all seeing triple then I say it’s definitely possible,” says the copy on my right.

                “This is going to start getting confusing fast,” says the copy on my left, “How do we refer to each other?”

                “Well you said you want to go by Zeta-Seventeen, and I want to go by Atlas, but what do we call him?” asks the copy on my right.

                “No that’s not fair,” I protest, “We only have two names to go by, but to be honest, I don’t feel allegiance to either name yet.”

                “Well then what do you suggest?” asks the copy on my left.

                “Well before, you said you only want to serve Polemos,” I begin, referring to the copy on my left, “Why don’t we call you Service.”

                “I guess that works for me,” replies the copy on my left.

                “And you,” I continue, turning to the copy on my right, “You said you wanted to lead humanity to a better tomorrow.  Why don’t we call you Leader?”

                “I like it,” replies the copy on my right, “But what do we call you?” he asks.

                “Well, I feel like sort of the gap between the two of you.  Like I’m the middle ground connecting you.  A common friend,” I say.

                “Then why don’t we call you Friend?” asks Leader.

                “I can live with that,” I reply.

                “So Leader, a Friend, and a Service,” says Service, “Now that we got all that covered, what’s going on here?”

                “Well, there was Rexrode.  He pulled out that ECD, and then everything turned gray,” begins Leader, “Now I’m standing here talking to two copies of myself.”

                “Then this must be some trick of the ECD,” Service deduces, “Rexrode must be here somewhere.  We must find him.  We must complete the mission.” He turns around and starts looking everywhere. 

                “That’s not going to do you any good,” says Leader, “Everything looks like one solid shade of gray.”

                “He is hiding somewhere here I know it,” yells Service, “I will find him even if I have to beat this gray back fifty shades.”  He aims his gauntlet into the gray and fires off three rounds.

                “Stop it!” I yell, “Where is that getting us?”

                “Nowhere.  It’s getting us nowhere,” says Leader.

                “But our mission, our purpose,” pleads Service, “We cannot abandon the thing we stand for.”

                “But what if our purpose isn’t the right thing to do?” asks Leader.

                “No,” barks Service, “I will not let you talk me out of it.  This is our mission.  I serve Polemos.”

                “But have we ever questioned why?” asks Leader, “Maybe we need to readjust our purpose.”

                “No,” replies Service, “This is why we are here.  This is why we exist.  We are here because we are meant to serve Polemos.”

                “There’s just no reasoning with you is there,” says Leader.

                “I stand strong in my loyalties to Polemos,” says Service.

                “But don’t you feel any remorse for what we did to Devivo?” I ask, “He spared our lives, but we couldn’t spare his.”

                “Yeah,” answers Service, “He did.  And now we are immune to the plague.”

                “He also gave us the syringe with the cure too,” adds Leader.

                “So why don’t we look at it like this,” I begin, “We still serve Polemos.  We can’t swear off that allegiance just yet.  But that doesn’t mean we can’t add more to our purpose.  We have the ability to help all of humanity.  We have a golden opportunity.  We should agree that we can do that much.  Figuring out how to get this cure out and save the planet.  Helping when the opportunity presents itself.  I mean, that’s the true definition of service.”

                “That makes sense,” agrees Service, “We can make our own purpose and help the world.  We do not have to only serve Polemos.  We can serve humanity.”

                As service comes to this conclusion, the gray fades away.  We are now standing on what appears to be a beach.  There is sand beneath our feet, waves flow up and down the shoreline.  The sky is black, but high in the sky is not the sun or the moons but a big green eye.  It looks like Marcia’s eye.  It’s as piercing here as it is on her face.

                “What do you think that means?” asks Service.

                “I don’t like her eyes,” I state.

                “You can both tell it’s Marcia’s eye, right?” asks Leader. 

                “Yeah,” says Service, “But Friend, what makes you not like those eyes.”

                “I’m not sure,” I begin, “It’s like, when I look at them they pierce me.  Like they penetrate my mind.  And it bugs me.  I just want it out.”

                “It is only a little company,” says Service, “I mean, of all the people here, she is the one we cannot kill.  We might be stuck with her.”

                “But I don’t think I could handle that though,” I reply, “Those eyes are bad now, and we’re supposed to kill her father.  How bad are they going to be after that?”

                “But they only bother you because you let them,” argues Service.

                “I can’t help it, they just do,” I reply, “We’re better off just being alone.  That’s how I like it.”

                “No,” says Leader, “Look at what got us into this existential mess in the first place.  The three of them, Marcia, Moses, and Rexrode, managed to work together to make us look like a complete idiot.  I don’t think that amount of team-work can be accomplished by total strangers.”

                “Where are you going with this?” I ask.

                “Look, they know each other.  They’re family-mostly, but I think there’s some ambiguity there between friend and family.  I think your friends end up making your family,” explains Leader.

                “But we don’t have a family,” I point out.

                “Maybe we should,” says Leader, “You’re scared to let anyone in, but, if recent events will show us, alone, we are weak.  And the three of them together put us down without a fight.  We need a friend.  We need a family?”

                “Then how do we start?” I ask.

                “Well why don’t you look up there,” Leader says pointing to the eye in the sky, “That gaze, that piercing you feel, I think that’s curiosity.  Marcia wants to know about us, she is willing to be our friend, why don’t we start there.”

                “But if we do, we can’t exactly kill her dad then can we,” I point out.

                “Yeah, what happened to ‘we still serve Polemos?’” asks Service.

                “Well we won’t know if we don’t try right?” Leader begins, “Polemos didn’t exactly give us a timeframe.  Why don’t we try this friendship thing out first and then assess from there, what’s the right road we should take.”

                “I guess we could do that,” says Service.

                “Not being alone could be quite the experience,” I add.  When I do so, the land scape changes again.  Now we are back in the chamber where Devivo had us fight all those husks.  Except now we’re the only things in the room.

                “We’re back here,” says Service, “Why is that?”

                “I think our landscape has been changing every time we come to a conclusion,” begins Leader, “A conclusion about ourselves.”

                “So we need to come to some form of a conclusion here,” I say, “But we don’t know what that conclusion is supposed to be.”

                “Not exactly,” replies Service, “I think it has something to do with location.  When we were in the land of gray, we were confronted with not being able to accomplish the mission we were set out to complete. Thus, we had to reassess our immediate goals, at least to the point where we could set more for ourselves.  Then at the beach, we had the big surreal eye in the sky.  That helped us to conclude that we are better off together than alone, and maybe we should not kill everyone we meet.  That took us here.”

                “So what’s so special about here,” I ask.

                “This is when we started contemplating everything we’re considering right now,” explains Service, “It took us a near death experience and an act of mercy for us to think that maybe there is more to this than Polemos.”

                “We received the cure, and the task of bringing that cure to the world right?” Leader asks, “We created a new purpose for ourselves.”

                “So what is it that we need to conclude?” I ask.

                “We know we have a new purpose,” explains Service, “And we know that we will need friends along the way to complete that purpose, but in the end it is our initiative.” 

                “I get it,” says Leader, “If we are to succeed in our new task, we’ll need friends, but we also need to lead them to that goal.  We need to be the shepherd, guiding humanity to the better tomorrow we envision.  We need to be the Leader.”

                That must be the conclusion this world is looking for because the room changes again.  Now we are standing in the room we were in before the surreal-ness began.  We’re still split.  I don’t think we’re out of it yet.  In this room stands Rexrode as well, but only Rexrode. 

                “That took you longer than I expected,” says Rexrode, “But now I can see why, you have a fragmented soul.”

                “Fragmented?” I ask.

                “Yes,” begins Rexrode, “My orb here allows me to look into your soul.  The only issue is that if you have too much conflict, then you have to sort it out before I can talk to your soul.  You had enough inner conflict that your soul split three times.”

                “But I think we got it all sorted out,” replies Service, “We had to reassess our goals.  We determined that we don’t have to just serve Polemos.  We should be a service to humanity as well.”

                “Not only that,” I add, “But we also determined that alone we are weak, and will never succeed.  We need friends to help us along the way, and to do that, we need to be a friend ourselves.”

                “And lastly to conclude,” says Leader, “We are the one bringing the goal to the world.  We need to take initiative and lead humanity to that goal.  We need to be a leader to succeed.”

                I look to my left, and to my right.  Leader and Service are gone, but I remember this whole experience from their perspectives now.  We are one again. 

                “It looks like you have that sorted out,” says Rexrode, “You want to lead your friends to serve humanity, is that right?  It’s a good goal to have I’m sure, but tell me, do you still intend to kill us?”

                I shake my head.  “No, well- at least not yet,” I reply, “We-I decided that I don’t know enough about the situation to conclude if we should continue to follow this path.  There may be other goals I wish to obtain more.  If I kill you now, then I’m blindly following orders.  I’d rather at least be informed while following orders, that way I know I agree with the orders.”

                “That’s good to hear,” he replies, “Now this is a question of curiosity, but as the projection of yourself you have chosen for your soul, you still wear all your armor.  Why is that?”

                “I think it’s because this is all I’ve ever known,” I reply, “I feel more like the armor than the person underneath.”

                “But do you still feel that way?” Rexrode asks.

                “I guess not,” I answer, “Before I felt like a weapon, a tool, a gun to be fired.  I didn’t feel like a person.  But Now I do.  I feel like I am independent of my orders and I could make my own decisions if I want.”  I reach up and take off my visor, “I feel like I could make a real impact on this world if I just throw my weight in the right direction.”

                Rexrode seems taken aback by my action, “No, it can’t be,” he mutters, “I have to go.”  He disappears into thin air.

                “Wait!” I call, but he’s gone, “What’s that supposed to mean?”  The room begins to fade around me.  It fades to that familiar shade of gray that surrounded me before.  But soon this begins to fade too.  I am left on the floor where I was before Rexrode pulled the ECD on me. 

                “I think this is it,” says Rexrode, he’s fiddling with a wire in my helmet.  He pulls it.  Doing so I notice the signal bars on my visor display drop to zero.

                “No!” I yell realizing what he’s done, but it’s too late, both for the wire, and my reflexes.  I don’t even remember moving, but I find myself blade deep in Rexrode’s gut.  No, I didn’t want to kill him.  No.  I just spent all that time determining I wasn’t going to do that.  I retract my blade but I am too stunned to do anything else.  Why?  Why did I have to do that?

                “You recovered fast,” stammers Rexrode, trembling.

                “Daddy!” shouts Marcia.  Concern is clear in her voice.

                “Sir! I need to get you medical attention, stat!” shouts Moses, warping over to Rexrode’s side.

                “Marcia-“ mumbles Rexrode, blood dribbling out of his mouth.

                “I’ll be right back for her, don’t worry sir,” Assures Moses.  Then he and Rexrode vanish. 

                No no no no no no no!  Why did I have to do that?  My freaking reflexes.  If he hadn’t decided to cut my communication line to Polemos, then- no!  This isn’t good.  I just dropped off Polemos’s radar.  They think I’m dead.  I know what happens if they think I’m dead.  Bad things.  As if bad things aren’t already transpiring.