From Metamorphosis by Barrett Nash · Volume 2: A Case Study on Consciousness · Book 4: A Man Dies Peacefully · Part Three of Three.
Content note: Volume 2 is an unretouched record of a real life and includes candid accounts of depression, self-harm and suicidal thinking.
Ascent/Descent
Chapter 12
Like a raging storm leaving confusion and damage in its wake Nathan Prince is wildly tearing through the Mystic high command in search of Theodore Shadow. Wherever he goes doors shut quickly, conversations end abruptly and people walk in any other direction, such is the mood that Nathan Prince is resonating. Alexa Mystic was just executed by Theodore’s own hands in front of thousands. It is on television. It is going through the entire world. Nathan is shivering in rage. Nathan is close to being in convulsions. Where is Theodore Shadow? There is a shocked atmosphere that Nathan doesn’t notice in his fury; the world doesn’t know how to react to what just happened to Alexa, certainly the leaders and insiders of the Mystics have no idea how to react. There is a collective chaos, a universal moment where no one knows what to do and no one bothers to ask.
Sitting at the same window where Alexa Mystic said goodbye to him with a kiss on the head, Theodore Shadow again looks out the window, this time at a bright and sunny day, as if to mock the dark ghouls that have conquered his soul. There is not a single thought in Theo’s mind, there is simply nothing, a complete absence. He clasps his hands together on his lap, those same hands that just clutched all of the life from his soul’s partner. There is a true fragility around him, as if his subconscious itself has not yet decided the best course forward, with madness, despair, redemption and resolve all equally likely and all equally unlikely. He still thinks of nothing.
Nathan Prince blows into Theo’s room like a missile striking its target. He opens the door but it has the forceful impact of being broken open. He strides across the room without looking at a single thing, and as he bears down on Theo that extraordinary kinetic potential he is thrumming with instantly converts to his tongue as he hits Theo as hard as he can with his words: “You idiot. You unbelievable idiot. How can you be so stupid? Not even stupid to me, stupid to yourself? That girl of yours comes here to try to end the war, and as idealistically brainless as she usually is, this time she lucks into actually having a good plan. The war could have been over! The True Mystics are nothing without Alexa Mystic, she abandoned them! Now what have you done? You took the caged beast and set it free, ever more ravenous for our blood. They will rally around her like she was some pure angel who never took a shit in her life. She died for nothing. The war is going to go on. You let her sacrifice for nothing. You killed your best friend for nothing. You will forever be remembered for your hands around this phony angel’s neck. You have doomed us, you have doomed the world. Now the war will be one hundred times worse. Our movement is not finished, but we will not win in a decade. The True Mystics are not finished; John Mahmed will take this rabid horde that wants your blood for what you did to their idol and their wrath will be terrible. There will be new prophets trying to take from all these shards their own piece, zealots netting the easily swayable like loose butterflies, calculating men waiting for a moment to slip a knife in the ribs of anyone who has power. This is the end of the world. We will be in darkness forever, or near enough it makes no difference. This is my fault, all my fault. Why did I choose you as my cause to conquer the world with? Beauty, what does that even mean? You call this beautiful? Have you ever believed in your own cause, are you the ultimate heathen? I should have put you and that woman in a glass cage and destroyed the key and made you into some living god that doesn’t ever open his mouth to belie the truth: that you are nothing. You are nothing. You are nothing. You are so weak. Too weak to compromise your beliefs when they need to be compromised. Too weak to hold to your beliefs when you need to believe in them. You are only a bridge built half way, it cannot stand. Why could you not have accepted your inadequacy and just relied on me to complete the bridge? You have ruined everything. War is coming. I would abandon you just to let you rot, but I am tied to you like a man standing on the planks of a sinking ship trying dolefully to bail while the ship’s captain seems to want to sink. The world is splintered endlessly. Know the doom you laid and may it weigh on you forever, for a thousand forevers.” Detached from any sense of reserve Nathan is like a young boy punching a wall in his despair that he cannot climb over it; he has the wild gesticulating motions of a lunatic punching at the walls, yet he does not strike Theodore Shadow, even though he might want to. He storms out of Theodore’s room with that same intensity as he flew in, trying to bail this sinking ship with a ferocious intensity that harkens the forlorn impossibility of his task.
Turning from where Nathan was thundering a moment ago Theodore goes back to looking out the window just as he was before Nathan entered the room. Again his life-taking hands are clasped together on his lap. Still no thoughts are in his mind, though he certainly absorbed every word Nathan just scourged him with; they will be scarred in his soul for that forever that Nathan cursed him to. If his mind is like a color it continuously sinks into ever deeper blacks.
While staring out the window an unconscious thought does suddenly flutter through Theo’s mind. It is a beautiful day; for all the happenings in the world of man, the world of nature is enjoying a blissful day with flowers in full bloom, birds twittering magic songs and the air loaded with the smell of sweet cut grass. Not even knowing his own body’s actions, Theo’s subconscious decides to take Theo for a walk through that beautiful day, and those towering storm clouds of his mind are dragged dutifully behind.
Walking without thought, walking without mind. A physical day wrapping around Theodore like a perfect dream of summertime while in his mind a nightmare is unraveled and carnivorous. He walks. Some see him and pale into what shadows they can find; they are afraid, not just a murderer but something worse. As a demon he walks through heaven. This sort of day, in that long-ago time of his valley, would have been something Theodore Shadow would have fallen in love with.
Walking makes those colors that precede thought begin weaving a delicate tapestry in his mind. Each emotion represents the worst torture. Better to turn his mind back off, but the shock of the day is wearing off and that great gift turned curse of consciousness means that thinking cannot be stopped, no matter what; Theodore’s brain is turning back on. Like a man coming from a coma and adjusting to a body in pain and disfigured, Theo starts to walk through those hallways of his mind. Alexa dead. Nathan’s words. Fruitless war. Hope lost, darkness forever. Alexa dead. To stop this infernal thinking! The temptation of weakness, to stop this incessant stream of consciousness. To let darkness truly prevail and end his own torture, end any more pain to the world he might cause. Is it weakness? Could it be strength? Theodore looks at himself and wonders. He was a man who spent his entire life trying to do nothing but good, how could so much evil be born from such a pure heart? Every step since he let Alexa into his life has been wrong, yet he worked so hard for them to be the right steps.
There is a flower at Theo’s feet. His mind focuses on it, every delicate petal, the rich colors. How can the natural world produce both himself and this flower? Are we not the same, thinks Theo, born to the rich earth, trying nothing but to survive, to reach to the sun. Theo stares at nothing but the flower. The only thing in the world it does is grow towards the sun. It will bend, it will twist, it will turn. It may become ugly, it may stay beautiful, whatever is necessary to grow towards the sun. What a perfect logic. Why hadn’t he been like this flower. Where had he lost that simple logic to follow his purpose in life. He used to know where his sun was while he was in the valley; now, he has grown away from the light and into a cave. Theo is devastated with himself, unable to have matched the fragile purpose of the flower with all of his humanity, all of his physical prowess, all of his consciousness. Perhaps this consciousness is no gift, he thinks, perhaps it is a curse, or even more a test — a test set by whom, well, that doesn’t have to be answered, but a test for mankind: for all of the gifts given to them, are they able to match the simple purpose of nature, the simple purpose of the flower. Theo failed that test. He wants to stomp the flower, in a pique of infantile rage he raises his boot over it and slams it to the ground and he all of a sudden has tears in his eyes and weeps for Alexa and weeps for his decision to kill the flower. In blinding tears he lifts his foot and what wonder, the flower is not dead. Disfigured and in grime but still its stem is good, its roots are good. The darkness of the world befell on it and it will rise towards the sun again. It still knows its purpose, for what has happened to it there is still this perfect purpose.
There is a flower in Theo’s mind that used to grow towards the sun of inner perfection. He sees this now. It bended, it twisted and it turned. It became ugly. It thought it was growing towards the sun but it became lost, it lost the sun. The only thing in the world that it wanted and it lost it. Maybe it was stomped on by the cold boot of fate, but even more maybe this delicate flower in Theo’s mind lost its purpose — it lost the sun because it stopped looking for it, it chased something bright that seemed better than the sun, promised more than the sun, and it led Theo’s flower to this cave. Yet no matter how lost a man might become the sun is still there over his head somewhere. The purpose of his life is not lost; the darkness may be eternal, yet that does not mean that he should not try to grow towards where that promised light might be.
There is a wave of revelation in Theo’s mind. The forge that was out, not even in embers, is suddenly bursting forward to life. He knows himself again. He knows the path forward. He knows that all these things he has been preaching — beauty and the appreciation of beauty and that a good life is a small life — are not the meanings of life, merely a way to find the meaning of life, to head towards the sun of enlightenment and inner perfection. How could he confuse the tools for the purpose? How could he worship the tools and forget the goal? The way forward is clear: to listen to his inner god, the true consciousness, that same innate nirvana that tells a flower to grow to reach towards the sun and the sun to burn with heat and light for the flower. Theo listens finally to his real heart and he knows the way forward. He sees a path to the sun, delicate and temporal, yet a real path where he can perhaps atone for defying nature and work to bring nature back to its pure course. Theo smiles. He smiles at the memory of Alexa, knowing her bliss if she could share this moment — and indeed she does share this moment with him, life not being limited to the simple act of living. Perhaps he cannot give others this revelation; perhaps it was trying to share with others his innermost beliefs that corrupted Theo’s sense of purpose, trying to describe revelation then attain revelation. Perhaps all those others will remain lost, belief being a thin blanket that never truly covers anyone. Yet the world will be as it is, each person needing to find a way to listen to their own true heart, each person needing to discover their own faith, each person needing to make their faith enough. The world is not dark or light, it is not good or bad, it is only as it is, just as mankind is only as it is, and all there can be is being true to nature individually. Anything more is not for man.
Theo knows the way forward.
Chapter 13
With a solidness of purpose that crosses like a rainbow through the colorless chaos emanating from the Mystic high command, Theodore Shadow is flowing towards Nathan Prince. Many people see him and begin to dissipate in fear, yet universally they are struck by the radiating sense of peace and confidence that Theo wears like a halo. Some see this as the ultimate terror: the complete loss of mind of Theodore Shadow — how can a man ever find such wondrous peace after the sins that Theo has swum through? Others are more thoughtful, seeing again that teacher who first opened their minds to a revelation that still pulses through their hearts; they see a light emerging from a blackness like a pure sun rising away from a total eclipse.
Theo comes on Nathan while he is giving whip-crack instructions in every direction. He sees Theodore Shadow and proceeds to disdainfully ignore him, yet Theo is not dissuaded. Shadowing Nathan wherever he walks, Theodore is a silent river of resistance, assured that slowly he will break down the stone of Nathan’s fury. Finally, in a flash of anger Nathan bursts at Theo, “What do you want, cursed one?” Theo smiles, not a Buddha’s smile but rather an actual jovial smile, as if he feels genuine humor at Nathan’s rage and name-calling. “You and I need to talk, now would be a good time,” says Theo. “I will never again give you any more time of my life, Shadow,” retorts Nathan. “Then I command it,” says Theo, losing the trace of a smile he had, now channeling a dead seriousness. Nathan is about to burst into a tirade that Theodore has no ability to even command a dog to heel when he catches an unguarded gaze straight into Theo’s eyes and sees a man that he does not recognize, a man he has never met, a man unlike anyone he has ever met. Nathan nods and follows Theo silently.
“What do you want?” asks Nathan. Theo sits down and gestures Nathan to sit as well. Nathan hesitates a moment, then takes a chair. During a silent pause Theo stares at Nathan, deep into Nathan. He begins speaking: “I need you to listen to me with your ears and not your revulsion. I need you to hear what I say because I offer it not as the broken snake you wished to make me into but rather as that man who once knew the entire universe of his heart in all its crevices and has come to know it again. Nathan, you used me as a tool. I respect that. Yet we have both been flawed in our uses, myself not perfectly made for those tasks you tried to apply me to, yourself imperfect in your designs, something that I know you acknowledge, it is what is driving so much of your rage. The world is imperfect; we always acknowledged this intellectually, but I think neither of us has ever truly understood what dealing with such imperfection actually entails. Now, after so much, we may both know our lessons too late. You see no way forward, and this is a failure on your part; you have never used me as a tool as fastidiously as you should have, your own weaknesses of being too weak to break me and too weak to let me be myself. Now it is I, the tool, who will have to tell you how I should be used. There is a way to end all of this, there is a way forward. It is to be a new lie, a lie where we create a scapegoat and load it with all the horrors that the world has been filled with and sacrifice it without love, leaving the world free of those sins that they heap on this fabricated monster. I need to be that sacrifice, I need to have all the sins of the world thrown on me. I need to take all that darkness that my life has already taken me through and use it as a guide so that I can shoulder all the rest of the world’s darkness. I need to be a lie, an embodiment of that fallacy evil, so that others will not look into their own hearts for the terror that has plagued the world and can instead trust that shaky tenet of their own inherent goodness. It can only be me, who has risen so high and now fallen so low; I am the only vessel that all the world can be made to acknowledge as the devil. Nathan, we need to lie. We need to say that all the violence that has happened has been because of me. We need to say that I stole the mantle of the true prophet Alexa Mystic and used it with maliciousness to feed the sickness of my heart. We need to make me the gleeful sadist that caused the worst atrocities to ever happen just for my own love of death and hatred of good. This is the way forward. This is the only way forward. I will die accursed and with me will pass the terror, the history and the division. The world can come together in a fraternity of misguided souls who can without embarrassment and without fear unite together as a world universally tricked by my deviance. We will rewrite history. We will let my words become words I stole from Alexa, we will make you and John Mahmed into unwilling stooges that were trapped in my web of deceit, we will let all those endless atrocities weighing down the souls of so many that should never be forgiven be forgiven and flung on me, so that they can just be human again. You need to use me as a tool, Nathan, and I need to be used as a tool. Only in this way can I see a way forward. Only in this way, with my absence, can I see a hope for my dream to be realized. Only in this way do I see some small way to atone for the great evil that I have let unfold. I will be the worst pariah, history will remember me as a monster without parallel — indeed this is likely true — and the world will be better for it.” Theodore stops talking and Nathan Prince is respectfully quiet, more respectful to Theo than he has ever been.
“I have always looked at you as a false idol, do you know that?” begins Nathan. “I saw you as a half-filled vessel spouting emptily into even emptier glasses and watched cynically as they sung your praises. I saw you as the imperfect embodiment of an imperfect world, that the simpletons that form the majority of humanity would want to crown one of their own since they wouldn’t speak the complex language of their betters. I have been wrong so much, Theo. I am an old man, and I have broken myself; the door to the world that I fantasize about will simply not open, I do not have the key, I have torn myself at the wall and it has broken me without my even making a scratch. I hear your words, Theodore Shadow, I hear them well. I see you now in a manner I have not seen you before. Where before I saw you as a lucky dullard who spoke the simple language of the masses, now I see that this was all my own vanity, that it is I who am unable to speak that simple elegant language of the universe. Theo, I have been so wrong in all of this. I used you as a tool wrong, I used Alexa as a tool wrong, I committed sins that I hate myself for as the worst humanity can produce, and I throw those words at you that are the same that the judge in my heart condemns me for. In my heart I should be the one sacrificed for my real sins, the greatest of which is destroying you, yet my sacrifice would mean nothing, just another empty gesture of so many that I’ve benighted the world with. I cannot say that you should do this, just as you become a man who I look up to; maybe for the first time I understand worship. Theo, I cannot tell you that I will use you as a tool in the way you describe. To take you from the world just as you have tamed your curses would be another great rock dragging on my soul when I already am drowning from the weight. You want to save all these people, to use your sacrifice to make the world a better place. Was that not what we have both been fighting all this time for? That used to be the highest calling in my heart, and now I would tell you that I was wrong. Humanity is a scourge that is not worth the slightest gesture to aid. You are a man more than humanity; you would sacrifice one good man for the betterment of the sorry lot, and I would tell you that this is a sorry bargain. I would tell you to leave us, me the most of all, and we can cannibalize each other and carry on into the forever darkness that is the endless curse of humanity. Go, Theodore Shadow, find another valley, live in Nirvana forever and never leave. The world will always be the same place; people look to the stars and expect magic and revelation, they expect the world to be a better place simply because they think the world owes them perfection like some undeserved gift. This will never happen. The heart of man is black, humanity is black, and the world is forever black. Everything is always the same, all we do is change the superficial, nothing underneath is different, will ever be different. I will stay as the blackest of all and try to flock these bloodless sheep into a better enclosure, learning too late the lessons of Samael Hollow. I will rebuild the United Global Republic under a superficial Mystic flag, and I will protect this virus that is humanity from the world, I will protect the evil that lives in humanity from each other. You must leave; you are better than all of us, Theodore.” Nathan stops his passion, gazing surprised at the words that just flew from his mouth as if hearing them for the first time as he spoke them. For a moment he looks as if perhaps he wants to catch them and stuff them back in his mouth, unsure of his own heart; then he thinks better of it with a shudder and firms his resolve.
Theo responds, “Thank you, Nathan Prince, you work so hard to wall your heart from the world it is a wonder when I see it truly beating. I hear your words too, and I absorb them, I love them, I am tempted by them — and I throw them away and I reject them. Do you know, when I sat at the table with Alexa, just seconds away from murdering her with these hands that are chained by flesh forever to my body, she asked me a question that I could not answer: do I still feel a passion for living. I thought then that the truth was I had no passion for living, everything was dead in me. Yet now that is not the truth anymore. There is so much passion for me in living, I wish to live forever, I wish as you tempt me to leave all of this and flee to the wonder of nature and of my own mind. I will not do this. I know my own heart, I know now that no matter what I must be true to my own heart. I know too that this sacrifice that I will make only has any power because I still do feel a love for life. Nathan, you must love humanity because it is worth loving. For all of this we have lost so much, but we must not lose our love, we must make our love even stronger. We are in a dark place; for so long the darkness conquered my mind and all I wanted was to see the smallest tendril of light, all I wanted was to see the blackness become a little less black so I would know that there is hope for the world. Now I realize that was a greedy wish. I am not sure if I believe in any god but I do believe in faith in the universe and there being meaning in living, and I deviated from my belief and my faith because I wanted to find an end to the darkness as quickly as possible. Now I know that even if it is forever night for all of my life, as long as I grow where my heart tells me is truth then perhaps one day we will break from this suffocating cloud and there will be sunshine on the other side, real sunshine. There are words that I sermonized, words that I spoke at the preaching where I first met you, words that I now know are a more fundamental truth than I ever understood. They are the words that came from my heart, but perhaps for a while I just let my heart sing and did not even listen to the words themselves. Perhaps I needed to lose myself to know who I truly was. I needed to fall from perfection to truly see perfection. The words were like this: ‘May the purpose of our life be to lay a thin sprinkling of dust, adding nothing meaningful yet the same amount added as those before us. May we serve the future no matter how imperfectly. Give to that future a fresh layer, imperceptibly higher, yet still microscopically, a higher vantage point. And if it fails to sate, a thin excuse for a noble life, our effort will not be in vain. Perhaps that light dusting we laid will be the final critical layer, or close to that critical layer, that will raise our descendants to that fantastic revelation, that nirvana all dreams are made of where they will be lifted from the darkness and for the first time, the very first time, see that ethereal light of truth in all her glory.’ Nathan, we must temper our ambition and lay what thin layer we can. You must regain faith that the world can become a better place, that mankind can become a better species. We must lay what little dust we can and it will not be enough, but it will help build the mountain that will one day crack the sky and let humanity stand among the heavens. We can only do so little but this little is the meaning of our lives. You will sacrifice me, Nathan, you will love humanity, you will work for the rest of your life for these smallest of victories. Your life will be sacrificed just as much as mine will be. Will you help me?” Nathan smiles and takes Theo’s hand tenderly, like a young lover, where every touch becomes something worthy of worship. He speaks with a reverence: “The world is full of so many who think they are doing good. They help a child and pat themselves on the back, they work for a charity and they pat themselves on the back, they ease momentarily someone’s suffering and they pat themselves on the back. Were we ever like that? I think we both were. We thought we did good simply because we felt good in what we were doing, we thought we were making the world a brighter place simply because we made our own worlds brighter places. Now we are not like that, are we? Now we know the truth. To truly do good you must suffer terribly, to truly do good you must sacrifice everything you have. It is such a hard cross to bear it is no wonder that true benevolence is so rare — indeed, perhaps it is good it is so rare, for someone to suffer so terribly for others is in many ways not noble but a tragedy, nobility itself being just another narcissism. Give those innocents their nobility and their sense of goodness, it is better like this. Perhaps to truly create something one must destroy themselves. This is a fate too heavy for those we profess to love, so let us few knights of a cause that gets no rewards and recognition take on our shoulders the true suffering of fighting for the goodness of humanity. I am yours, Theodore Shadow. I am yours in a way I have never been for anyone before. I worship at the altar of your goodness and am in fear of the weight of it. Your sacrifice will not be in vain. I will use all that I have to destroy you as evil when I am now sure there is no greater good in the world, and I will do this because even if I am not sure now that I love humanity I will fight for the potential that humanity embodies and that you hold dear. I will tear you apart, and love you. You will be executed terribly and I will make your memory be a black cloud of fear over the world forever. Let us find and talk to John Mahmed and make a peace, let us go about the work of destroying you.” Both Theo and Nathan stand, Nathan reluctantly withdrawing his hand from Theo’s. Theo leaves the room with Nathan walking reverentially behind him.
John Mahmed initially refuses to meet with Theodore and Nathan. Time in this story has not been an always measurable variable; where in the real world life is measured in terms of minutes, days and wrinkles, here it is measured in terms of life experience, and John Mahmed has aged from that young idealistic boy who first entered these pages in the forgotten beginnings of the Mystic Revolution. Now he is a wizened man. He knows that Nathan Prince is a wily and creative nemesis and in anything touched by this man he senses a plot; however, it is not because of Nathan that he does not want to meet, it is because of Theo. Hatred does nothing to define that very specific emotion that John has for Theo, it is something far more nuanced. At one time John Mahmed worshiped Theodore Shadow with the entire intensity of his heart; now he is not only a fallen idol but also the murderer of the woman whom he loved more than anyone else in the world. He is not like Nathan, he is not absent of belief in the Mystic movement — rather, he is saturated in its belief. He worships the words of the early Theodore Shadow while seeing his current incarnation as a satan, a man who was tempted by the devil and succumbed. A teleconference is arranged only if Theo agrees to say nothing and only if Theo agrees not to look into the camera.
The call starts and a fiery zealotry radiates from John Mahmed. For him there is only his belief; he doesn’t care about winning or losing, life or death, he only cares about carrying on with the True Mystics. Yes, he has corrupted them from Alexa’s original sinless flock, yet as with any zealot his power comes from his ability to trust in his belief no matter the reality. Nathan believed before this call started that perhaps a real accord could be reached, yet one look into the eyes of John Mahmed and he is feeling a sickness in his stomach: this is the sort of man who does not know how to compromise. The call begins in silence, with Nathan sitting sanguinely studying John’s face, John sitting with a condescending demeanor and Theodore quietly sitting behind Nathan staring at the table. Nathan begins to talk: “I suppose we can escape the pleasantries, John Mahmed. I do not know you well, I don’t know the type of man you are becoming. What I hope is that there is a desire for peace in your heart, because if there is you will listen to what I have to say and feel like there is a rare opportunity here. First, you must understand that what I’m about to say does not come from me, this is no manipulation on my part, this originates entirely with Theo. I say this though I know you hate Theo even more than me, yet I know that you at one time trusted Theo’s heart, and this idea originated in that holy part of his heart you used to worship instead of from any calculating part of my mind. Alexa is dead, we executed her. You have a penalty to bear in this; she came to us knowing she would be executed, she preferred this to remaining with the True Mystics in the direction you were moving them. We are all guilty. The world is now going to be in flames. We know that you are preparing for total war, that you will do anything to destroy myself and Theodore, who you see as the ultimate crisis for your faith. I just want to assure we are all talking the same language, are we?” John coldly nods and Nathan continues, “We are willing to come on bended knee to you in the hope that we can come together and not just avoid more warfare and suffering, but actually work to build that society that Alexa dreamed about. We want to change the truth not to lie, but to take away the rotted bits that destroy the whole. We want to take Theodore Shadow out of Mysticism, we want to turn his name into a curse word that mothers use to scare small children. We will replace him with Alexa as the spiritual foundation of Mysticism, and all the violence, all the disorder, we will lay at the feet of Theo and his treachery. We will then bring Theo to trial and have him publicly executed as a criminal without parallel. We will do all this because we think that it will allow for the clean slate of a world where your beliefs and the beliefs of Alexa can flourish. To make this work we must unite, we must become as one, where even if you continue to hate me you must be able to work with me. What are your thoughts?” Nathan leans back, feeling poised perfectly between being hopeful and being lost in hopelessness.
Chewing his lip like a contemplative young child, John Mahmed ponders this. “If I could, I would tell you no. That you are both a cancer, and no matter your intentions you will keep killing whatever you touch; you need to be hacked away to save the whole. I am not some wild man like I see you judging me as; I believe in something, and I want to achieve it. Yet you are right. Alexa’s death feels like a weight around my own neck, choking me physically, my lungs unable to breathe a single clean breath since I found out she fled my side to sacrifice herself to you. My sins weigh on my heart, yet I have learned my lesson before it was too late. I will not become the man that I was descending towards, the man Alexa feared I would become. I will not become like the two of you. You are correct, I am heading towards total war, but not out of rage, rather out of dispassion: I want to rid the world of its demons. You come here, you who I hate, and you give me this offer. I see you two as being without redemption, but I do understand now, after becoming lost myself, how good men can be brought so low. I condemn you both as being debauched now, yet you did have goodness in you at one time. This does not allow for any forgiveness from myself or the world, yet it does make you more human. Should I trust you? How can I trust anyone who has been shown to have so little mettle to be trusted. Yet I know that this is what Alexa would have wanted. I, like yourselves, have looked vainly for a way to bring the world together rather than tear it apart, and nothing has come to mind. It would be a sin to the goodness that I might do with this deal to reject it because of your own malignancy. I will be able to accept this alliance on three conditions; if you accept all of them I will work with you, Nathan Prince, as a willing partner, a man you can trust, a man who will fight for the True Mystic precepts and the betterment of the world. The first condition is that I alone want a veto over the key decisions of the new world we create. I will not be unreasonable and I will listen to you well, Nathan Prince; I may disrespect your humanity but I do respect your mind. Alexa once accused me of being an endless ocean of empty belief. I want to be better than that; I now have belief in those things that Alexa believed, and I want to assure that the society we will create reflects this. The second condition is something that you have already suggested: the total teardown and demonization of Theodore Shadow. However, you make this into some tragedy, and the concession I want is that you stop spewing these garbage words to me. I don’t care if Theo has come to some peace in his mind or if he’s god himself walking among us. We demonize him because he deserves to be demonized. He sacrificed his beliefs, he brought the world to ruin. Yes, he brought some good; we will make use of that, we will carry that light. But a man should be judged on balance, and with Theodore Shadow there is no balance, the scale is tipped so lopsided that it descends through the ground and into hell. That is the only way we will talk about Theodore Shadow, and that is the only way we will let the world remember him. The third concession is to do with Theo’s execution. A man like this should suffer; he needs to be punished for his crimes, indeed he needs to want to be punished for his crimes, and the fact that Theodore Shadow has suggested his own execution is the only reason I am truly listening to you, Nathan, because it means that Theodore wants to truly have some atonement, he craves the just punishment that he deserves. Theodore will be executed. More than that, I want him executed without prestige, without ease. I want him to be executed publicly to hatred and derision, I want him to be burned at the stake in the hope that the purifying flames will purify his soul before he ceases to exist and curse us with his presence. These are my three conditions. If you can accept them, I agree to be a willing partner; if you cannot accept them, then there will be the war that we both fear. What are your thoughts? Shadow, you can look at me and answer, I want to hear from your own lips that you accept your doom. Do you not want to tell me that the roads of life are complex and confusing, and that in a different world our positions could be reversed? Maybe you are right, sinner, but this is the only world that we will ever exist in and here you are the fallen one. So, the only words I want from you are if you accept my concessions and accept your doom — not because it will bring peace, that is not to do with you. I want you to accept your doom because you feel that you deserve it. Well?” John leans towards the screen. Nathan looks at Theo. Theo looks up from the table where his gaze was fixed and into the digital eyes of John Mahmed. “I ask Nathan and only Nathan if he accepts your concessions, because he is the one who will work with you to make a brave new world from the tattered world I will shortly depart from. For you though, to silence the quelling in your heart: you are correct, I feel I deserve death. I don’t look forward to it, the world is beautiful. I now know that the world is not for me, that for my crimes I need to be punished, and I embrace that punishment. Make the punishment as you like, it makes no difference to me. May the world be better for all of this. Nathan, do you agree to these three concessions?” Nathan nods. John Mahmed nods, then asks, “Well Nathan, let’s get to work. What is the way forward?” Nathan and John start talking with Theo contributing nothing; his time is past, yet the things that Nathan and John talk about are beautiful derivatives and conclusions of the dream that Theo and Alexa fantasized of. Theo says nothing but his eyes absorb the entire world and sprout that same serenity since he saw the flower. He is still following the true way forward.
Chapter 14
The rumors start as a whisper, but a whisper in the connected era quickly becomes a shout. Nathan plays his cards close to his hand; he and Theo agree that it’s better for Theo not to know the details of the next stage of the Mystic Revolution. Theo sits endlessly at a window, staring at nature, living in his mind; he does not follow the cornucopia of cacophony that is building around him. Rumors so vile, backed by evidence that is incomplete yet more than enough to catch universal attention. Nathan works intelligently, stifling the rumors just enough that they seem a closely held truth, that those who know them feel let in on a great secret — yet, for all that, the rumor is made to spread. The rumors don’t make a difference in their detail, the result is all that matters, and while Theodore Shadow has fallen from grace throughout the conflict with the United Global Republic and the True Mystics, and has become a figure of horror since the execution of Alexa Mystic, nothing has been like this. It was always assumed that he was a fallen angel; now the evidence is quickly becoming insurmountable to even the most simple child that Theodore Shadow is no fallen angel, he is a despotic psychopath, a man who can only be defined as evil, a man who pushes the boundary of evil into new territory. The things he is accused of are legion, made the more horrible because he relied on a honeyed tongue rather than violence, coercion rather than anger and manipulation rather than horror. Theodore Shadow is a man whose greatest sin was convincing everyone that he was the embodiment of good, and his greatest achievement was convincing the entire world that he was the embodiment of good. There is no disgrace in the heart of man for falling into the honeyed trap of such a man: the feeling is that the trusting good people of the world were made the toy of a psychopath.
However, these slowly simmering epiphanies are not being used as reasons for disillusionment with Mysticism; rather, they reinforce faith. For a time everyone in their heart embraced the idea of Mysticism, and it has been a slow leak of disenchantment, over terrible atrocities and most bitter war, that has leeched the white virtue of the cause. Now there is a reason for that tarnishing, and now in the heart of man a fire that was going cold is reignited into a blaze; an excuse for the debasement of Mysticism is found, and that pure original feeling is allowed to flourish again. Perhaps this is why there is not more criticism of the fairy tale that Nathan and John construct: mankind again wants to be embodied by that moment where a utopia seemed possible and humanity seemed a higher creature. Of course Alexa Mystic was the true prophet, with Theodore Shadow trapping her like a fly in his web of honeyed lies. Of course all the wars and division, the friends who became monsters and the strangers who seemed full of hate, it was all because of a disease made possible by the diseased mind of Theodore Shadow. Each person had the silent question put into their heart of whether they wanted to support the true history of Theodore Shadow and their own debasement, which could be true and more research would prove or falsify, or whether they wanted to support the false history being sold, where they could be innocent lambs brought to the slaughter, which could be accepted by simply not questioning and trusting their own partial heart. The conclusion in the hearts of the world is quickly and universally aligned against Theo in a passionate if still silent rage. So recently Theo was the most powerful man in the world; so soon he will be completely alone. For all of this, he still sits at his window looking out.
With timing almost comical in its operatic perfection, Nathan Prince and John Mahmed come together to issue a joint statement. Both of them have come together as men who always wanted what was best for the world, true patriots to the human soul, yet overwhelming evidence now shows that they were unwitting accomplices in grievous transgressions, that they had been played as game pieces in the tangled jigsaw that Theodore Shadow was carving the world into, and now no longer would either of them allow it. Nathan and John say they know that they perpetrated terrible acts, but they were chess pieces to a higher power and now they have broken free; they are going to fight against the deviant Theodore Shadow and they are going to work forever as willing slaves to atone for their transgressions and reaffirm the true Mysticism of Alexa Mystic. The world applauds publicly and in their hearts. An instant coup is launched by Nathan Prince with John Mahmed’s approval.
Theo is captured looking out the window. His capture has been planned in advance, the worry being that he might be violently torn apart in revulsion or stupidly butchered in passion. Instead, even before John’s and Nathan’s announcement an elite and trusted group are sent to collect Theo. They barge into his room where he is still sitting at a window, and as he hears the violent intrusion he quietly turns around. He asks simply “Is it time?” and the leader silently nods, orders him to be chained, and he is marched to an invisible prison where he disappears from the prying eyes of the world.
A true hatred is quickly built up against Theodore Shadow. The sentiment of the common man has been like great tectonic plates that have metastasized from endless millennia of microscopic movements into daily revolutionary shifts. What would have once been unimaginable is now taken in stride; it becomes easy for the world to condemn Theo so quickly. In the blistering plasma of common sentiment there is a carnivorous hunger for Theo’s life, the jury in each man’s heart has spoken. Can a man know his own heart? There is something in the cannibalistic spirit against Theodore Shadow of each man’s own hatred of themself, their own fear of themself. Each of those deplorable acts committed in the heat of a moment or the ice of terror is remembered like a bad dream and has been pushed into some mentally subliminal prison where it festers, eating at the subconscious id of man. Every man becomes a man when they realize they are capable of those horrors that they themselves fear, the world full of nothing but murderers and potential murderers. When a hot war flashes like the one that has consumed the world between the United Global Republic, the Mystics and the True Mystics, the fuel for the global conflagration is this terrible potential in the dark recesses of every man, and once that dark cage is opened it is nigh on impossible to cage the beast. The demonization of Theodore Shadow allows for the dark cage to be closed again: the devil was not in themselves as their quiet heart knows to be the truth, the devil is this external lightning rod Theodore Shadow, and all that festering self-loathing is suddenly striking onto Theodore Shadow with a senseless intensity, those quiet tears of a child who weeps in a parent’s arms after torturing an infant sibling. The crowd wants Theo’s blood to be the cleansing alms to their own innate bloodlust.
Theo’s imminent trial for orchestrating war, high treason, murder and acts of cruelty is announced. The punishment if he is declared guilty is public execution. With great fanfare the public celebrates the progress of their society, where a criminal no matter how powerful can be persecuted. An atmosphere is produced similar yet different to that when it seemed like the United Global Republic might be vanquished without violence and a dreamed-for society might be made earthly reality. There is a new dawn for the best attributes of the human spirit: hope, dedication, fantasy and belief. In a cell Theo cannot know that the world he sacrificed his life to help produce is taking root, needing the water of his complete sacrifice to finally blossom. The tendrils of daylight he prayed for are not just blooming; the lightening of the entire horizon before dawn begins to illuminate a new society in its promising infancy. Nathan and John have worked together in a partnership which has quickly morphed from one of untrusting allies into one of collaborating artists, each endlessly more powerful for the accompaniment of the other. Nathan finds again in his heart that desire to build a stable world where the individual can flourish, and John Mahmed finds again his devotion to the true tenets of Mysticism that originally baptized his passion. They work together for a society where money is just a means to an end and financial success is measured by generosity to the less fortunate rather than status symbols, a society where the principal requirement of a job is not an automaton’s ability to replicate simple tasks endlessly but rather an artist’s spirit in endless creation and forever nuanced perfection. Finally mankind is not a slave to technology’s revolution; rather, technology is harnessed as a slave, and each man or woman who was nothing but a cog becomes something organic built on top of the cold machine. Society has been realigned to provide a true path forward where beauty can be felt in every moment and that budding flower in each person’s mind can have the opportunity to grow unobstructed towards the sun of their most innate dreams. Mankind had been on the edge of a knife, teetering between the brute animal nature of its distant past and the holy promise of its future, and after a perilous flirtation with retrograde the slow, promising march forward has begun again. A lie has again been created to shepherd society through the unfathomably complex abysses of the real universe towards the simple sunshine of real and meaningful happiness.
Chapter 15
Theo watches his trial with a detached interest. Every day for many days he is taken from his grey holding cell within the courthouse building into the imposing room of the trial chamber. His greatest pleasure during this time is when he first enters the chamber and, as he is paraded to his seat at the front, he glimpses an unobstructed view of the outside bathed in a just-risen sun. It warms his heart, and during the entire time that he sits at the front of the chamber, attempting to adequately play the part that Nathan Prince and John Mahmed expect of him, he finds himself endlessly fighting the conscious desire to do nothing but stare out of these unfathomably close windows. Instead, he concentrates on the trial itself. The judge leaves no imprint on his mind, just a grey entity who could be changed daily without Theo taking any note. The crowd leaves no imprint either, just a tempest at his back which he knows he is not supposed to acknowledge — nothing but a storm of revulsion that gives the courtroom both its noxious feel of contamination and its burgeoning sense of validity. Theo doesn’t listen to a word of any of it, knowing that his job is simply to accept his condemnation. Like a young student who learns how to sleepwalk through class by reading a teacher’s personal expectations rather than any real knowledge of the material, Theo works hard to make sure that he is always fulfilling the judge’s and public’s expectations of him. When the judge asks if he did this action or that action he admits that he did; when the judge asks how he did this, he explains in either a truth or a lie, whichever is the real answer that the judge wants; when the judge asks why he would do this, Theo responds with a believable response from a man who has already been declared, in the jury of each individual heart, to be a dervish psychopath.
Day after day of this act and Theo is becoming ever more exhausted, ever more buried under the weight of the construct that is being built as a cage around him. There is a feeling that each and every sin that has been committed in the history of the world is being laid at his feet, none too big or too small, and while it may seem ludicrous for any rational person to believe that a single person is capable of so many crimes, there is a collective irrationality to the public now with regards to Theodore Shadow: the bigger the lie of Theo’s crimes becomes, the more people can individually forgive themselves and forgive those others who committed atrocities, since Theo’s titanic maliciousness makes everything else seem inconsequential. Some of the crimes Theo is being condemned with, however, are not based on phantom facts but rather the real controversies that have chased Theo’s own mind. He goes through the same passionless responses for these too; he knows that for the court he is accused in front of, any attempt to address the rationale of his real actions would demand a nuance that would lead to moral ambiguity, and the point of Theo’s trial is completely unambiguous: to condemn him as being completely without morals.
Instead, while Theo’s body is patiently absorbing without question the depressing arc of the physical trial, in his mind there is a parallel mental trial where he is attempting with a complete dedication of spirit to acquit himself in front of the jury of his own soul. Here the punishment is not life or death — it is already assumed that death is coming — rather, it is between eternal peace and eternal agony in that death, as Theo tries to personally make peace with his own life.
The trial for Theodore Shadow’s soul takes place in the burnt remnants of his valley. While in this place the defendant Theo is a character that crouches on bent knees in the shadow of the ruined apple tree, there is also another Theo who watches the entire expanse as if from an invisible tower. From here he can see the ruined expanse of his valley in a manner that he never saw when he determinedly abandoned it in the real world. He does not see the valley as it was in his heart, nor does he see it as the blackened hollow he imagines it is in the world now. Instead, it is almost a painting, an artistic representation of that thing that is closest to his heart. The land is ruined but the sun is shining. Theo’s heart hardens against himself.
From his lofty perch the watcher Theo sees his alter ego crouch on the ground as a solitary figure seemingly waiting for others. There is a type of mist both illuminating and eradicating a pervasive light whose source is undeterminable. Suddenly out of the ether shadowy figures file into the ruined husk that was Theo’s happy cottage and into a jury stand. Was the stand always there and Theo just never noticed it? The figures slowly come into focus and each member is Theodore Shadow as well — not identical versions of himself as he is, but rather each an individual version of who he was throughout his life. One is a young boy Theo who still hides the fact he plays with dolls. The next is an adolescent Theo who beams like a sun in the promise of the future. After the adolescent is a university student Theo who loves to talk loudly because he believes his voice deserves to be heard. In the next row is the high-powered lawyer Theo who goes home every night to proudly check his bank account. Below the adolescent Theo is a harrow-eyed Theo who has watched his parents’ art be leeched from them by government drugs. Second to last is the bright-eyed Theodore Shadow who glows with the newfound tranquility of his valley. Finally, there is the Theodore Shadow who has let Alexa Mystic stay in his valley and believes that perhaps he has even found a higher plane of perfection. The watcher Theo feels tears stream down his face as he sees so many dimensions of his life laid out before him, and for the first time he truly ponders what it is to die, to have all these characters who exist only in his mind disappear forever from the world, their story never to be told truly again. The crouched Theodore Shadow stares straight ahead now, not seeing the jury of his different selves, rather looking at a ghostly shadow emanating from that same impenetrable fog. Out finally walks Alexa Mystic in judge’s robes, and she sits at a grand podium that is lightly levitating over the ash-clogged remnants of the little lake.
Suddenly Theo dissipates from his all-seeing perch and comes to live in the melancholic mind of the accused Theo who kneels on the ground in front of Alexa. For a moment when he embodies his cursed self he gasps with shock as if jumping into very cold water; when he was in the sky it was like he was separate from himself and also separate from his history, now again in his body he feels the full weight of his past like a club battering the side of his head. His life is a leviathan, a living breathing organism made up of endless light and dark, the twisted creature now docile, that flower of just purpose dominating the present — but behind it is a mixture like a jigsaw puzzle, and the image of that past is indecipherable, equally likely to contain an awe-inspiring scene or a window into hell. Theo realizes that the jury and judge will decide on how to put this puzzle together, and the image they see will be their verdict.
A silent wind blows through the valley and Theo finds himself shivering under the glowering eyes of his past selves and Alexa Mystic. Alexa coldly looks down at Theo in a way she never looked at him in real life. Theo does not understand why his subconscious is constructing the scene in this way but he flows with it, trusting where his mind brings him. He sees Alexa stroke her neck and is repulsed to see black bruises where he strangled her. She clears her throat, making Theo realize that there had not been a single sound in this vacuum in his mind. “Theodore Shadow,” she says, “you stand before a jury of your own conscience and the judge of your only true friend to decide the nature of your humanity. The trial will proceed like this: I will ask you to justify in your own words those times where you compromised your own sense of good, and you will try to convince those past lives you used to live in the jury that your decisions were just. After, they will give you a sentence, which is of course a sentence of your own internal devising, yet it will be charged with the real belief you now find you are giving this ever-deepening daydream. Do you understand?” Theo nodded. “Then let us begin,” Alexa says.
Leaving his huddled crouch behind, Theo stands up straight and waits for Alexa to commence. He feels very cold, unsure if it is fear or something more sinister making him shiver. In the back of his mind he is aware of the physical trial that is arbitrating over his body and he knows that he is performing dutifully in that realm; however, his entire mind is centered solely on this mental trial, which is increasingly becoming more vivid than reality. Alexa asks her first question: “Theodore Shadow, why did you save me when I was a child? I accuse you of compromising your dedication to your belief that for you to have any effect on the world could have unforeseen negative effects, and that therefore you should not affect any life other than your own. Your initial worry was true — saving me was the first stone that started the avalanche of consequences that have led you here. Again, why did you save me?” Theo smiles softly at the memory of that sweet young girl with eyes that seemed bigger than her head; it feels now like that girl never existed. Theo starts talking while thinking of that memory. “Honestly Alexa, I have no idea how to answer that question. I could tell you that I have no idea why I saved you that day, or I could equally say that saving you was the only thing in the world I could do. Life happens so fast — I think that is the biggest lesson I have learned from all of these tragedies, that decisions are often not our own to make, they are a slave to the diktat of time. I saved you because my body simply reacted to the monstrous scene in front of my eyes. An innocent young girl just sprouting from infancy, and men talking above her about raping her, men talking about killing her. My mind was thinking about the question you pose to me, about whether, to be true to my beliefs, I should save you or not; my body just reacted to a young cub in danger. I flew at the men, I killed all three of those men. I had never known death before, certainly I had never killed a man before, and all of a sudden three deaths were burdened on my soul. However, while I say that my mind did not know what my body did, my mind has now come to decide that my body’s actions were just. It is one thing to hold a belief intellectually, it is another to let that intellectual belief conquer every other fact of a life. Perhaps it is true that if I had stayed strong and not compromised my belief I would still be in my valley at peace, but the weight of your death would hang from my neck like a tightened noose for all my life. Perhaps that was a sacrifice I should have made, perhaps I was simply weak, but I do not regret saving you. It was the most pure thing I have done in my entire life.” With a feeling of confusion, like he did not answer the question properly, Theo stops talking. Why can’t he speak what his heart truly feels? There is a perfect answer, if only it would flow from his tongue.
Alexa seems neither pleased nor displeased with Theo’s first answer and the jury is universally stone-faced. “My second question is why you let me stay in your valley, when much as in the first question you knew you would have to compromise your beliefs. To have me here was to have an effect on the world. Why did you do this?” Alexa asks. Theo rebuts, “I could say that I let you stay with me because you made me. Your logic was sound: I didn’t want to let you stay with me because I didn’t want to affect the world, yet I saved you and affected the world, and letting you stay with me was a consequence of that. However, that is not the whole truth. I wanted you to stay with me because even though my life gave me great spiritual satisfaction it was sorely solitary; seeing the fire in your eyes to stay here in this valley with me seemed like such a wonderful thing, to have the opportunity to share with another all the wonders that enter my heart. Again, I was weak. I wanted to have no effect, yet I was tempted by the idea that here maybe I could have a positive effect.”
Again neither pleased nor displeased, Alexa accepts his answer with silence and the jury stays stone-faced. The questions begin to come faster. “Why did you burn the valley?” Alexa asks. “So that there would be no turning back in weakness from the path that I had set before my feet,” Theo replies. “Why did you begin preaching?” Alexa asks. “I’d committed myself to sharing the lessons of the valley and only had my voice as a tool,” Theo replies. “Why did you threaten the men in the village who injured John Mahmed?” Alexa asks. “I am not a pacifist. I abhor violence; however, some will treat a peaceful nature as weakness. I felt a need to protect those who followed me against those who would do them harm,” Theo replies. “How could you put your trust in Nathan Prince even though he has no belief in Mysticism?” Alexa asks. “While Nathan Prince has no belief in Mysticism he convinced me that he has a strong passion for making the world a better place. He also convinced me that we could be vehicles for each other’s goals,” Theo replies.
All of these questions have the feel of preamble to Theo. These are not the sins that Theo’s heart cries a swansong of sorrow for, nor are they the acts that he will be condemned for. Now the questions become more serious. The harsh demeanor of Alexa softens ever so slightly as she asks him, “Theodore Shadow. How is it you could tolerate violence as a means to an end? How is it you could tolerate terror as a means to an end? How is it you could tolerate killing as a means to an end? How is it that you could compromise your beliefs so many times to make room for ever increasing deviance?” Suddenly Theo feels his heart race; it is as if the entire scene was devoid of color and now suddenly the scene is oversaturated, every faceless stone and ashen stump seeming to vividly awaken and become filled with life as Alexa asks these questions. Without moving, Theodore is now facing the jury of his past selves instead of Alexa. The flower that has been filling Theo’s mind with tranquility of purpose is under attack as his mind devolves the questions put to him through the processors of his rationale. He starts speaking shakily, in a whisper. “That is the question, isn’t it? It’s the one I don’t have an answer for… Life didn’t happen as I imagined. I always wanted to stay true to my beliefs. I never wanted to cause terror, I never wanted to accept torture. I never wanted death and killing to be condoned in my name. Every step of my life has been following the stepping stones of attempted universal righteousness, of attempted universal goodness. The world works in such a way that there will always be things outside of one’s control. The world didn’t have to unravel the way it did. Did it? Could I not have been the exact same person I have been, having the same weaknesses, making the same judgment calls that I have, and an entirely different situation could have resulted? I wanted to make the world a better place. I fought to make the world a better place. I suffered to make the world a better place. It has been like betting: I kept losing my bets, then doubling down with a bigger bet that I would then lose as well. Should I have walked away? How could I walk away when I had already hurt what I loved, damaged what I had wanted to fix. I should have stopped, learned from my failures and gone back to the roots of my belief and worked to have no effect on the external world. I know that now, with the curse of hindsight. In the moment I could only operate within the confines of the individual choices the situation had. Yes, I could always have sought to back down, but ever since I saved Alexa all those years ago backing down became contaminated, not a pure choice but rather one that had negative consequences as well. If I had not saved Alexa she would have died. If I had not let her live in the valley she would have been forever lost. If I had not burned the valley we would not have been strong enough to forever leave it. If I had not begun preaching we would have been robbing an unhappy world of a potential voice of happiness. If I had not threatened the villagers who had beaten John Mahmed they would have bullied or worse all of the Mystics. If I had not trusted Nathan Prince, Mysticism would have faded away without ever achieving critical mass. If I had not tolerated violence, violence would have been used to break the Mystic movement. If I had not tolerated terror, our enemy who sought to stifle our voice would never have given us the oxygen to be heard. If I had not tolerated death as a tool, our own deaths would have been our undoing. I tried so hard. At every crossroads my soul would weep in anguish at such unholy choices. I always made not the choice that I wanted, but the choice that I thought would be the best overall. I was weak, but my weakness was an original sin. I was not weak at every stage, I was only weak at the very beginning in doing that one right thing in saving Alexa, and all my strength since then has been unable to surmount the forever canyon that weakness unraveled in my life. It didn’t have to go like this, the map was not drawn before we started our quest, great evil did not have to happen. The United Global Republic could have listened to the will of the people. Nathan Prince could have been better at peacefully manipulating the world. Those people who all of us have been fighting to make the world a better place for could have been better ambassadors of their own inherent goodness instead of so easily becoming corrupted emissaries of deviant self-righteousness without external empathy. I sincerely believe if the dice had just been rolled a different way a better outcome could have resulted. If that is not the truth then woe to humanity, for it means our broken species is unsalvageable, a carnivorous shark that will never be tamed. You can condemn me for the evil that resulted from my actions, but I tell you that you cannot condemn me for a single action that I made, for every action was made with the most holy of intentions. Great evil has befallen, and I accept that weight on my shoulders. However, does being the root of evil make me evil? Can one fault the intentions of a mother bird who pushes her chicks out to learn to fly and one of them crashes to the ground dead? Can one fault the intention of another mother whose children are starving and she has no food, and when she kills the mangy family dog to save her family the rancid meat kills them all? Can one fault the intention of a starving mother dog who refuses to feed her scrawniest and weakest pup, even though it will die, to try to conserve food for the other pups who then might survive? Terrible results happen sometimes from those with the very best intentions. Sometimes, those terrible results would have staved off an even worse result. Terrible things happened in my name, but is it not possible that my intentions were always good? Is it also not possible that the world might even be a darker place if I had not taken all the actions that I did? There is a society that is taking root in the world as we speak that I played a vital part in creating. It could be a thing of beauty. Does that not mean anything? Should a man be measured on his intentions? Should he be measured in the tools he implemented to further those intentions? Or should he be measured on the ultimate end result? I truly don’t know. I trust my intentions. I trust where the world is going. I am cursed by those tools that were used, though they were not used lightly. I ask you to pass judgment on me. I need you to pass judgment on me. Please, just tell me the truth. Am I a bad man? Is that the result of all of this — all my rationale and mindfulness nothing but an illusion? Or perhaps this is what evil looks like, every tyrant a good man who just became lost. Tell me the truth so that I know who I am. I will die, so soon, that is no terror, but to die without knowing my own self is something that is truly terrifying.” Theo stops talking, the unnatural light in the valley suddenly dims, and where Alexa and the jury were sitting there is now only emptiness. The jury is deliberating.
Kneeling in the valley waiting for his sentencing, Theo is aware that in the real courtroom the proceedings have stopped and in this realm too the jury is deliberating and he awaits their sentencing. He does not consciously ignore the external proceedings now, he just feels so much more alive alone in his valley. Is this what lucid dreaming is like? Can there be such a thing as lucid daydreams? Theo breathes deeply the air of the imagined valley, and though there is a thick smell of dank decay underneath, there is still that sweet aroma that greeted him at awakening for so many years. This is still his valley; after all the ways his world has changed or ceased to exist in his mind he still had this room with a remnant of his own holiness locked away. If only he’d known he could escape to this room, perhaps he would have escaped so many nights of mental anguish. As he reflects on his defense to the phantom jury he gains a sense of confidence in his own actions. No matter what verdict either jury finds him, no matter how right it is to find him guilty for the result of his actions, he feels strength in his heart that he acted only with goodness. Nothing can take that last shred of dignity from him.
Suddenly another character is in the valley with Theo. Sitting in a chair gazing at Theo with inscrutable eyes, it is the young Theodore Shadow with dead eyes who watched his parents lose their art. They both stare at each other for some moments. No other characters come; where Alexa’s podium was over the lake is now empty sky, and where the jury box stood in the wreckage of the cottage is now nothing but broken stone and dry earth. The aged Theo waits for the young Theo to speak. He takes his time, seeming to try to understand something about his future self, trying to understand how he would one day be this ruined man. The aged Theo’s eyes still exude a blistering light, and this unmistakable sign of true life makes the young Theo smile so faintly. Perhaps he thinks that the world is a mysterious place. He says, “I have been chosen by the rest of the jury to give you our verdict. Are you ready to hear it?” The aged Theo stands on his feet for the first time since he arrived in the valley and walks over to his younger self so they are almost nose to nose; they look like father and son. The aged Theo nods. The young Theo begins. “You were a lost man, and when you were lost you tried to use the best sense of direction that you had and it did not suffice. Now you are found again, and this is good. Sadly, that does nothing to make up for those things you did while you were lost. I look at you with love and admiration for seeing the world to where it is now going, but your ends don’t justify the means. With love, we condemn you, not out of dislike or hatred but out of compassion; only with this punishment will it be possible for you in your own heart to feel peace. Truly, you more than anyone know that you deserve punishment, and we will give it to you. If there is a hell, you will go to it and suffer wretchedness until the end of time even though your heart is good and the world you left is brighter for having you — the darkness must rest somewhere, else lest it dissipate and be born into the system again. You will be the deserving recipient of this burden. This will be no sacrifice, it will be placed on you as a punishment, but your dedication to accepting this punishment does much to ease the terror of your sins. Know that by accepting here, in your innermost heart, your own declaration of the evil you have committed, you can now cast away the shadow of that evil, accept it, and go back to the peaceful tranquility of marching towards that unreachable tower of goodness that now resonates in your every heartbeat. Know, also, that from the standpoint of the infinite universe, that silent judge who might be called god, you are neither good nor evil, since neither good nor evil actually exist. You are nothing but a complicated organic molecule, some descendant of those first few atoms of stardust that descended to earth and became the building blocks of reality. To ask that stardust to confront the questions of existence is just too burdensome a task; the world is too complex, it is like a maze. Sometimes there is no avoiding going down a wrong path, mankind being simply insufficient of a race, in the doldrums between the divine and the dog. You erred grievously many times, yet you should be commended still for taking action, for working to bring the world forward. The history of life on earth, and mankind specifically, is not a linear story. Most species go extinct, most paths end in nothing but a dead end. This is the destiny of life: just as each man is born to perish, everything in existence is born to fade away. That time spent awake to the universe is precious, to absorb whatever singing the universe deigns to fill your ears with no matter how indecipherable it might be. You listened, and even more, you acted. So much progress is made with two steps forward and one step back. We applaud those who move us forward and revile those who move us back, but they are both a part of the same motion; much like a pendulum in a clock, ambition is always tempered by the gravity of reality. You acted publicly, yet you were only a figurehead. All mankind is a silent participant in the revolutions of mankind, a figurehead no more guilty or less guilty than anyone else, the tectonic movements of society greater than any one man. All of humanity is just one organism, moving together in some banal dance whose logic is impossible to decipher, but you must trust there is some beauty to it all, no matter what. Take this valley, which you imbued with a passion that inspired armies and burned to a graveyard that spoiled your soul. You thought it possible to teach the lessons of nirvana you learned from the valley, yet you never learned the real lessons it so ostentatiously shouts. Rain will bring the valley back to its former self. Then perhaps it will burn and rise again endless times throughout the future course of the world. Flowers will grow here again and they will die here. Everything is transitory, making only the slightest whisper amid the euphonic hymn of existence that consumes the true universe. To deify a man for doing great deeds for humanity is the same as applauding a tree that is fortunate enough to benefit from sunlight and water and plant many seeds. Then what if some of those seeds carry a disease that contaminates the whole forest? To revile a man for bringing destruction is the same as holding anger at a spark whose eventual conflagration engulfs an entire forest. Then what if the forest was a graveyard of dead trees and the fire served to renew life. The world will not love or condemn mankind, it cares not. Theo, you are a forest fire, and no matter your actions, there will be flowers one day as a result of you, and those flowers hold the same meaning as the destruction you wrought.” With that the young Theodore Shadow stops talking and becomes one with the valley just as the valley fades away, leaving nothing but memory as Theodore Shadow awakens back into the courtroom of the real world, where Theo’s physical sentence is about to be announced.
After the sentencing Theo is brought outside of the courthouse for the first time since the trial began. Theo has no idea how long the trial lasted, whether it was weeks or months or days; regardless of the outcome he is pleased to be outside of that lifeless environment. He knows that all this brief journey will consist of is a transit from his cell in the courthouse jail to a new cell in a maximum-security prison to await his punishment, yet he finds himself looking forward to the journey. There are only so many days left, there are only so many experiences left.
The first thing that strikes Theo’s eyes as he exits the courthouse is not his escort of a battalion of soldiers, nor is it the enormous crowd screaming vile at him from the other side of the security detail. No, the first thing that strikes Theo’s eyes is the dying embers of the sun’s rays as they walk towards their nighttime slumber, perfectly blinding him with their burning photons. With a grin that will conquer the media’s attention as the first sight of the despot Theodore Shadow after the court’s announcement that he is to be executed by a purifying fiery pyre, Theo’s smile has nothing to do with the trial or the masses of people stretching to the horizon; he simply grins like a small child for those warm sun rays that touch his face for what may be the last time. He stares straight at the sun as long as he can, feeling his retinas begin to degrade, and he luxuriates in the new feeling, even if it is an agony, since it is something new. Perhaps he will immolate his eyes first, before he immolates the rest of his body, he thinks to himself, a new test of spirit. Then he gathers his senses, knows that he has a duty to perform as that crazed madman that tried to ruin the world, and he simply lets the flow of his security detail carry him as an extension into the rear of an armored sedan, the last vehicle he will ride in during this life.
With idle curiosity Theo wonders if this sedan is a subtle gift from Nathan Prince, a last chance to see the world. Now, in isolation except for the guard on each side of him, Theo feels like he can simply smile to his heart’s content and enjoy the rapturous world unraveled before him for a few brief moments longer. Yes, a dour parade of military muscle and hateful eyes follows his vehicle through the streets, but it is as if they are invisible to Theo. He does not see these trailing ghosts, he is focused on every splash of light that absorbs the last embers of the day’s dying sun. Here, the red of a series of carnations illuminates more perfectly than any rose. There, down that blockaded road, just for an instant as they pass, Theo sees a glistening fountain with children splashing in its spray. A thousand times a thousand microscopic scenes flood into Theo’s eyes, as if he had both a microscope and a telescope trained in every direction. His heart suddenly comes to live in his mouth and Theo realizes that he is on the verge of tears, and this makes him smile all the deeper, knowing that the rapture he is engulfed by is simply inescapable, a wonder drug, a natural high that conquers every corner of his self.
The gates of the imposing prison loom ahead. Acting as a horizon plane, the cold brick robs the sun from the world in its shadow, and as the last sliver is blackened away Theo does not wonder — he knows that this will be the last sunset of his waking life. He turns in his seat, one of his guards raising a hand to stop him but then thinking better of it. A certain humanity becomes universal in the heart of every man when dealing with the condemned. Looking out over all those rabid faces with flashes of deep beauty interspersed in the peripheral, Theo feels a deep sense of contentment. This is a better world than the one that he first entered; after bringing the world so low he feared perennial night for mankind, now as he himself is brought low a new day arises. In every crevice of Theo’s mind, body and soul his immutable self sings a hope-filled hymn for the world that it will quickly leave behind forever. The world is beautiful.
Chapter 16
Outside an imposing metal door two guards stand at attention in complete silence. At each end of the hall is another two guards, equally silent and equally stiff. Past the edge of vision there are more guards, all silent, all rigid, all weighed down by the importance of their task. There is only one prisoner in this complex, one prisoner for hundreds to be guarding, one prisoner to warrant such a fear, such a fervor. On the other side of the imposing metal door is Theodore Shadow. Video screens track his every movement, monitors littering the fearsome prison like leaves on a tree. No one talks. No one gossips. There will be time for that later, after the conclusion that has been planned. For now there is only dedication, work and a forever silence.
In the silent consciousness of every man there is of course a personal discourse on what these endless monitors are showing, and there is a universal disappointment in what is revealed. In his cell Theo is not a rabid dog, nor is he spewing curses and damnations. All he does is sit. For hours and hours on end he sits. His eyes are often shut though he is not sleeping. His hands stay clasped on his lap. This is an image of a calm man at peace. That thought never enters the mind of any of the guards; the many medias they are in servitude to have utterly convinced even the most contrary part of their minds that Theodore Shadow is an antichrist. This man, sitting on the bed, this man who seems so peaceful — this must just be another guise of evil, the calmness of a still snake that is always ready to bite.
Theo is sitting on his bed in his cell. He does not know how long he has been here. Meals come at a seemingly regular interval though he has never bothered to count. Each plate of food is something that puts his palate into rapture; each bland morsel may be the last food he ever eats and he treasures it. He sees a camera on him and wonders if Nathan Prince would want him to act a certain way. He thinks jokingly to maybe cast some dirty faces at it, then thinks more morosely that he has played his act to perfection so far, it would be nonsense to push the boundaries of his stereotype now. He simply sits. He smiles at the fact that he can still think jokingly. He smiles at the fact that he can still smile.
There is not much to the cell. A bed with mattress and sheet. A cast-metal toilet with a sink built into the frame, made unnervingly in a manner to make suicide impossible. Theo hates the toilet; by taking away the option of suicide it just permeates the air with its noxious foghorn. The option never enters Theo’s mind, but he feels an empathy for those many sad souls that became so lost and the only option was one that was ripped from them, no freedom left. Every cell always has a sadness ingrained in its fabric, the memory of all those others who walked the short expanse of exposed concrete, who slept on the bed, who gazed with revulsion at the cast-iron suicide stopper. “Did the other men who slept in this bed leave this prison alive?” wonders Theo.
While the scenario is sad, Theo’s mind is joyous. The end is coming; so rare is it in life to know so truly the end is coming. Usually life is something ripped away when you’re not looking; Theo gets the opportunity to comprehend the reality of his own demise, and instead of this being a terrifying epiphany Theo has turned it into something personally wonderful. He is afraid to die. His heart radiates with fear. No matter Theo’s thoughts on the likelihood of there being a higher power, Theo is sure that there is no afterlife. That he came from dust and will be dust. That no matter what that dust might be regenerated into, it is of no concern to his consciousness — that consciousness will be no more. Theodore Shadow as an entity will cease to exist forever. For all the infinites that come after there will never again be a Theodore Shadow. The mammoth emotion that this fear embodies in his mind is much like the sun that radiates over the rest of his consciousness, something that rules over all but that is impossible to actually look at. Theo acknowledges his fear, bows to its supremacy, then moves on to that revealed landscape that the light of the specter of death unveils. He sees his life as if it was a complete map, where he can see the entire shape of what his life meant. Like watching a movie he thinks back on specific memories, wanting to touch all those experiences that were gifted to him through a lifetime of passion. He wants to touch them before they disappear from the fabric of reality. He lets his mind choose the memories that he delves into.
For Theo his favorite time is the night — or at least those hours of the day where the lights are turned off, leaving the cell in a true blackness, a darkness so pure that there is no difference between eyes being opened or shut, no difference between being awake and fantasizing or asleep and dreaming. There is only memory, there is only nostalgia. He doesn’t fantasize about escape or imagine what death will be like. He is at peace; he has been at peace since he rediscovered himself in the flower. His season is finishing: he had his time as a seed, he had his time about to bud, he had his time in bloom. Now he is about to fall, yet he has laid good seeds, seeds that he feels confident will grow more flowers. Isn’t this the purpose of life? He is about to fall and decay and let his body nourish the world; may nothing be wasted, may everything have purpose.
His mind wanders. Days flash by in the single memory of the first night Alexa talked with him underneath the apple tree in the valley, the memory lasting immeasurably longer than the reality as he notices every other layer other than the superficial. Like how an author might take a decade to describe a single day, time is only such a peripheral detail to memory. Years flash by in a blink. He remembers university with a warmth, then moves on. The memory may arise again to the surface later, each memory rising and lowering like a pod of whales coming for air, each memory rising suddenly and unexpectedly with a blast of remembrance before swimming again just below his consciousness, ready to rise again.
One night when the lights are off and it’s black, some of the guards flood his cell. With military precision they manipulate the video camera so that it shows a repetitive frame of a fake Theo. Each of the guards wears a mask. Theo watches this in shock; he has not seen another human being since the day of his trial, and now there’s a writhing mass of humanity on every side. Silent hands suddenly lift him from his perch on the bed and in an elegant arc he finds himself forced onto the floor, his cheek absorbing the cold imprint of the concrete. A warm and heavy voice that is indecipherable as even male or female whispers in his ear, “You thought that you could sit here mocking us after what you have done? You need to feel suffering, you need to feel the pain that you’ve inflicted on us.” Theo does not move as suddenly blows rain on him with that endless frequency of droplets in a hurricane. Kicks and stomping. With silence Theo accepts all of this, not even fighting the urge to cry in pain; he has accepted in the very pores of his heart that death would come at any moment, that it coming now would be no surprise. His final hope before a true blackness passes over his brain, matching the blackness of the room, is that he hopes his death without fanfare at the hands of these nameless conquerors doesn’t inconvenience Nathan Prince’s and John Mahmed’s plan. After Theo fades away the guards keep beating him until suddenly the lights flash on, Theo’s blood revealed to be spread on almost every surface of the room, and the shouts of other angered guards break the torturers from their bloodlust reverie and Theo’s broken body is left lying alone. Breath in sputters blowing little bubbles of blood from his mouth, he is still alive.
Groggily Theodore reawakens to a voice enshrouding his discombobulated perception of self. Momentarily he feels no pain and wonders if he is dead. Then he hears the familiar voice of Nathan Prince saying, “Nurse, can he hear me?” An unfamiliar voice answers in the affirmative, and then a door opens and closes and the nurse is heard to have left the room. “Theo,” Nathan says, “You cannot move right now but you can talk if you want to, the nurse tells me that your injuries do not inhibit speech.” Theo suddenly feels a moment of panic when, just as Nathan tells him that he cannot move, he acknowledges this reality — what has happened to him? The reassuring cadence of Nathan’s voice calms him. “You’ve been terribly beaten to the verge of death by some radicalized guards who had a skewed sense of citizen’s justice. They will not bother you again. I am sorry this has happened to you. I am told you are in no pain, that the drugs you have been given will make you not feel anything. We have accelerated our plans in regards to your execution. We think it is prudent to let as few people know as possible that you have been injured; it could create a sense of pity and this is unacceptable. You have performed remarkably, Theo. The trial was a success, society is arising out of the ashes of our war with a vivacity that is entirely a new thing to the world. It is wonderful, Theo. I ask you to stay strong to the very end like we discussed. You will be executed tomorrow. What are your thoughts on this?” Theo opens his mouth to talk just as he has countless times before in his life, but the words just come out as gibberish. His mouth doesn’t work the way he wants it to. He slows his words and it still doesn’t come out. He pauses, and so slowly says the word “Fine.” Nathan nods, then stands, saying, “John Mahmed is with me as well. This will be the last time we meet, Theodore Shadow. From me I tell you that after all we have shared together, the only feeling in me for you is one of a supernatural awe. You are a greater man than me, Theodore Shadow. You cannot see me well, but know that here, now, in your presence, I bend my knee to you, awe-filled. I will miss you my friend. John, do you have anything to say?” There is a silence, then the voice of John Mahmed fills Theo’s ears, “You have done terrible things Theodore Shadow, and I think you are doing the only course that has been left to you by the fate of your own actions. Know though, know that I do not hate you. You have become a martyr to your own sins and the dedication you have committed to your atonement is a powerful example. I am not sure I could act with that same strength. Goodbye, Shadow, may whatever the journey through the afterlife is like treat you as a good man.” Nathan’s voice is heard by Theo for the second-last time, “Theo, is there anything we can do for you?” “Yes,” Theo whispers, “No more pain medications. Let me die honestly.” Now Theo hears Nathan’s voice for the last time, “As you desire, Theo. You have been our willing servant in all these proceedings; the least we can provide for you is death in a manner that suits you. Goodbye Theodore Shadow, goodbye my friend. We will not meet again.” With what might be considered a chuckle Theo’s mouth spews aimless noise, and then Theo says his final spoken word to the world: “Bye.” Theo’s last view of Nathan Prince is his back as it blows through his door without looking back.
The next morning after a sleepless night Theodore Shadow waits for the door of his cell to open. He is angry with himself that his night was sleepless. No more dreams will come, that peaceful oasis of night a draught never to be drunk again. The pain is immense and Theo revels in it. It is a type of dream, the vivacity of his recoiling mind focusing him. A key lesson in torture is that once a man is past the point of no return, where the damage inflicted on the body is felt to become permanent, the prisoner is at peace. The world is not slipping away, it has slipped, and no tears or rage can change that truth. For Theodore Shadow, the world has slipped. The pain in his body is meaningless, receptors from a body screaming that the body is in peril being ignored in a mind that accepts that the body is not imperiled but dying. The body just doesn’t know it yet.
Blackness suddenly shifts to blinding light as the fluorescent tubes begin their blue burn. Theo does not seem to register this change. His mind is like a computer trying to process an impossible task and everything is frozen with the struggle. The last thoughts of his life meander through his mind almost beyond his control; Theo wonders if there is some resonance behind the flashing bursts of fantasy and memory that flit through his brain at a speed beyond consciousness. Then he decides to not think about it and just watch. Does this all mean something? Is there to be some final revelation, some deeper understanding of the world in these last moments?
Breaking Theo’s peaceful torment is the waited-for terror of the door bursting open. Army fatigues surround him, faceless and so like those that tortured him, yet now there is a fearful reserve emanating from these nameless souls. To take the life of another is a crime to even the most corrupted humanity, and these guards are simply simple people tasked with being a critical member of the bridge of death. Waiting in the wings of every person in the cell, including Theo, is the knowledge that if these guards were to not do their job then death would not come. Are these young men and women murderers then? Is Theo’s blood to be on their hands? No, their training and their minds speak logically, while meanwhile their hearts weep in a language that cannot be communicated in anything but a primal murmur of sorrow to that logical bastion the mind. These are not bad people; these people hate Theodore Shadow, yet these people are about to do something that they will remember for the rest of their lives as a sin, and as they look at the condemned monstrosity they call Theodore Shadow there is a silent fraternal empathy, an acknowledgement of the true complexity of a bizarre world.
After a perceptible pause, just that endless time of a heartbeat, arms lift Theodore Shadow from his perch on his bed. That he has been beaten terribly is obvious; what is not obvious is if the guards know what happened to him, if they are sickened by the vagrancy of their fellows or proud to be comrades to those who can righteously bring the high low. There is not time for these questions. Theo is put into a wheelchair waiting in the hall, the now empty hall. He is wheeled through the grey complex without passing anyone. Theo has not said anything and will say nothing. His eyes feast on the world. He looks around every corner with a vain hope of seeing through a window the entirety of the world, if only for just a moment. It’s a vain hope. This ugly complex is the last vista he will ever gaze upon, and with honesty it is sublime. The real world. The real world that will be taken away from him, the fading notes of a lifelong orchestral requiem fading fast into a forever silence.
There is a room where Theodore is wheeled into. It is bizarre: the size of a country church with the nameless concrete of a parking garage. It is empty except for Theo, the guards who accompany him, a video camera on a tripod and a large, delicately arranged pyre of wood. Theo does not feel the pain in his body anymore. His vision dwells not on that wood that spells his doom but rather on the video camera. “So it is to be televised,” he thinks without really thinking about it. “Fine.” With a gentleness reserved for the recently dead the guards lift Theo from his wheelchair into a human-sized cocoon of emptiness in the center of the dried wood. “Who made this pyre?” Theo wonders. “How do you find someone who knows the right way to do this?” Theo’s mind dwells on the simplicity of the wood. Here are the cadavers of century-old monks, a natural witness that towered over a small and personal kingdom in nature. Cut low now to cut Theo low. Sacrificed victims to ameliorate Theo’s own sacrifice. Theo feels a deep kinship to this wood, feels for a moment the last human touch of the guards, feels it leave, then embraces the rough surface of wood, so solid now, emanating a wonderful smell of childhood and primal man, yet hiding an incredible potential energy.
With a sadness Theo realizes that the guards have left the room. He does not remember his last glimpse of humanity. He sits wondering and waiting for a few seconds that last longer than many lifetimes. Then the faint acrid smell of smoke trickles into his nostrils, sending a signal to his brain that absorbs the truth with a grim and silent nod. Theo has jumped from the cliff of life and now he is in the air, for a moment flying, waiting to land in the arms of death. There is no pain and no heat yet. His mind is so alive. Life is such a fragile gift, how can its fragility ever be fully appreciated until it is wrenched away never to return. The first tendrils of heat begin to rise from the depths of the wood; it is actually quite pleasant. Theo looks without acrimony into the camera. He does not know how to die. He decides that no matter what he will not scream. He decides that no matter what he will not look away from the video camera. He wonders if these are promises it’s possible for a man to keep.
Pain begins. Like a fog rolling over a colorful landscape, soon it dominates the world, leaving nothing but the heavy haze of its suffocating presence. The heat begins to wrap Theo like a heavy blanket that only becomes ever heavier and ever hotter. We are not going to watch Theo here. We are not going to see if he screams or keeps his vow of silence; we’re not going to know if he breaks his gaze from the camera. Death should have a certain dignity, and fire’s death is a twisting contortion that robs everyone of dignity. It is our job to turn our back and imagine that Theo dies the way he wants to. While our back is turned, let us ignore these smells and noises and flow into that garden that still dazzles in the center of Theodore’s mind. May we walk through and for the last time smell the flowers that bloom everywhere, growing not in ordered rows but rather with an organic chaos. A lifetime was given to form this haven. Every smell emanating a memory. Here Alexa as a young girl, here the first time she held his hand below the apple tree, here the feel of her neck as he acted with the same magnanimity as the roaring fire in robbing her of life. There are a thousand times a thousand smells in the valley. Every blue-skied day having its own separate flower. The feel of the dirt on his feet upon waking in the morning. The field is endless in every direction; it takes a lifetime to live a life but it takes an endless number of lives to appreciate that life. We have but only one. The flowers are beginning to fade, that fog that thwarts forever life creeping over the memory flowers one by one. Caressing them one by one as their petals bow to gravity and rain to the world. Their lives extinguished one by one. The fire has almost done its job. The flowers will never grow these memories again; this field of life that is our protagonist will never live again in all the infinites of time in the same manner as the life that is almost disappeared. Yet the ash becomes a part of that rich dirt that takes all those gentle ingredients of a blessed world to create new flowers, new Theodore Shadows, new trees, new gardens, that are all different from what came before but an equal monument to the life of the universe. Perhaps those many lessons that the garden in Theo’s mind had to learn will be absorbed into the new life that sprouts from death; perhaps in the very building blocks of life are the seeds to a richer world than the one that has passed. As the lights go out in the scene we watch there is the feeling of a curtain falling with many questions unanswered, life never fully explained or understood. All there is, for a moment in the darkness, is a whisper that may be just the silence of death, or maybe is the last note in the music that was Theodore Shadow, so softly the words could be anything. We choose to hear Theo say, “I will live forever.”
11:54 25 January 2013 Astam, Dhital 8, Nepal
[EDITOR’S NOTE: for the book’s afterword, flagged for Barrett: The novella ends on a tension it never resolves, and this revision deliberately leaves it unresolved. Nathan Prince’s engineered lie is damned — his creed at the door, “No, I don’t believe in anything… I will take that lie and make it real for the good of all,” is staged as the moment the movement sells its soul — while Theo’s engineered lie, the scapegoat pact, is staged as redemption, and the narrator himself blesses it: “A lie has again been created to shepherd society… towards the simple sunshine of real and meaningful happiness.” Alexa’s “better liar” speech is the hinge that almost reconciles the two — “In a world where all are sinners there is no need for holy men, there is need for a better liar… At least, unlike Theo, I will die for a lie I believe in” — locating the difference not in the lie but in what the liar believes and is willing to pay. Whether that difference is real, or whether the book forgives in Theo exactly what it condemns in Nathan, is a question the text raises and does not answer. It is named here rather than resolved in the text.]