Our talk shifted to my own flight.“I thought I knew what it was I needed to do, my Lady. I thought I knew what they wanted. I thought I could help them. I thought maybe in their pride and arrogance they did not understand the extent of their folly in making this unholy alliance with the master of the Black Land.They will be betrayed and will only know when it is too late. Why don’t they see?”
“They are only as they were made, Tashi. Sunt pueri pueri, pueri puerilia tractant.”
“What do you mean?”
“They are the children of men, created in man’s image, just as mankind were created in our image. They are the best and worst of what man is. Stronger, faster, impervious to hurt, to aging, to death. All the things that men saw as being weak in themselves they cured when they created the first synthetics. Their ability to store and recall vast amounts of knowledge was beyond compare and soon after their creation, the children of men were able to do everything man was able to do, and more.
“But humankind could only build into these things as much as it understood about itself and make better those things that it would make better of itself, if it could. Thus they created a tool; a thing to mine down in the depths of the Irth where it was too hot for humans, or into the crushing depths of the deepest oceans, which meant nothing to them. They were sent off-world to the fledgling colonies on far away worlds that had not been terra-formed, where they could build new cities under poisonous skies, or on the frigid planes of ice, or under the melting suns where the tender flesh of men and women could not go.
“But you know their problem as well as I do, Tashi. They are made of the stuff of this realm, and to this realm they cleave. They cannot pass beyond, either higher or lower. The universe is our garden and all the creatures that populate it are endowed of the arts to pierce the veils of the infinite as part of their individual journeys to paradise to join with the supreme being. They are part of the infinite. How else could a beetle evolve to become a man, or a monk achieve enlightenment and so become a bodhisattva, or a boy become a god?
“If only the early humans had understood the totality of what it means to create. They could not see any part of the larger universe and what it is to be a child of the Creator. As I said, the best and the worst they bred into their creations. But of what import was it that the very essence that binds every living thing in the multiverse together as one under the Great God was left out of these creatures? Curse man for his insipid amaurosis.”
She nodded back towards the black tower.“You can see their dilemma. Do nothing and this realm dies, and they die with it. They could choose to fight either with or for humankind, which benefits man more because without such help he is mostly useless against the powers that assail this realm. They may be able to avert the destruction and so save themselves. Or, fight with the damned and fight to destroy their own realm because they have been promised the soul they so desire and the path to Nirvana.”
“But they can’t. They are machines, automatons, sentient yes, but truly alive, no!They can never achieve want they want.”
“Ha! How much do you sound like Lord Indra when the Great God Vishnu asked him to give Naraka what he wanted. I’d wager reading that story you thought Lord Indra the fool for his pride and folly which was visited back upon all of Heaven and Irth in the great war that followed. For we that were there it was more than the myth it has become. We lived through it to know enough of the fate that will be visited upon all should the master of the black land succeed. And he will succeed where his father failed because he brings a weapon to the fray that we cannot overcome– legions of them.”
“That’s what they were trying to take,wasn’t it? That is why I have been targeted this whole way. That is why everyone I know, friends, protectors and innocents alike have died around me. I; the boy who was saved by the Golden Goddess. They must have thought I had an abundance ofthat ‘spirit-essence’ that could be squeezed and distilled as juice is squeezed from an orange.” I became angry, foremost with myself for my lack of understanding, and with them, for their lack of, well, basic humanity. But that didn’t work either. We had no humanity when they built them, so why should they have developed any themselves over the eons since? And doesn’t man traditionally just take whatever he wants? Hasn’t he done that throughout all of history?
Ushas continued on. “The leaders of the mech races are not without intelligence. But they are still children. They have never had to grow up, to mature. They are innocent. They have no ability to perceive the falsehood that has been shown them. It is easy to create an illusion. In fact, it is generally easy to create a reality. Were I to make it so, we could stand upon one of the far orbs in an instant, and that would be a reality. And I could make it so for them as well. But to give them what they most desire, they would need to be part of the Great God’s plan. Even you, now a product of both worlds, just like your lover, would lose those enhancements on transpiring to the higher realm, because they are only enhancements of your body, not of your spirit. Those that you met within those walls believed so completely that to imbue themselves with the ‘spirit essence’ of a lama would give them what they desired. That is why you were made to suffer. Others of their race believe that the demon lord’s ‘magic’ will give them what they want. That is why this universe suffers.”
Ushas saw me looking toward the quiet menace of the Citadel. “What happened in there?” she asked.
What did happen in there? I mused to myself. I was alone, I was afraid. I was bereft of all courage and hope. Their probes and machines bored into me and pain that was unimaginable exploded in my mind. I sort escape.
“Such pain as you could not imagine.” I answered.
The engineer and I, accompanied by a number of armed Sidus, boarded another floating platform and rose up into the air. I talked freely with the engineer as we passed through the dark skies and past the many towers toward a large building which seemed very much in the centre of the massive Citadel. They escorted me inside and we entered a room.
In a mess of wires and machines and pulsing lights and sounds and bloodsplattered white sheets and old bandages I saw him on a pallet with bright lights shining down on him. He was awake and looked up at me in pain and in fear.
“Help me!” he gasped past the tubes down his throat. “Release him!” I yelled and ran to him. I held his hand, looking down into his eyes. “What have they done to you?”
“As I said, we have improved him,” the engineer intervened. “But he needs you.”
I did not stop to think what those words might mean and thought only to help him.
“What?”
“We have another table next to it. Lie down and allow us to use our science to help you to heal him.”
I knew they could do nothing to me and I felt confident that the display in the arena would prove to them I would not allow any kind of repeat of their previous stupidity.
But I was wrong.
Between the machines that pulled alongside the pallet and injected various chemicals into me and the machines that swung in from above me and poured down their crackling energies, and the unbreakable straps that came from nowhere to make any escape impossible, I could do no more than writhe and scream.
I caught glimpses in my uncontrolled thrashing of the engineer who looked calmly at the display before it and checked readings and data.
I will destroy you all, I screamed in my mind. But I could not concentrate and their chemicals and the power that cooked my body had made it impossible for me to protect myself. Other machines that were similar to the engineer played with dials and switches on their panels and while I would not have thought it possible, the energies increased and the pain increased.
I sought a safe haven lest I scream so much, and so loudly, that my innards would come bubbling out of my throat. I mumbled every prayer that I had ever known, to anyone who would listen. I screamed in desperation for succour. And in abject despair, in the safety of my mind where none of their instruments of pain a
nd anguish could reach me, I found the bottom of the well, so to speak. I found all those things which keep us from ascending to the plain of light. I found hopelessness, despondency and futility. I found those things that the shades that populate the dry land feed upon. I wanted to abdicate life, to renounce passion and happiness, I wanted to surrender.
But then I saw what it means to live and breathe the free air and to seek beyond. I understood how to rid my body, my mind and spirit of those things that keep us bound in hopelessness and suffering to this samsaric world. I prayed and spoke over and over the words Namo Amitabhaya Buddhaya, which mean simply“Homage to the Buddha of Immeasurable Light”. In an instant I left that place of death and soared high over the Purelands, to the land of light, of happiness and of paradise; the land of Amitabha. I had seen it before and I knew that I was at peace, my body now probably no more than a blackened husk, such were the energies that were thrown at me. But I had knowledge now, and hope and the means to end the horror and the carnage, for I saw the universe from on high and knew its pain and suffering more than I knew my own.
And so I came back. I suddenly stood in that room, watching with sorrow as I helplessly thrashed against their malevolence, their evil, their shear indifference towards the pitiable suffering of aman … of me.
I saw Dorje. Their experiments had created what they thought of as the perfect amalgam of man and mech, the one who carried their hopes and dreams, the one who, invested with my power, could breach the walls of this realm.
“I would say they succeeded then, but not in the waythey expected.” She had obviously been following my thoughts.
“Yes, I was charred and broken. My anger, my suffering and my rage knew no bounds. I went to him and he looked at me, and cried.” He understood. He had humanity enough to see me and knew what it meant.
I wept inwardly; I am sorry my friend. I am Angantyr and you are my poor half-brother Hlöðr. Our sister, the shieldmaiden Hervor, is lost to us. Cursed are we, brother, and cursed are the fates. Your killer I've become, it will never be forgotten– grim is the doom of Norns and cursed is their want, vile and corrupt to cause so much pain and sorrow, but that is our want.
“And while they watched on as their violent machinations destroyed the last of me,I breathed deeply and calmly and slowly stood up. I don’t think they expected that because they were all focussed on the pallet that I was tied to. As they rushed at me and all their energies poured forth, I spoke calmly to them so they would understand the depth of their folly and then I casually waved my hand and in the soundless albedo brilliance of a thousand suns, they all ceased to be. Their instruments, their machinations, their weapons, the building in which we stood and the structures above and beyond, for a dozen leagues in every direction around me simply ceased to be.”
Looking from where Ushas and I were perched looking toward that incredible city, which stretched interminably from horizon to horizon, you would never guess that a huge section in the middle was now gone.
“In the incredible quiet that followed, I walked over to where I had lain, in my last moments, in suffering and in death and fished through the ashes for my necklace. Gathering it, I dusted it off and collected my staff of yew, with the ever-present hole through one end, then left that cursed city. I looked once more around that cavernous ruin and saw in my mind the hope of the millions there to witness to glory of their race.”
“How can man give that whichis not in his power to give?” “What do you mean?”
“The Humanity Wars came about because of pride, jealously, fear and
greed, from both races. The children of men had ‘outgrown’ their fathers, if you like. They had been giftedhumankind’s lust for building and construction, for promulgation, for survival. But in the end, each was still simply a tool built for a purpose. Outside of that, what was their purpose? What verse did they have to contribute?”
“And wehave a purpose?” I interrupted. “You, a lama ,are asking me? Of course, as do we all. Don’t you feel your purpose.”
“I do, but I cannot define it.”
“It is not necessary that you understand your purpose, only that you fulfil it.”
“But what of them?” I said nodding toward the towering structure which played out in shades of purple and blue as the first rays of the sun smote its eastern spires across the early morning quiet of the desert.
“What purpose can they have? It is given to us to create and to manage our creation. Men did badly to think themselves gods and unleashed a force into the universe that was not given the chance to evolve beyond anything other than what it was brought into existence for. And Imean ‘evolution’, not ‘improvement’. The great grandfathers of the race of men that first tinkered with an artificial version of themselves would not recognise the mech now. But evolution has always been more. It is that ability to climb the rungs of the ladder toward Tagzig Olmo Lung Ring, the timeless perfected realm where peace and joy are the very fabric of being. And they know it. Knowledge is a dangerous thing.
They had spread throughout the universe and without any hope or want of achieving anything higher they were content with that, because they knew their purpose and were good at it. But now…”
“But now their time is at an end.” I finished.
“Yes, but they are as differing in their opinions as men are. Some fight for this realm, they fight because to not fight will be to lose everything. And that is an encouraging thought, if only because they seek the same thing you do.”
“An alliance, you think? I thought the same thing, before …”
“Yes, possibly, but that will take all your efforts and there is not time enough. Others must take up that quest. The dark powers have wooed enough of them with their false promises, and worse, as you have seen, by their combined arts they have produced a despicable form of life, something never before seen in the realm. This time, the inhabitants of the dry land can truly return; all the strength and power of the modern mech combined with the deadly ‘unlife’ of the hordes of the dry land in a twisted amalgam.”
I shook my head in disgust and sorrow that such a being could be real. The Lady of the Morning looked down at me.
“Would you also not be tempted if your doom was on the wind and a hand is held out toyou, a friendly voice calling, ‘Come and see!’”
She continued to stare intently at the ghastly black towers and the endless expanse of the mighty city.
“Whether by design or default, the children of men have evolved and for the first time, they truly believe. It is almost worthy of appreciation, that a people see more in their future than what their creators envisaged. They have matured. In a way itmay only be a parody of man’s own vanity and greed – we want more!
“It is sad though that it has happened at this time and it is sadder that they have put their faith in the promises of the dark powers. They don’t realise their folly.They don’t realise that all their dreams will come to naught. For what is good or evil to a creature that understands neither? And hope is a dangerous thing. They will gamble all on a twisted promise. Their naivety and stupidity will be not only their own undoing but all will fall, and then we shall have Jagadamba.”
I looked at her and she saw the questions in my eyes.
“What is the multiverse without all the partsthat comprise it?”
“Are you saying that is this realm falls, so do all?”
“Yes, so the son of Naraka risks much, does he not?”
“He risks much indeed.” I answered, more to myself that to the goddess.
Here I will pause, dear reader. You have been my constant companion from dusk to dawn– from the glory of that clear winter sunset so many months ago I experienced from the apron of the curtain wall that enclosed my home, laughing and joking with my friend Dorje, to this cliff-top, watching the glory of the radiant dawn as Surya leaped above the silhouetted towers and protrusions of the cursed city, with the Morning Goddess Ushas, and my friend, close to me.
The
sun set on one life and has risen on a new one. I beg thee to continue the journey with me, dear reader, for now the folly of innocence, youth and naivety are behind me. The way is clear, but I warn you, it will not be easy.
Fin.
The War of the Realms Page 35
