by Project Itoh
That might have been what he had always desired—to be the son of the warrior whom he respected more than anyone else.
As Big Boss told Ocelot’s tale, something about him seemed lonely.
The two men were united by the depth of their losses; they were comrades in arms. They had helped give form to Zero’s twisted delusions and paranoid worldview, and they would gladly pay whatever price to undo their misdeed. And Big Boss and Ocelot paid dearly.
Now Big Boss reached the source of his sins.
“It all started with him … Zero.”
Snake looked in the direction of Big Boss’s gaze. A small distance from the rows of gravestones, an old man was sitting in a wheelchair. The stars-of-Bethlehem danced in the breeze like snowflakes, and beyond them he looked sad and lonesome; desolate.
As Snake followed Big Boss to the man in the wheelchair, all he sensed was emptiness. The old man’s face was covered with so many liver spots as to have been painted with them, and his wrinkles were ragged and deep enough to be called trenches. Whatever his face had been was buried far beneath. What remained of his eyes were hidden beneath encroaching eyelids; he couldn’t see anything now. An oxygen mask strapped to his face forced air into his body.
Snake felt deep sadness upon seeing that a human being could age that much. Nothing was more precious than life, but nothing was more ugly than living too long.
Big Boss gently rested his hand on the man’s shoulder. The old man’s profile had long since ceased to resemble anything human. I doubt he wanted this for himself, to live this long. Zero wasn’t the type to cling to life. But he had felt too much responsibility, and its flip side, suspicion, to die at peace.
Unable to trust the future to later generations, Zero was a lonesome man who carried everything by himself. Unable to believe in anyone else, he built a world of complete control, and to maintain that world, he kept living. Such was the only choice left to this visionary. His fate now, as a wrinkled ball of flesh taking feeble breaths from the oxygen tank on his wheelchair, was torture, cruel and meaningless.
Big Boss tenderly looked into the face of the man who had once been his commander and said, “Zero grew old, and by the end, his Patriots were being run by a network without shape or form.”
“What do you mean without shape or form?” Snake asked.
“The proxies were only one small part of the vast cycle that Zero created. The corporations, for-profits, and research institutions that comprise the military-industrial complex were part of it too. They operated on budgets automatically allotted to them by the proxies—accounts maintained by the Patriots. The network covered everything from weapons R&D and investment to production and marketing. It encompassed the people, the companies—even the laws that protect them. Politics and economics became nothing more than iterations of the same oppressively uniform system. I don’t think anyone realized that it was all a setup—a mere set of norms. The Patriots were those norms—a neural network reduced to its simplest form.”
The Patriots had no room for reform or individual will. A type of cold universality formed the arteries of the Patriots’ information bloodstream; a pattern from the flow of information brought visible by the political and economic networks that had gained complexity through advances in transportation, distribution, and communication. On the outside, the pattern seemed too complex to predict, but in reality its behavior was deterministic and followed a simple equation.
But a new pattern emerged. The stream of information suddenly diverged and took an entirely new course. The Patriots’ network was to undergo a radical change; to go from their quiet existence to that of a primitive life-form, endlessly dividing and combining, and reproducing and propagating without limit.
A life brought on by Zero’s delusions of a unified state.
A life called war.
The Patriots, now driven by Zero’s obsession to unify the human consciousness, were quickly overcome by the new meme of the war economy. With the help of several catalysts—including the political cause of creating a cleaner, safer battlefield, and the move toward military privatization to reduce administrative costs—the war economy spread worldwide.
By then, the System was no longer being steered by Zero’s will—or anyone else’s.
Theirs was a world without ideologies, principles, or ideals—or even the loyalty The Boss had so treasured—and decided by the movement of intangible capital. The norms, intended by Zero to be only proxies, began to reproduce and take on a life of their own—the life of the war economy.
SOP, Gekko, ID guns, and more—these technologies appeared on the surface to have been developed by separate companies. But all had been directed into the world by the Patriots AIs, diverting funds from the Philosophers’ Legacy to research groups and the equity investors backing them.
“But,” Big Boss said, “with the American system in a state of collapse, the Patriots’ society has reverted to a blank slate.”
Big Boss gazed across the cemetery. The unvisited burial ground was the husk of the old, fallen world. Those interred within were soldiers who died in the old wars. Some had fought as agents of the Patriots, and some had fought against them.
“This man was the source of everything,” Big Boss said.
He removed his hand from Zero’s shoulder and stared at the man who had been the center of it all. He was the center of the world, yet possessed no recorded citizenship. To hide from assassinations and terrorist plots, he had thoroughly erased all traces of himself.
Thanks to Ocelot, EVA, and Naomi’s plans, the moment we uploaded the worm cluster to Haven’s servers, and GW manifested physically in the Patriots’ network, JD revealed Zero’s location, which was information only the head AI knew. Ocelot, EVA, and Naomi had given their lives for that moment—to guide Snake and his team along the proper path.
One will. One thought.
Zero had tried to rewrite the world to bring all its peoples to his vision.
“And he doesn’t even realize it. He’s completely unaware of the fact that he led the world to the brink of ruin. He’s practically dead.”
Of course, the writer couldn’t appear in his own story.
The world Zero wrote had no place for him. His was the loneliness of a writer; the loneliness of the creator of stories. That very loneliness transformed the world—his creation—to a desolate, sad backdrop.
And so the old man stopped writing the story himself. Zero built an automated system to produce the narrative he desired. Such was his only option; he had grown weary of aging and of storytelling. I speak, therefore the world is. If he stopped narrating, all his efforts spent toward the unified world would go up in smoke.
As Snake listened to Big Boss talk, he began to feel deep pity for the tiny figure sunk into the wheelchair. Zero could not write an ending to his narrative.
Enough! Stop this here, he cried out, but the machine he’d created paid no heed. Granted new, independent life through the war economy, the storyteller had begun telling its own tale now. Zero found himself on the receiving end of the story, blasting at him, drowning out all other noise.
“Now that I’m actually face-to-face with him again,” Big Boss said, “the hatred is gone. All I feel is a deep sense of longing … and pity.”
Before Snake was a lone man beaten by his own creation. Even the mighty Patriots began with a single man. One desire, one dream, grew huge and bloated, absorbing technology, manipulating the economy, until, before he could realize it, his creation had become a beast.
He made the System, but in the end he became just another of its victims. Big Boss gazed at him with eyes filled with tenderness and lacking any shadows of enmity or ire.
“Did Zero really hate me? Or … did he fear me? It’s too late to ask him now.”
Para-Medic, Sigint, EVA, and Ocelot, the original members of the Patriots, had all passed on. Only Zero, the man who started it all, remained.
Everything had its beginning. But the world didn’t
begin with “one,” but long before, in chaos. From zero. The moment zero became one was the moment the world sprang to life. One became two, two became ten, and ten became one hundred.
Taking it all back to one would solve nothing. As long as Zero remained, one would eventually grow to one hundred again.
“Our goal was to erase Zero.”
Big Boss closed his eyes and patted Zero’s head as a nurturing father would his son. Occasionally, the wheelchair’s life-support and nursing care systems made a sound as the suction-assisted equipment retrieved Zero’s waste. His cranium had contracted, and his skin had wrinkled; his face resembled that of a newborn.
Big Boss crouched in front of Zero. Staring closely into that face, he softly spoke.
“We have our sins.”
By we, he didn’t mean Snake. Without realizing it, he had grouped himself with Zero, his former commander, comrade-in-arms, and the mortal enemy who had imprisoned him—and the world.
“And for that reason, I’m taking it upon myself to send Zero back to nothing.”
Big Boss reached behind the wheelchair and switched off the life-support system. The old man’s eyelids faintly trembled. Big Boss stood, turned his back on his slowly dying friend, and started to walk back toward The Boss’s grave.
A steady electronic tone could faintly be heard—the life support’s warning alarm, turned down to its lowest volume, was Zero’s loudest death cry.
What had ended? An old man, long past seeing, hearing, and possibly thinking, had been freed from a pointless existence. Snake couldn’t understand how that signified an ending to anything. Hadn’t this old man already been destroyed by his own creation?
By the time he realized it, everything important had ended.
Snake said to Big Boss’s back, “You going back to zero as well?”
Big Boss froze in place, then looked over his shoulder at Snake and said, “You erased me two times before. Today will mark the third. The FOXDIE Zero planted in you has already begun eating away at my body.”
It couldn’t—
Then in an instant, Snake put the pieces together.
The FOXDIE colony Naomi found swimming in Snake’s blood in South America had contained two variant strains. One was what remained of the FOXDIE virus he had been injected with on Shadow Moses. Its genetic pattern to distinguish the virus’s targets had eroded and threatened to spread death indiscriminately to the people of the world. The other was a new, unknown FOXDIE that had been recently injected into Snake by somebody—possibly Drebin.
I’ve been used again, Snake realized. The orders he had been given at Shadow Moses—to eliminate the terrorists and intercept the nuclear weapon—were only a lie to deliver the virus into the captured facility.
“Truth is,” Big Boss said, “the FOXDIE in you killed EVA and Ocelot. Naomi told me everything.”
At the end, Big Boss’s voice cracked and grew weak and hoarse. Just as Snake noticed something was wrong, Big Boss fell to his knees amid the sea of white flowers and clutched at his chest with his right hand.
Snake ran to him and asked, “What’s wrong?”
Big Boss’s face had turned pale, his aura of vigor vanished like an illusion. Sweat beaded on his forehead. Big Boss gritted his teeth through the pain in his chest.
Snake knew what was happening.
This man had been his commander and his sworn enemy. He was Snake’s original, his father and brother. And now he was dying before Snake’s eyes.
“They did it again. They used you to kill me. The Patriots … no, their proxies. To bury us, they did it again. In the end, they’re a program, only capable of repeating the same pattern over and over again.”
Through the pain, Big Boss forced out a wry laugh. Snake had kneeled beside him, and he put his hand on his son’s shoulder and summoned the strength to stand again.
“Do me a favor, will you? Take me over to her. To The Boss.”
Snake was nonplussed, unable to deal with the indescribable emotion that welled up within him, as the man he’d only known as an enemy asked for his aid. For a moment he remained unable to move, peering into Big Boss’s eyes.
Yes, he was Snake’s enemy, but he was also Snake’s father.
Snake didn’t know his father. He had been raised by many guardians, but none he ever considered his real parents. He was never abused or treated dispassionately. Rather, his surrogate parents had handled him with the utmost care. The young child was astutely aware that all of the love, and all of the severity, that as his parents they afforded him, was entirely calculated.
Now that I consider it, his upbringing followed the Patriots’ playbook completely, just as Raiden had experienced. Through a manufactured narrative and environment, Snake had been put into the role of the child.
Big Boss, who had gone off the Patriots’ script, appeared before Snake as an enemy—a wall to be overcome, a constant presence binding him. Who could fill that role but a father? And wouldn’t a father have the responsibility to fill it? Unknowingly, Snake and Big Boss had begun building their relationship as father and son.
Snake helped Big Boss walk across the carpet of stars-of-Bethlehem. Feeling the weight of his father’s body on his shoulder, Snake laughed at the strangeness of their situation—a father and son bound as enemies. Snake had grown up only being given the fictional affection arranged for him by the Patriots, yet this was the man he faced as an adversary, as the sole person allowed to be the target of his hostility.
“There’s one more thing Naomi wanted me to tell you,” Big Boss said, his voice faint from pain. “About the old FOXDIE in your body … the one that mutated. The new FOXDIE inside you, that killed EVA and Ocelot, continues to multiply. At the same time it is preventing the old mutated FOXDIE from reproducing. The new FOXDIE is uprooting the old. Naomi confirmed it in her follow-up. The mutants are receding. Before long, they’ll be gone entirely.”
For a moment, Snake froze in place, astonished. Only minutes ago, he had been trying to end his own life, believing that he would otherwise become history’s most terrible bioweapon and spread death across the earth.
“Does that mean,” Snake asked, “the mutant strain won’t cause an epidemic?”
“The mutant strain will only live as long as you do. But even then, the process will just repeat itself. One day, the new FOXDIE will start to mutate and become a new threat. That is … if you manage to live that long.”
Suddenly the strength left Big Boss’s legs. His sudden weight caught Snake by surprise, who let go. Big Boss fell to his hands and knees and let out a feeble groan. His right hand clawed at his chest as if to scrape out his heart.
The virus had recognized Big Boss and went to work on the cells that kept his heart going. Apoptosis. The swarm of molecular machines went from cell to cell, spreading their falsehoods: It’s time for you to die now. Your work is over.
Feeling as if he were watching his own death, Snake said, “Am I going to die?”
This is my future. Snake projected himself onto his original. Before his eyes, a man with his body and his face was dying. Snake felt as if he were having a near-death experience. Many who had been to death’s door reported the sensation of floating above themselves, watching their body die.
This man was Snake’s original, and a large and inescapable part of his life.
This man’s death was Snake’s death.
Possibly sensing Snake’s fear, Big Boss lifted his head and said, “Everyone dies. You can’t stop it. You can’t run away from it. This is your notice.”
Big Boss seemed to be telling him, That’s right, this is your death, whether it will come like this or not. There’s nothing bad about seeing someone die who looks like you.
To attend the death of a loved one is to have a practice run at your own. Mental images avoided through normal life are shown to you inescapably. And you’re left to face the question:
How will you use the life you have left?
As if to drive home to Sn
ake the significance of his own death, Big Boss put it in words.
“Don’t waste the time you have left fighting.”
Having somehow fought back the pain, Big Boss again borrowed Snake’s shoulder and began to walk. He felt heavier now, weaker than before.
“I’ve never thought of you as a son.”
Snake grinned, obviously thinking, Yeah, and I’ve never thought of you as a father. Until a short while ago, Snake had only regarded the man as the original source of his genes and as a longtime foe.
“But I’ve always respected you as a soldier … and as a man. If you’d been in my place back then, maybe you wouldn’t have made the same mistakes I did.”
And Big Boss accepted Snake—as the man who had surpassed him. As the man whom he, along with The Boss and Zero, had created, and who had overturned the world he had wrongly brought about. Though he might never have considered Snake his son, he respected Snake as a person. What could that be if not a father’s praise for his son?
The man who had set everything right—all his sins, all his unfinished duties—was a man of his own blood.
“On the day I killed The Boss with my own hands, my own life ended.”
Walking ever more slowly, the two men at last reached The Boss’s grave. Big Boss removed himself from Snake’s shoulder and slumped weakly to his knees. The words on the tombstone, IN MEMORY OF A PATRIOT WHO SAVED THE WORLD, struck deep into his regret.
“Boss … you were right,” Big Boss said, as if at confession, then spread out his elbows and gave a military salute. “It’s not about changing the world. It’s about doing our best to leave the world the way it is. It’s about respecting the will of others … and believing in your own. Isn’t that what you fought for?”
Big Boss’s heart was filled with regret, yet to have reached this place filled him with the greatest joy. This was the joy The Boss had understood; this was the joy she believed valuable enough to give her life for. Big Boss had taken a long road to get here, but finally, in the cemetery where he faced the end of his own life, he had been able to see.
