by Dan O'Brien
The Translucent Man shifted, the prisms of his form changing to orange and then to a vibrant color that was such an amalgamation that it could not to be attributed to any single color.
“What then would you ask of me?”
The Lonely took a bold step forward, his feet finding sure footing on the glass-like exterior of the ocean beneath him.
“I would ask two things.”
The Translucent Man nodded.
“I would first ask your philosophy, the beliefs of this East, of these oceans beyond. And then I would ask you if this is the end of my journey?”
“To fulfill your request I must ask something of you,” replied the Translucent Man, the shards of his being calming to a clear crystal that reflected the swimming hues of the ocean.
“Ask anything, I am here to find a glimmer of understanding.”
“What drives you? When you look deep inside you, what is it that propels you forward to seek out answers?”
“Questions about life, the connectivity of things. A reason for being, for acting the way we do.” The Lonely stepped toward the distant horizon, feeling a cold wind brush across him “Not just for myself, but for everyone: past, present, future. Why is there war, why do those who deserve to live die and those who should feel death live on? These are the questions, the queries that drive men to faith, to seek purpose.”
“An honest answer, a noble reply. So perhaps you do not search for your individualism, but instead what it is about the group that makes searching worth the time. Some would have you believe that the group is in service to the individual, and then another set again would have you believe that it is the individual who is in bondage to the group. Which can it be?”
“Both, neither,” answered the Lonely with a disgusted shake of his head.
“Indeed, the answer is as complex as the workings of humanity, the way with which we carry out our daily lives. Peace, Purpose, Strength, Intelligence. Each of these is an important function of who we are, what comprises us. There is that which we can see, touch––and that which can only be felt. We spoke of the sun, its great power, but as well the latent strength that dwells deep within it.”
“The concept of inner and outer strength.”
The Translucent Man shifted once more; although, he had yet to appear so human, so truly life-like.
“There is a great mystery as to what dwells within a man, his darkest heart or brightest moment. We are all alone inside. We know that we are a part of greater commerce, but within we feel the solitude, the desolation of being. This is where we find our greatest epiphany, our most profound question. We think, therefore we are. We can look in a mirror and be aware that we exist. This is the ability to look upon another and understand how they feel––even if it is brief and fleeting––and communicate to them the intricacies of our lives, to understand their emotions: the essence of humanity.”
“We see ourselves in others. I can understand that.”
“Ah, but it is much more than that. We mimic each other, begin to understand and react as others do, both affirming our identities as well as making that wandering, unrestrained spirit void. That wonderment of childhood that we spoke of is replaced once we understand our place. It is not that this placement in society is not important, but society marks the beginning of questioning. For we have created parameters, guidelines to how we judge our lives. Soon, we find ourselves wondering why pieces do not fit into the puzzle that we have created. We think perhaps there is a greater plan far out of our reach that we cannot possibly understand.”
“Faith,” spoke the Lonely.
“When we are children we are introduced to many things. These things are given names, symbols, and ways for us to understand. From these distinctions, we generate a template of the world, its comings and goings. For the short period of our lives, we live within the walls of the fortress we have created and wonder about what lies outside of those boundaries.”
“So, the pursuit of understanding is a worthless endeavor?” queried the Lonely.
“Hardly, the awakening of the wonder we felt when we were children is an explanation of the unexplainable. We have to use reason to understand the way things exist as they do. We explain that the air exists because of something else that we created and gave term to. The declaration of the existence of gods is to satisfy a desire to have purpose in our lives. Are either wrong?”
The Lonely looked upon the Translucent Man in wonderment, for had the being been human it would have seemed manic, in a frenzy of speech.
“Leaps of faith are not the only thing for which we look, but we also hope to discover whether the names that have been given to concepts truly mean what we believe them to be.”
“How then do we find peace or purpose?” questioned the Lonely.
“What is peace? Is it the absence of war perhaps or a cessation of opposing forces in your life? That is outer peace, the calm of forces colliding against the boundaries of your life, but inner peace could be something else altogether. A quiet moment of reflection, an understanding that those forces causing you the greatest horror are inconsequential in comparison to the greater forces that will affect you over time. It has been said the greatest warrior has peace in his heart, a calmness of mind and spirit guiding his hand thoughtfully into battle.”
“Though he has war in his hands, he has peace in his heart,” iterated the Lonely.
“Indeed. You would be wise to fear the falseness of men. A great man with a false heart will present truth in great quantities to seem credible and alleviate his guilt. But, a meager man with truth in his being will offer no pretenses for he walks a path without illusion.”
“How could a false man ever present truth when his very core is deceit? Is not the simple of act of falseness such that his words would never be credible?”
“Indeed, but honesty and truth are very rarely the same thing. A person may honestly tell you something that is the furthest thing from truth. Belief in something, devout conviction in many things, can make a person truly believe that what they speak is truth. To them honesty and their truth would yet be the same, but it would still be a lie.”
The Lonely nodded slowly.
“And a false man will use parcels of truth as a shield for lies. State a truth, even a minute one, and from that you will begin to question the sound reasoning of others––look in the face of truth and see only the obtuse perversion that has been created. A wise man burdened with truth will not seek to tell you the truth, for he knows it to be. An utterance of it may become polluted and invalidated by the flippant tongue of a zealous man.”
“The nature of belief…” began the Lonely.
“Is such that it requires belief in the unknown, which we all inevitably pay homage. We come into this world and leave it, the entire breadth of our lives we know not why we came or the reason we leave. We know that we were born and will someday die. What comes in between this world and the next is this life. I think that sometimes we war because we have created differences, seen in each other, or perhaps ourselves, a divide that we feel separates us from one another.”
“Religion.”
“Not always. It is simple to leap upon ideologies, but sometimes these great divides are little more than geographic or a matter of histories. We all are born. We all will die. And some of us will live greater lives and some lesser lives, but we all must suffer this life. Will there be a great peace? I fear that humanity will not outlive its hatred. A great will drives those who hate for misunderstandings and ideology. Perhaps why you have come here is to see the irrationality of separating those who do not believe as you do, or to so blindly follow something that you can look upon another and not see that we are all together in the same war that wages in each of us. All born to one place, all born of the same flesh and bone. Each of us the same animal, same being, that has been given different voices.”
“How are we to believe in something if there is a possibility that you are not right?”
“Th
e two darkness lay claim to us all. In this life, we fight for the possibility that there is an after. When we look upon each other we do not see brothers and sisters, husbands and wives. We see a different history, a different culture. Instead of inclusion, we fight for exclusion. Blood will not be repaid with more blood, vengeances never quelled until there is neither left of either side upon salted earth. You, the Lonely, wish to know why there is war. War exists because people will find a reason to fight as they value their belief to the detriment of those who differ.”
“This journey has placed me before four ideals, four totems of such varying belief of opinion and thought; yet, there is a unity among you. They all wish to be understood, each of you searching for a glimmer of truth that knowingly fits with another. There is great power in cold thought, richness in passion, and boldness of thought. Sound reasoning and understanding can take you great distances. And peace, a unity among ideals, is such a wondrous dream that I dare not conceive of it for it would burst before my very eyes,” spoke the Lonely deftly.
“We have spoken of strength and peace, of great things and those ideals that we lost in youth. You asked me for two things. I have given you only one.”
“No, you spoke of the two darkness: the before and after.”
“That was not the question you asked. This path that you walk is such that you question everything––believe nothing. Not unlike a human life, no? You have formed your opinions of what comes next in that human life because you know that this here is not the metropolis of a once-world or the barbaric state of another. This realm is what it is.”
The Lonely said nothing, lacing his hands together like a brilliant weave.
“You asked if this was it: four realms, the end of a journey.”
The Lonely nodded.
“That was indeed the meaning of what I asked. Is this?”
The façade of the Translucent Man faded.
The shimmering prisms disappeared like wisps of colorful smoke. The ocean surged, but the glassy exterior did not give way.
Clouds broke.
Sunlight poured upon the Lonely.
He shielded his eyes, the brightness felt comfortable upon his bronzed skin. Rays of golden light stretched far out into the horizon. The Lonely pulled his hands away from his eyes slowly. Where there had been a shimmering being, now stood only a small boy.
Bright brown eyes stared at the Lonely.
Ebony skin shone brightly.
A cream-colored tunic, cut off at the shoulders, hung over his torso. Similarly colored trousers wrapped his legs. He wore roped sandals.
“What does your heart say?” spoke the boy, his voice childish, as it should be.
“No pretenses, the sign of a man who walks with truth,” whispered the Lonely and then realizing that he was staring at the child, he searched his feelings.
The ocean was calm as the Lonely looked upon it.
The blue was so radiant and clear that you could see far into the depths; schools of fish migrated in perfect form.
The wind was cool on his skin.
He could smell the ocean––the freedom of it.
“We all wish for something more,” spoke the Lonely as he closed his eyes and let the sun drench his face.
“Then more shall you have.” The boy who might have once been called the Translucent Man looked upon the Lonely. “You have not yet met the Keeper. Your journey will not be complete until you reach the Keeper. The journey of the Lonely will end when you reach that being.”
The Lonely heard the words of the boy, or perhaps it was the Translucent Man. Sound had begun to run together, the background noise stronger than the voice that spoke to him.
The sun grew hotter upon his face.
He knew what would come next.
His journey: it would continue forward; again, he would be transported. He relished in the sun, felt its warm touch. And even when the grip came, the pressing energy of his departure, he found hope and solace in the sun.
The Crossroads No Longer
The Crossroads had not lied.
As the Lonely looked about what had once been a break in the road, he was struck by the openness of the crossroads. Looking first right and then left, he saw only the uncompromising terrain that was unmarked by mortal contact.
Had he truly expected to see the Crossroads there?
Surely he had not, for the Crossroads no longer possessed a charge. He felt neither the sadness of loneliness nor the exhilaration of completeness, for both were incidentally an illusion and meaningless to him.
The Translucent Man––rather the child who stood in its place––had said there was farther yet to go.
He walked forward, taking his steps deliberately and purposefully. For one night, he walked until the uneven terrain gave way to an expansive desert, the sweltering heat overhead frigid instead of sweltering.
He shivered when he should have been sweating.
For another day and night, he walked until the desert flowed into mountains.
Winds pounded against him.
Snows whipped about his unguarded figure; yet, he tore his shirt from his back. He boiled from within, sweating when he should have sought cover and comfort. High into the mountains he climbed, until he reached its wintry peak and upon this pinnacle he found a most peculiar sight: a set of wooden stairs.
It was situated in such a way that he would have to stoop in order to descend them. As the wind and snow whirled around him, he looked at the door and pondered what was behind it.
Deciding that there was no other way, he gripped the frozen handle tightly, breaking loose icicles that had formed on it, and forged ahead into the darkness within.
The Room under the Stairs
Once again, the Lonely had stepped through a portal into the unknown. The door underneath the stairs had led him to an unlikely and unusual place.
The ground beneath his feet was hard uneven clay.
The air was thick.
Fog hung just above him.
“Hello,” he called weakly, wiping at the billowy layer of clouds.
The dark clay beneath began to crumble. At first, his feet sunk in; but with each step he took, his body sank deeper until he felt the cold touch of water and the slimy, viscous nature of the mud around his feet.
“What is happening?” he whispered as he tried to thrust one way and then the other, but to no avail.
The voice that answered him possessed neither wisdom nor confidence. “Nothingness, the end,” spoke the Foolish Man.
The Lonely kicked hard now, feeling the sluggish mud pull him deeper into the darkened abyss from which he could not find a reprieve.
“Is there no escape? Where are you standing?”
Even if had he been capable of seeing farther into the darkness, he would not yet have been able to see the Foolish Man.
“There is only the Shore and the Great Darkness of the Beyond.”
The Lonely swam hard now as the mud gave way to shoals against which he could kick his feet and keep his head above water.
The water in which he was submerged was cold.
Winds struck his face like an icy slap.
One hand at a time, he pulled himself onto the aptly named Shore. The grittiness of the clumpy sand brought a grimace to his face. Still, the air seemed dark and foggy, but he could make out shapes in the distance.
“Why did you not help me?” he called as he brushed mud off of himself as best he could.
“Can you truly help anyone in this life?” answered the Foolish Man.
The Lonely glared at the man, but his angry look dissipated upon further inspection. Tall and lanky with a mop of thinning black hair, the man––if he could be called such––was a pale specter of a being.
“What is this place?” queried the Lonely, taking his eyes from the man and looking at the uninteresting surroundings.
“This is the Room under the Stairs. We hide here from them,” the man answered.
“What are you called
?” asked the Lonely.
The shore was caked as if it had been rained upon; heavy tracks led far off into the distance.
“I am called the Foolish Man, speaker of the masses,” he answered. And then spreading his hand wide behind him, he continued. “We live here in fear of the voices, the beings of energy.”
“The totems?” queried the Lonely.
