“Nothing is so sobering
as a cold dose of the facts.”
- Wisdom of the Vigils
It felt sterile, Ryan's room. It was clean, well lit, comfortable surely, but sterile.
There was a hum. Not the hum of humanity or busy streets, rather the audible and palpable hum of electric lighting mixed with air conditioning.
The temperature was reasonable, if not a little chilly, but it did mean that heavier clothing was a pleasure to wear. Art pieces adorned the walls, doing their best to hide the drab grays and whites.
He stared at a mirror on the desk, not for vanity, nor was he making himself presentable. Ryan was just looking. He had seen that face so many times before, questioned it, talked to it, and looked deep into its eyes.
He saw the face of the savior of humanity. Ryan the Savior.
It was proud, noble. It shone with accomplishment. He had defied the Vigils, cut the umbilical cord so to speak, defeated his oppressive ring masters.
The face had shown its power in facing up to what needed to be done. It had remained poised as the hands it commanded destroyed the maglev system.
Nobody could have questioned that it was determined. Nobody could have doubted the loyalty to humanity that day. He had made a hard decision and stuck by it, even though it went against his most ingrained sense of morality.
That face staring back brought in a team of trained operatives hundreds of kilometers, armed and deadly, to extract it, and the body to which it belonged, because it was important.
Special breeds of people are born among the hordes, diamonds in the coal, wheat among the chaff. He was one of them, he was special. He would accomplish great things.
A sickening feeling tickled his stomach. Without a second thought, he banished it, and ruminated back on the day.
Little people. Little ants. They scurried around, they were busy, they were self-absorbed, but they were insignificant. But he was significant. Not that he cared for them, but he could lead them into the future. That was his destiny.
The feeling crept back. It was annoyed at being ignored, and now, with the silence of the room, the chill in the air, it grew in strength.
Ryan the Savior? More like Ryan the Conqueror? He was stunned by the thought that came blurting out to the fore.
Rulers are hard to miss. In general, they are adorned in the finest clothing, command armies, rule on high. Forever they had to guard themselves against selfish enemies.
The people they ruled over constantly criticized them. It was a thankless task. No, that is not what he sought.
Those little ants, they would not thank him for his efforts. He was just another face in the crowd.
He had caused such chaos, and yet, and yet he was Ryan the Unknown, Ryan the Faceless. No history book would detail his biography. The Vigils would have struck him from their records, abandoning his history with them.
Master Theodore was a fool to think he would be suitable for their ways. He was not a Vigil.
While at first he enjoyed observing and recording, being unseen in the crowd, he quickly grew frustrated at their insistence on planning. So many wasted opportunities. All the resources and power in the world, and for what? To be wasted on mooncalves.
He had never asked to join them. It was thrust upon him. What choice could he have made, given the options of joining the Vigils, or remaining in the wallows of the wastes?
Master Theodore had saved his life, it was true, Ryan could not deny that, but he had squandered his years. As he practiced his mantras and learned his place in the Brotherhood, that for the rest of his life he would remain invisible to the world, his anger grew.
Then Marcus, Brother Marcus back then, had spoken to him. Ryan recalled his words as he gazed at the mirror.
He spoke of a better way, a different way. He spoke of making decisions as they became necessary, rather than in hindsight.
Great ideas were born of struggles, history proved it. Chaos, he said, was natural, inevitable, but controlled chaos, that was something only a human could create.
Shocked, Ryan had come away from Brother Marcus with such mixed feelings. Everything he had said made sense, but, at the same time, it was at odds with the concept of moderation, of preservation of life, of eliminating chaos.
In short, it was against everything that had been rammed down his throat since he was nine.
Up until that point, he did not think that he had a choice. He was an Acolyte, and would remain so until he became accepted as a Brother, or had his memory erased, or died.
But Marcus had shown him a new choice, a path to be something more than a faceless relic cast in the walls of the cellars of time.
The nagging sensation in his stomach became pronounced. It became uncomfortable to sit, so he stood and walked to the wall.
He pretended to admire the reproduction of the Monet there, attempting to lose himself in the colors. It did not work.
His mind did everything to ignore it. He thought about Father Abraham, and whether he had plans for him. Of course he did, otherwise he would not be here.
Conclusion reached, his mind grappled for something, anything else. He thought about Kahira, and whether she was attractive. She was, very, but he could not think of her as a sexual object now.
Content that it was winning the battle, the sensation persisted. Why would he even think about Kahira that way? She was too old for him, and she would never consider him as attractive, surely.
And now he was thinking like a teenager, a mere boy letting his hormones and fantastic thoughts run rampant. He was losing control over his mind.
Frantically, Ryan took a book from the shelf and flipped to the first page.
The words refused to be read. They danced about under his eyes. He swore and closed it. Perhaps the television. Perhaps the internet. He could lose his mind for just an hour or so. Perhaps he could drink.
But no, for then he would be like the very people he despised.
Those slovenly masses who wiled their hours away in front of screens, lost in a man-made fantasy, eager to reach the end of their existence before accomplishing anything.
How scared they were of living! How they ducked away and absorbed themselves by ignoring the beast that was eating them alive. Why did he care about them? Why did his mind continue to think of the masses? Those pathetic ants!
The nagging sensation stopped abruptly. It had led him, kicking and screaming, to this point, and so sat back and watched. Ryan collapsed back into his chair and looked again at the mirror.
He shrank back as he noticed the eyes staring at him.
They were not of Ryan the Savior, nor Ryan the Conqueror.
These were the eyes of Ryan the Murderer.
Blood was on his hands. He had justified it over and over in his mind. The struggle had to recommence, people needed to suffer to feel life. How many lives he had saved by killing... murdering.
No! He was not a murderer!
But he had done it. He had killed indiscriminately. He had done so with a heavy heart, with regret for the lives that were so abruptly terminated, with sorrow for the families of those who would be left to grieve. He had performed the deed without malice. That had to count for something.
They were just people. There were more, so many more of them. All of them, self-absorbed wretches, lost in their own lives. So why did he care about them? The question rattled back and forth as he pushed it away. Each time it came back to the fore. Why did he care?
Ryan had detached himself from society a long time ago. To grow, to become more than human, he needed to let go of the basic desire to love and to be loved.
It had been a conscious decision of which he reminded himself every day, determined not to let his the inner animal take control.
But it had never gone away. Buried, ignored, scorned perhaps, but it had never left him. And now it was back, with a friend called Conscience.
He lowered his head into his hands and let tears gush from his eyes. Tears of sorrow. Tears of regret. The first tears he had spilled for nearly ten years.
He was human, after all. That was why he cared.
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