Neodammerung

Written by Anakin McFly

I. From darkness lead me to light

It would be easy to slip away in tears beneath the fallen veil of darkness that shrouds his vision, escaping into the quiet relief of the welcoming void to wait for death. The pierced dead will not cry out. And those who fight so valiantly for freedom have already accustomed themselves to the taste of defeat. Prophecies and desperate hope hold little sway in the immediacy of battle; magic has no place amongst blood and gore and the repeated, futile pitting of human passion and anger against unfeeling metal strangers. Faith had long died beneath sharp blades and lasers. They would not fault him for giving up. He was only human.

But yet the gold lines of light that crisscross his mind intrude on his reality, supplanting themselves over the dull grey metal that his ravaged eyes can no longer see. They form the path towards his destiny, beckoning in their mechanical dream glow towards the last chapter of his life, the final step before he can succumb to rest. The lines are alive in their own way, pulsing with a spirited energy that hints at an alternative existence lived in wires and electricity rather than flesh and blood, a sleeker life that imperfect humanity will never be able to fully grasp.

And so he gets up, and he walks on light, almost insensible to the sturdy surfaces that meet his feet with each step. This could be a dream. Reality is not prone to gentle luminous guidance that suffuses his mind with its golden glow and growing sense of calm reassurance that this is what needs to be done, that this is where he was always meant to walk, eventually, as stated in a future written out long ago by mysterious invisible powers far out of reach of his understanding. But then, reality is not something with which he is closely acquainted, and in the tumultuous months since his entry into it the lines between waking and dreaming have never become as clear as he would have hoped.

Once, reality had meant emerging into the wetness of rebirth and gaping at the world that until then had been invisible even as it surrounded him; reality had been blandly nutritious meals bathed in cold artificial light and falling asleep on coarse bedclothes to the perpetual hum of the ship's engines. Reality had been people freed from the confines of utopia and allowed to be human again, had been tribal dances of bare feet on wet clay and love in cosy dwellings carved out of rock. Reality had been hovercraft tumbling through disused sewers and clamouring crowds begging him for salvation.

Whereas now there was quiet and nothing but the luminescence that snuck its way in past blinded eyes, and the occasional chill on a breeze that bit through his tattered clothes and was a constant reminder that he was still alive.

The lines led him to their city, and the scope and grandeur of its golden vastness burst upon him in unrelenting waves, filling his mind with the stories of life that never lived. And it was beautiful.

He took his last step.

Then he waited with patience to deliver his plea for peace.

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II. From delusion lead me to truth

The rain had cleared the city of other pedestrians. He walked alone down the empty pavement, head bowed to keep the water off his face, brisk steps tempered with a curious foreboding that this might be the last walk he took down this street.

A streetlamp's sharp reflection in a puddle cut into his vision with sudden brightness. His eyes shut on reflex; and in that instant he thought he felt the sensation of liquid flowing over his closed eyelids. It's the rain, he thought with shaky uncertainty, but his face was still dry when he reopened his eyes on the rain-soaked street.

Something in him made him stop and take a breath and raise his eyes to the cloud-shielded heavens. Raindrops peppered his face, rivulets of water streaming down his cheeks. Yet the hard hitting drops did not match the sensation of the warm fluid coursing over his shut eyes that he had felt... or thought he had felt.

There was something less real about the rain.

He took his hands out of his jacket pockets and held them before him, palms up, catching the fall, trying to get the cold and the wet to jolt him into a stronger certainty and assurance about his physical position in time and space, of his reality, of truth...

The rain got heavier.

He shook his hands free of the water and returned them to his pockets. He walked on. The bridge was just up ahead.

The truth would come in time.

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III. From death lead me to immortality

The problem is choice.

Choice ruins perfection with its tantalising possibilities of deviance, of messy, alternate pathways that lead mostly to destruction and waste. In a perfect world there cannot be choice, there cannot be free will, there cannot be humanity. They are incompatible.

The opposites clash in the sky beneath the unending depths of storm clouds, the curious audience of repeated spectators gazing on in silent observation. They remain still and expressionless even as the fight rages on; they already know the outcome... or think they do.

So it has come to this, he thinks, the shapeless buildings rising up to tower around them, the vacant streets that once bustled with activity now drab and grey and dead as the tar that paves them, the militant rows of suited bodies at attention that once had housed living souls, each of them ready to take over if his tireless foe ever falters.

Somewhere from the back of his mind pricks the fear that this is all that is left of the world he used to know, people relegated to robotic duplicates inhabiting a dark city of perpetual gloom; unbidden, memories and images surface even as he takes a punch and tumbles backwards through the air: digging hungrily into a hot bowl of really good noodles, feverishly typing away at his computer, the scent of freshly baked cookies from an oven, the ancient plea of a child: Mrs. Anderson, can Tommy come out to play?

Water breaks in a shower over them for the umpteenth time, the realisation that one could not defeat one's equal taking on an unwanted focus in his mind. This fight could last forever; an eternity of trading punches and taking falls and getting up again, of smashing through walls and windows and drawing the blood that even now still flows in his veins, of flying and landing and taunts...

Why keep fighting?

The problem is stubborness, determination, refusal to give up. The problem is choice.

A thunderclap in the sky brings him back, back, back to a dim hotel room cosy in its warmth safe from the storm, his rain-washed clothes almost dry as he sits uneasily in a dark red armchair, his tension visible in the way he sits poised to leave, his gaze intense, questioning, wordlessly demanding answers, demanding truth...

And perhaps he never really got that truth in the end. Not enough of it. There are still so many questions, and no one left to answer them.

He staggers back to his feet in the crater they have created, suddenly weary. It is not a physical weariness; he has long surpassed that. But he knows he cannot win; neither of them can. The only path to victory is defeat.

Everything that has a beginning has an end.

It was inevitable. The darkness covers him, spreading across to encapsulate his body.

Then the sacrifice, and death, and victory in death...

And then the only thing he sees, everywhere, is the light.

And it is beautiful.

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