Mistification (Angry Robot)

by Kaaron Warren

  "It was a long way out before the moon grew ugly," said the captain. "We were headed towards it and for a moment our ship seemed to block the moon. We felt like we were causing a lunar eclipse."

  The reporters muttered about minds being lost, the waste of it. Any of them would give their sanity to have ventured moonwards.

  "The first noted lunar eclipse was in 721 BC," said the third member of the crew. It was said he had kept the others entertained with ribald stories. Marvo wondered if perhaps he would tell one now, but did not ask.

  "At this time, Shalmaneser V of Assyria took Hoshea, the king of Israel, prisoner, and besieged Sumaria. Once it fell, twenty-seven thousand Israelis were exiled to Medea and Mesopotamia. As they marched, the sky went dark, and the twenty-seven thousand waited in terror. They believed their God had deserted them; he didn't even love them enough to light their way in exile. This is how we felt on returning to earth. Like we were being plunged into darkness."

  There was silence in the lecture hall. The three astronauts nodded like their heads sat on springs. Their audience was shocked. Some of the journalists had heard him to say, "They were exiled to Media," and were already framing the words which would destroy his career, for making such statements about their industry.

  "Was the eclipse soon over?" said Marvo, and that was the last question of the night.

  Marvo went backstage where his youth got him through the door. Marvo could ask all he liked of the astronauts; he was thirteen, young enough to be an obsessed fan. He learnt very well; he understood. They seemed happy to talk to Marvo. He was truly interested, and the third in command found himself talking of things they had agreed to keep silent about.

  "What was it like to come back to the earth?" Marvo said. "Did you feel as if you didn't belong any more?"

  "When we were launched into society? We all found it strange. Don't tell anyone this. We'd been away, were used to our own company but it was more than that. The faces were ugly, greedy, selfish. The land burnt and poisonous, the water lifeless. It was like we had landed on a failed world."

  Marvo understood how the familiar world could look so strange. What he saw on TV and what he saw in the real world were the same but so different. To him, the world was not flat and lifeless at all but so full of colour and depth it sometimes made him dizzy.

  "How old are you, kid?" the astronaut asked him. They drank chocolate milk together.

  "I turned thirteen last week," Marvo said. He didn't add, "I think." He had taken out the note his grandmother had given him many times in the last month. He was not ready to read it. Not ready to grow up.

  "It's a big year for you. A lot of us figure out our destiny that year, you know."

  "I will learn my destiny," Marvo said. "I have it written down in a note."

  The astronaut didn't laugh. He took Marvo by the shoulders. "You read that note and you come and ask me anything, anything at all."

  Marvo went to the motel room he was staying in and sat down with the note his grandmother had given him. He had been putting off the moment because he knew that after reading it everything would be different.

  He opened it up and finally read of his destiny.

  It gave him strength; gave him meaning and a need for more, for greater understanding.

  I will call you son, though you may be daughter. I will never see your face or know your gender. Will you take my nose, my taste for spicy food, my lust for strength? All I know you have is what I give you now: my knowledge.

  And this I received from my parent; many thousands of years these words have passed through to reach you; added to, taken from, changed. Up-dated. We are not afraid of change; unlike religion we embrace it, use it, make it happen. This is why we will never die.

  There will always be someone who wants us to die.

  Be careful, be silent, subtle; beware. Those in power hate our strength and will kill us for it; they have done so before. True cynics, true disbelievers, will not have children, because they can see the truth and know that to bring a child into this world is cruel and abusive.

  We control the mist, we let it fall or we lift it as need be.

  This is our tradition. Passed through life and death, dying without choice for the cause.

  This is your inheritance.

  You may be lucky; born into a time when there is a resurgence of belief in our art; when the ugliness of the world is so great that the magicians, the mist people, the veil droppers, the beautifiers, are in demand. You may need to work with the great leaders or against them. Only you will know this. You must work the mist with a smile. You must not weaken, you must not fail. I sorrow for your great burden; only death will release you from it. I wish you love and health and a long life. You will know all with great sacrifice. I bid you farewell.

  Marvo read these words and hoped one day they would make sense to him.

  He was a part of the mist. The note, written in his grandmother's hand and to be re-written by him once it became battered, as it had been re-written for many hundreds of years, perhaps thousands, this note instructed without explaining; it told him his goal but did not tell him how to achieve it.

  Marvo, even at thirteen, understood that the magicians were the protectors of humanity. Without the mist, the fantasy, the world might end. No one would want to live or bring children into the world. Humanity would die out. The message from his ancestors told him this, and even then he knew it to be true.

  He visited the astronauts again to see how far away the mist had lasted.

  He watched them, waiting for a lesson from these men who had been beyond the mist. Their description of the world when they returned showed him they had been away from the mist, out of its reach. He wondered if they would be protected by it again; he watched as it fell around their shoulders. Another week or so and the magician's spell had done its work. At the celebratory dinners, they smiled and accepted and loved the faces staring lovingly up at them. The mist had once more descended.

  Two years passed in Marvo's life. He spoke to people and became frustrated at their answers. He wanted understanding of his mission, his birth, the men in green. He couldn't find it.

  He practised his magic and gathered more tricks. He studied leaders political and religious, following his instincts.

  Many tried to sell him religion. Marvo had learnt about religion from his grandmother. She had taught him awareness, magic and superstition. All of this helped him understand religion. Marvo began to speak to these people, curious to hear their explanations. He wanted to see what sort of houses they had. Would they remind him of the room? Some did. These were large, high-ceilinged rooms, and when they were empty Marvo felt good. Then the people would come in, press close to him and stare at the front.

  He began to notice flaws in the people he was with, similarities in their forms of belief. Later, he would identify these similarities as good magic. Using magical techniques for religious enlightenment. People called it theurgy and believed in it as a religion in its own right. Marvo saw it as illusion and it was the beginning of his realisation that religion would not explain his world to him. He wondered about the number of religions whose leader sits in a throne and is bathed in miraculous, magical shafts of sunlight. The followers gasp and sigh and sign up for another year; they never consider the possibility that maybe the throne had been placed in the path of the sun, rather than the sun following the exalted one wherever they be. This was one technique he saw. All religions were theurgical to one level or another, although many denied it.

  It was the believers he met who had knowledge. He learnt more by talking to the people in the audience than by hearing the words of the leaders.

  For two years after he learned of his birthright, Marvo sat in these rooms, the sun and the space making him feel at home. He learnt many things there.

  He found a church group whose seventeen worshippers had come from around the world to be together. The church was small but beautiful, its details immaculate. Many hours of labour
had carved the marble, polished the wood, created the stained glass windows. The people in the congregation were similar in build and colour, as if so much time spent exclusively in each other's company had made siblings of them. Marvo envied their closeness, their sense of family. He had no brother, no sister. He had never fought with another child. He never knew the pleasure of pulling someone's hair and having some of it come out at the roots.

  He knew about families, though. He knew they lived in large houses and there were always a lot of them. They always faced the front so you could see their expressions. Marvo could never figure out which way was front, when he was talking.

  The members of the church welcomed Marvo but were nervous of him; they did not know his morals, or his history. They did not know why such a young boy would come to them, what he had suffered, what they would have to heal. Still, they gave him tea, shared their ginger biscuits with him, and told him of their beliefs.

  He asked them about birth, about strange births and strange lives.

  They believed they were led by a great man who lived a strange life, a saint known as Chrysostom.

  This man became known for many things. He was fervently against the use of superstition to protect and heal; he wanted people to turn to God for these. Marvo could not see the difference, though he did not say so. Asking God to help you, or helping yourself using accessories seemed to amount to the same thing. Marvo listened, all the same, to these people who believed so strongly in the teachings of this long-dead man. Their expert was an historian who loved to recite numbers. Marvo liked his information this way. It didn't need to be interpreted. The historian loved to talk and over great mounds of buttered vegetables he would do so.

  "Our leader was born in the year 347, in Antioch, Syria. He was the son of Secundus, a commander of the Imperial troop. His mother, Anthusa, was widowed at twenty, but John lived beyond his father's years, not dying until the year 407. We celebrate his day on January 27th, the day his relics were transferred from the place of his death, Comana, to Constantinople – now Istanbul. His skull is in the Vatopedi Monastery on Mount Athos. It is silver and jewel-encrusted.

  "We worship him throughout the year. He was a great and learned man, both the archbishop of Constantinople and a Doctor of the Church. His name comes as a nickname, meaning 'golden mouth' because of his eloquence. He remains to this day one of history's greatest speakers.

  "He became a hermit in 374, writing an account of his austerities and trials. He spent two years in a cave alone, as a 'solitary'. He became very sick.

  "He was consecrated as archbishop on February 26th, 398. In that role he cut down his own expenses, taking all his perks and giving them to the poor and hospitals.

  "He railed against immodest dress in women and spread Christianity to the Scythians and Goths, to Palestine and Persia. He preached against caul superstitions, which made him unpopular in some cities.

  "He was very straight-laced, very careful.

  "He was the one who said: 'I came naked into the world, and I can carry nothing out of it.'

  "In 404 he was banished by Theophilus, the archbishop. The day he left, the Church and Senate House burnt down. His followers were blamed and tortured. He was made to walk hundreds of miles, and he died on the journey."

  The followers gave all they had to the poor.

  "It seems so clear," said the historian. "The saint was speaking out for the good, when in Greece at that time a new tax was imposed by Emperor Theodusius I to pay for war with Magnus Maximus: riots, statues broken, two officers sent to control people. Wrong versus right. Wrong is often so powerful and so filled with hatred for right. Wrong hates any sense of guilt."

  The followers had few possessions and did not use cars or buses. They walked everywhere. They were fit and hungry. Marvo found small things they left behind: cherry pits, scraps of paper, shoelaces. He kept these things in a drawer with all his other found objects.

  Marvo tried to be like them but could not sustain such selflessness. They didn't need or want his mist. They wanted to see the truth, and he left before he took that from them.

  They made him curious about the power of money, the possession of it, the ability to give it away. He could have gathered money anywhere, lived anyhow, but Marvo found work, to see what it was like. He worked in a large hotel, where he was not allowed in the foyer: the guests should not see him.

  "We don't like them to see the machinery behind the magic," said the manager, a tall man with dark eyes, eyes which saw all but didn't see Marvo's magic. Marvo got there hot and sweaty because he liked to run to work, then he'd shower and change. Marvo washed dishes, hundreds at a time. His partner at the sink would talk throughout the night, finding reasons for his position, excuses. Marvo's partner always wore gloves to wash the dishes. He was always well rugged up. His favourite tale involved the careless treatment of his most important possession.

  An Early Loss

  I was born in the hospital where my mother had no control over my birth or my first appearance into the world. Luckily, though, the nurse kept my navel cord safe for her.

  My mother kept the cord for many years, hidden from my father because he didn't believe in those things. My life was good and happy; I was successful in school and I had many friends. My prospects were excellent. I wanted to be a policeman, but my mother wanted me to be a doctor. It was our only point of argument.

  Then my dad started to turn into a real bastard. I don't know if he was jealous of me; I think he must have been because he seemed to hate me. He'd pick on me and call me names, yell at me if I didn't get perfect marks at school. My mother would protect me and that would make him madder.

  "Can't he speak for himself?" my father shouted all the time. And no, I couldn't speak for myself, not very well. I was too scared of him. I thought he'd hit me if I said anything, and I've always hated the idea of pain.

  One day, Dad was going through some drawers, looking for something, whatever, and he found the little box that Mum kept my navel cord in.

  "This is disgusting," he said. He was really cruel. He said it was filthy and obscene, without realising he was talking to ME, that his words were about me. He got a pair of scissors and, ignoring my mum's screams and shouts, my crying, he cut it into pieces and threw them away. I felt every cut, I felt suffocated when the cord was in the garbage bag. From that moment I've been a failure. That's why you see me here; that's why I'm doing this pathetic job.

  #

  It was a good story, so Marvo gave him a new umbilical cord as a gift. This was an error of judgement on Marvo's side, one he would not make again. The loss of the dishwasher's excuse for failure was the final straw. The loss was unbearable, and he took his life in one last attempt at bravery.

  Marvo washed dishes for a few more weeks then gave up work for a while. He discovered magic shows, sitting in the dark, watching them, sneering at them.

  At fifteen he believed himself to be the only true magician, regardless of what the note said. He watched the fumbling others pretending at magic, imagining that to fool the eye was magic.

  He would stare into the eyes of these people and see their falsity. He could ruin their magic with a word, a revelation. They could not touch his magic; his schooling was completed early. His magic was safe.

  He went to see the matinee performance of The Greatest Magician of All Time, another fake.

  He stayed for thirty bored minutes, rose to leave at the same time as an elderly man did.

  They rose from opposite sides of the aisle, stared into each other's eyes.

  The old man winked and left with a speed unsuited to one of his age. Marvo was unable to blink or breathe with the shock of the other. He saw the truth and he knew he had been similarly recognised. The horror of the revelation made him feel vulnerable and he sat and watched the idiot magician complete his nonsense. By the end of the show he was completely terrified. His note had told him there were other magicians, but this was the first he'd seen. Marvo would be reveale
d as a failure, he would be held under scrutiny and found wanting, he would lose under any comparison with other real magicians. For the first time in his life, Marvo lacked confidence. But he knew he had to find the old man and speak to him. Imagine the truths they could tell! The help they could give!

  He left the theatre ahead of the fidgeting children. The old man could not have gone far.

  Outside, Marvo could see a thin trail of mist. It smelt faintly of peppermint. He followed the mist to the old man, selling truth on a street corner. So few people see the truth; the old man would tell them.

  "This is your worst trait," Marvo saw him say to a large man in a patched business suit, "and this your best. Your biggest mistake was to do this. You have not yet done the best thing in your life, and you will not know until it is over that you have done it. I will not tell you your death; that is a truth better unknown." The old man had rejected his role as truth-hider and developed a new one.