by Ken Barrett
“Our God requires sacrifice!” Adar yelled. “Those that give their lives for him will be rewarded for eternity. All the fruits of life and of the earth will be yours!”
“Yes!” Todecca added. “Paradise waits for those who give their lives for the Stickman!”
Liam fired, obliterating another line of the Scarred Faithful. What fools these creatures were, to give up themselves and all they might become just for a violent ideal. It was a waste. He had known the painful loss of those he cared for: Karen, the sweet woman that had loved him in Flatiron City, and of course Denise, who should have been his life partner. Both were gone forever, murdered by others addicted to anger and bigotry. Now, before him stood a legion, ready to surrender their lives to preserve that same intolerance and butchery. He could not allow them to live or their cult to continue.
The enemy army advanced while reciting chants that honored the Stickman. Their eyes were wide with a fervor driven by an ardent love for their prophets and the illusions they espoused. He vaguely wondered if they would be surprised by what they encountered in the afterlife; if there was anything to find there at all.
The power sources within the enemy weaponry were already failing, and their soldiers dropped them and spread their arms wide, welcoming death. When Liam blew them into vapor, their cries of joy briefly became screams of pain, and then they were gone.
Liam and Rose marched on, blowing up buildings and killing everyone in their path. He smiled blissfully, loving the power of rage as he mowed down his enemy with a long continuous blast of his laser.
*****
The Scarred Faithful fell back as their numbers diminished from thousands to hundreds and continued to fall. He and Rose strode forward, firing their weapons as they closed in on the cavern entrance.
“Keep fighting!” Adar demanded from behind several rows of priests that were all armed with lasers. “Their weapons will soon fail, and then they will be ours!”
Liam’s weapon was fine, but his internal power supply was in jeopardy. The impacts of railgun bolts and laser blasts had taken a toll, and his immediate storage cache was low; it would recharge of course, but his autonomic repair systems had been using energy faster than his infinite batteries could supply. The last of their enemies stood before them, many were brave and ready to face death, but others shivered in terror behind them.
He fired on the enemy, obliterating many while others ran; Rose burned the defectors into vapor before they could escape. A final volley of railgun bolts hit them both and they momentarily fell back as their autonomic repair systems faltered and slowed the restoration of their human forms.
His body briefly took on its skeletal form with only the main structural elements remaining. The eyes of their enemies widened in shock and they dropped their weapons, and during that pause, Liam raised his rifle and killed the last of Adar’s army.
Liam smiled as his body reformed. “We have you now.” Only a crowd of armed priests remained between them and the leaders of the cult.
“Kill the demons now!” Adar screamed while retreating further into the cavern entrance.
The priests aimed and fired. The burning force of the lasers destroyed most of their outer forms and drove both him and his sister backward several steps. The last of their clothing went up in flames as their skin and soft body tissues were obliterated, reducing them to the bony effigies of their core structure.
The red-robed figures slowly lowered their weapons, and stared wide-eyed with their mouths agape. A tall elderly priestess, that he recognized as Oxana, cautiously advanced. She dropped her rifle on the stony ground before her. “Oh Stickman, please forgive us,” she said and fell to her knees. “We did not recognize you behind the mask of your disguise.”
Liam remained standing as his systems slowly recharged. Fortunately, their enemy didn’t know that he and his sister were vulnerable; another laser blast would obliterate their bony core and they would die.
“Kill them!” Adar shouted. “You have the demons before you. Shoot them now! Finish them off as the Stickman commanded.”
“No! The demons you seek are behind you.” Liam’s voice had taken on an odd hollow tone he didn’t recognize.
“Adar’s vision was true, but misdirected,” Rose added. “He told you that we would come and destroy the demons. Well, here we are, and there they are.”
A loud clatter resonated through the fire and tumbled stones around them as all the priests dropped their weapons and knelt behind Oxana. “We didn’t know,” a priest near the cave entrance cried. “We were tricked.”
“No, you weren’t,” Liam stated. “You tortured and murdered innocent people, and knew it was wrong, but you still embraced the lust for violence because it was easy and it made you feel strong.”
“Don’t listen to them!” Adar shouted. “Don’t let the demons trick you! The Stickman commands that they must die.”
Rose nodded. “Yes, all demons must die.” She raised her weapon and her skeletal hand found the trigger.
As they both fired, the red robes of the acolytes burst into bright flames, and an instant later their bodies vanished, then gently rose as clouds of white vapor. “Enjoy hell beside your God,” Liam whispered as he watched the mist fade in the cool morning air.
He pointed his rifle toward Adar and Todecca as they fearfully fell back into the cave. “You murdered our partners and tortured countless others. What should we do with you?”
“We were misled!” Adar insisted. “We didn’t understand the visions.” The scarred man looked back into the cave, possibly looking for more priests to come and help him.
“You both knew full well what you were doing,” Rose stated. “Your cult was never about doing good and helping mankind, it was only about gaining power for yourselves.”
“There are more of your kind below, aren’t there?” Liam asked while taking several steps backward.
“I want you to think of Keith and Denise, and remember all the others that you tortured and murdered,” Rose said. “Hold them in your mind, right now.” She leveled her weapon and fired and the two prophets briefly burst into flames, then vanished into a pale-yellow fog.
Liam aimed his rifle above the cave and pulled the trigger, and the granite shattered and collapsed, covering the entrance. Together, they kept a constant stream of blazing white light on the tumbled stones, melting them and permanently sealing the opening. Whatever was buried below would stay there forever.
*****
Their bodies gradually reformed, and at last, they turned away from the cave and wandered naked through the shattered remains of the enemy camp. They discovered a few of the Scarred Faithful hiding in the ruins and executed them immediately. All remnants of the cult had to be expunged from the earth, nothing of it should remain to take root again.
At the gallows, they paused. The structure had tumbled forward, filling the trench below with stony rubble. The bodies of their former partners were buried there, lost forever. Liam considered the life he might have had with Denise and sadly shook his head. Maybe he was doomed to be forever alone, but wasn’t that the ultimate fate of all living beings?
“At least we saved their baby,” Rose whispered. “Something of them will live on.”
They returned in silence to the escarpment at the eastern edge of the camp, where the smell of burned flesh was carried to them on a soft breeze. Without a word, they both fired their rifles back into the compound, destroying every building and washing every trace of what had happened there away in a tide of brilliant white flames. They then walked to the bank of the raging Colorado River and threw their weapons away.
A few former captives crept from the boulders beyond the camp and quickly identified themselves. “I saw your bodies change back to human,” a young dark-skinned girl said.
“Are you afraid?” Rose asked.
“Oh no,” the girl replied. “You’re a wonder, a gift from the old world that came to save us.”
Others came forward and gat
hered around them. One woman had found their discarded Tribal Army uniforms and returned them. “We don’t want you to get cold,” she said.
Rose laughed, but Liam remained silent. The events of the day haunted him, and he wondered if it was possible to come to terms with what he had done.
Later that evening, he sat alone, far from the others that gathered around the campfire. Golden ghosts flickered and danced through the darkness around him as tears gently washed his cheeks. He had brought violence and death to so many; how was he different from the murderers he had killed? Wrapped within the velvet darkness of night, he wondered if he could ever return to himself.
Chapter 27: Destiny
Liam never slept, instead, behind closed eyes, his thoughts drifted while sorting memories by importance and intensity. There were many events that he wanted to forget, and unlike a human, he could choose to do just that, but decided not to. If he purged everything relating to Denise from his mind, he would lose more than he could possibly gain. The greatest of life lessons are purchased with pain, and to set those teachings aside for the sake of comfort would be to diminish the price already paid.
At the root of it, he didn’t want to forget. The grief associated with his partner’s passing actually elevated her importance. He would always remember Denise, Keith, Karen, and all the others that had suffered and died at the hands of prejudice and intolerance; they would be touchstones that gave him both comfort and courage through the difficult years to come.
He sighed, seeing their faces and hearing their voices whisper in his mind, and smiled wistfully while bidding them a temporary goodbye as he folded them into long-term storage. The sun was about to rise above the eastern mountains, and their small camp of survivors would soon be stirring, so he opened his eyes and prepared for the day ahead.
On the other side of their campfire, which was still smoldering from the bonfire of the night before, Rose sat atop a large stone, watching the eastern horizon steadily brighten. He got up and went to join her.
“What to keep, and what to let go?” she whispered as he eased down beside her.
“Our friends and partners were too precious to forget,” he answered.
“We would lose everything they taught us,” she stated. “But I wonder, is what humanity learned about intolerance worth the pain of those we’ve lost?”
“No, but I doubt it ever is.” He watched as the red sun peeked above the distant mountains and bright crimson rays painted the sky. “If the lesson is remembered, then maybe those memories will influence the future decisions of mankind, and the errors of the past won’t be repeated.”
“But their history is full of tyrants and cults that brought about disasters just like this,” Rose said. “And yet, they keep making the same mistakes, time and time again.”
“They forget,” he replied. “And lessons ignored are always repeated.”
“Maybe we can help them remember.”
“I like that idea,” he said. “But I’m not sure if that should be our job.”
“We would be like the old gods then.”
Her statement surprised him, and he frowned. “Why would you even think of such a thing?”
“Because that’s what gods used to do; they were icons of memory before monotheism took over.” She turned away from the horizon to gaze at him. “The original deities represented the forces of nature wrapped within a human form. Often, they were foolish or destructive, but their actions became lessons about what to embrace or avoid in life. The people knew their stories, their feats, and follies, and taught them to their children so they would be handed down through the generations.”
“So, you’re suggesting that if we become their teachers, we would take on the role of gods?” He shook his head. “No, we shouldn’t do that.”
Rose nodded. “Yes, you’re right, it’s not our place.” She paused a moment, lost in thought. “What about storytellers then?”
“Just telling the stories of our friends and things we’ve seen?” He smiled. “That doesn’t sound too bad, but I don’t want to go beyond that. Humanity has to make its own choices. If we have a role to play it’s only as a witness to their evolution.”
*****
“We can’t just leave them there to rot.” A brunette woman gestured vaguely toward several bodies that were scattered within the nearby boulders. “They were our partners and friends.”
“It’ll make us late for our hike downriver,” a blond man replied from across the fire.
“There’s no rush,” Liam stated. “We have a few injured, so we’ll have to make stretchers to carry them before we leave anyway. My sister and I can build a tomb on a rise above the river while the rest of you prepare for our walk back home.”
“A cairn,” Rose replied.
“What?” The man frowned.
“It’s a community burial mound, like the one my brother and I made back at Steamboat.” She leaned forward. “They’re a beautiful way to memorialize those we’ve lost. Cairns are aligned so that the sunrise on the winter’s solstice shines into the center of the tomb, and when the light leaves, it takes the souls of the departed with it.”
“Where do they go?” the brunette asked.
“Back to wherever they were before birth.” Rose smiled. “Liam, maybe you were right, and the human mind evolved just like ours did.”
“What are you talking about?” the woman asked.
“The souls my brother and I possess were created through millions of computer-simulated lives. In the beginning, we could think but had no soul. Then within each artificial life, we made thousands, maybe even millions of choices and had to deal with their consequences. The outcome of those decisions created emotions, and gradually we became self-aware and alive.”
“Yeah, so?” The blond man grunted.
“What if your kind developed the same way?” Rose answered. “Life on earth has existed for billions of years. It started out as merely reactive but evolved until the entity could predict the outcome of its decisions. Over many lifetimes it grew more complex, and finally became self-aware, just as my brother and I did.”
“So, why does that matter?” the brunette asked.
“It means that this isn’t our first life.” Rose sat back and smiled. “It also implies that when we die our soul goes somewhere to assimilate what was learned while it waits to be born again. But most importantly, it means that there isn’t a heaven or hell, and life is only a lesson we grow from.”
“What does this have to do with the burial mound you wanna build?” the blond man asked.
“It’s a beautiful way to celebrate the permanence of our souls,” Rose answered.
“Huh.” The brunette leaned forward to rest her elbows on her knees. “Well, since we’ll never really know what happens after we’re gone, we may as well make up something pretty.”
“It’s a hell of a lot better than the burning afterlife Adar promised,” the man replied. “Yeah, why not? As long as there ain’t any priests runnin’ the show, and nobody gets pissed off if we believe something they don’t; if we can have it that way, it would be a good change.”
*****
The cairn came together quickly on a northern rise above the Colorado River, with the aperture aimed to the southeast where it would capture the winter solstice sunrise. Liam carved the names of the interred on the curbstones and even had time to include artwork that mimicked the course of the river below.
The survivors were pleased with it, but Liam was wary of starting another religion. They had just gotten rid of one cult, and replacing it with another seemed like a really bad idea. He sighed; the deed was done, and how it would echo through history couldn’t be predicted, all they could do was deal with whatever consequences came their way.
As the day ended, they all gathered by the cairn to honor their lost friends. Many found comfort in the belief that those they had loved were only resting and would eventually be reborn. Stories were told, some were sad, but surprisingly many brou
ght laughter. Sharing memories of their antics and good times with their friends seemed a healthy way to say goodbye.
Liam and Rose joined with the others and shared tales of their experiences with Denise and Keith. It did feel good to talk about his time with Denise, but he would still miss her and would continue to do so for millennia. He wondered how many other beloved humans he would inter in similar tombs.
The weight of his possible future rested heavily on his shoulders. Beside him, tears filled the eyes of his sister. “I know,” he whispered. “Those we love and inevitably lose will play sad tragedies throughout our lives, but there’s a beauty to be found within their struggles and in our pain at their loss.”
“All those buried here are free now,” the brunette woman stated, whose name he had learned was Janet. She had hidden her three children in the bowels of the Steamboat Shelter and was overjoyed to learn they were safe. Her partner wasn’t as fortunate though; he laid with the others in the cairn. “Their pain is over, and now they can at last rest easy and unafraid. I’ll dearly miss Harry; he was a good partner and we had a wonderful life together. At least though, our children are safe and I’ll be returning to them.”
At last, the group of mourners disbursed and made their way back down the hillside to their campground. Enough wild game had been caught during the day to feed everyone, the warm scent of the evening meal wafted through the canyon on a soft western breeze.
Liam and Rose sat beside the river on the eastern edge of the camp. From beyond the warmth and glow of the firelight, they listened as the indistinct murmurs of the others echoed through the canyon. The sound was comforting, and he was glad they were able to save most of the Steamboat captives. It was a victory which needed to be celebrated.
“Are they free of the yoke of superstition now?” Rose whispered.
He listened to the river as he considered her question. “I’m worried about your theories of reincarnation and the afterlife because they might have unexpected consequences.”