Code Of Hero

A Decision In Passing

We're never ready for the big things. The decisions that will affect our lives, and a thousand other unknowing lives. Things to come, and things that are. Decisions that may even shine light on what has been, and turn the heads of the gods to this lonely planet. If we take too long, those decisions slip away, and we find ourselves considering things that were never meant to be carried out. Such is the corruption of the world in this regard.

We're never ready for the big things. Doing them makes us ready.

At dusk, the mountains hissed dense fog around their peaks and obscured their beauty with a veil of cloud and darkness. The sun was just a shred of half-circle above the horizon. A blood red crescent sinking slowly into an eternal night. The red was so red it was almost gold. Above it, dark violet and navy made possible the glowing of the evening stars. Two crimson glows in the night picked up their positions almost instantaneously and brushed them aside soon after. It was of no use to them. They had come to watch and listen and reflect.

Serenely, the mechanical monstrosity lingered on its natural surrounds, crushing under its feet the soil and life of the Earth. It would be long from now that the land would come to recognize his kind. Millions of years would pass before mankind first thrust their scrap metal into the wrongly-assumed immortality of the planet. The monster scuffed the ground with his foot and watched the gears in his ankle turn with the movement. So complex was his design. So simple it seemed against the mountains and sunset now.

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

And so, in delaying patrol amongst the budding beauty of the darkened world, Dinobot found himself drawn to the natural rhythm of things. Day and night. Sunrise and sunset. Life and death. He crouched closer to the ground and ran his clawed, awkward hands through the rich topsoil, concerned with its development. Gears shifted and creaked as he raised himself up again in the new moonlight, and watched the dull color of dirt in his palm until a firm breeze swirled it into what may have been oblivion for it. He watched its path over the mountain trail until it disappeared into the shade of the sun's sleep.

Because I do not hope to know again
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

At that time, Dinobot was not ready for the decision, either. He was not so sure it even existed, then. Many times it had crossed his mind, and then diminished in passing, and instead of tracking its origin he would sink into the work he had to do, the things he had to complete, the things that seemed so much more important at the time. What would he do with the torture it would bring, anyway?

He seemed to be running from too many enemies at once. In sleep he found himself aching for the serenity of peaceful dreaming, and yet he found only torn, grainy pictures of things he might have remembered at one time. He seemed to be running out of everything but time. His endurance was failing. More and more he became caught up in the tragedies of his tortured soul, which stood within him screaming a horrible wail that fell on deaf ears. Tempests of regret and knowledge filled his being. Traitorous infidelities to factions he never could bring himself to believe in.

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessed face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

The clouds passed quickly overhead. If he strained to look high enough, he could see their direction of flight quite clearly. He wondered, when he was gone, if anyone would look at his life the same way.

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgment not be too heavy upon us

Prayers had become useless to Dinobot. They went unanswered until the very end, when no one any longer believed, when all that was left was barren wastelands of humanity and morality harboring the ruins of the merciful death of faith in anything. It occurred to him that he had allowed himself, in believing this was true, to transform into a blurry photograph of what had just been described. Another picture to add to his mental scrapbook. Something twisted inside him with such ferocity that if he had possessed the ducts for it, tears would have fallen somberly on the ground.

There was little left to his will. And still he stayed alive, functional for the people he believed needed him. There were the arguments to live for. There were the orders to follow. The shame on his face was there, when in passing glances he caught the feverish looks of distrust and just barely concealed fear. They would never admit it, though. And as long as they were content to disbelieve, he would not reveal the truth about them.

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still

The atmosphere pressed in against him like a judgmental vice. Just one more moment to look over what he soon would leave before he departed back to the world of Hell-fire he had created for himself.

If Dinobot had taken just one more moment to be introspective, he would have known that the only one judging him was himself. No angel cared to tread there.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death

Lying in bed, now, staring at an unfeeling ceiling. Thoughts floating around like disowned children, crying out to be heard, and silenced with a swift threat of a worse fate. His vision was swimming, like opium smoke in his braincase, but he did not mind it much. He was beginning to see things all too clearly.

At the first turning of the second stair
I turned and saw below
The same shape twisted on the banister
Under the vapor in the fetid air
Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears
The deceitful face of hope and of despair

Forever had never felt so close. Reason had never seemed so desperately far and suicide had never seemed so heroic. Images danced in the worried air. Movements of such grace and fluidity that Dinobot had to squint his optics against them to block out the irregularities. Fire was in those predictions. Great, leaping flames, licking the heels of the future with forked tongues. At the mention of this, he ran his own tongue over his teeth to inspect its shape in hopes that it too had not become serpentine. All he felt was cold steel.

At the second turning of the second stair
I left them twisting, turning below;
There were no more faces and the stair was dark
Damp, jagged, like an old man's mouth driveling, beyond repair
Or the toothed gullet of an aged shark

There were no windows in his prison, he realized upon reaching over for something to hold on to. He needed neither, and soon would not miss one or the other. But as he groped for a stronghold and found nothing, Dinobot found himself disappointed in the loneliness of wisdom and prediction. His only comfort was that his precognition was only to his own fate, and not the fate of those surrounding his life. He had all their pictures in his album of the past. Upon recalling them, he knew he would miss them when he was gone.

At the first turning of the third stair
Was a slotted window bellied like the fig's fruit
And beyond the hawthorn blossom and a pasture scene
The broadbacked figure dressed in blue and green
Enchanted the maytime with an antique flute
Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown
Lilac and brown hair;
Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind over the third stair
Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair
Climbing the third stair

His sword gleamed on the rack near the wall. How tempting. How insignificant to the upcoming finale. Like all material things, it would be brushed aside and forgotten, and he would be the only thing left standing on the scorched product of reality that it so readily claimed. It would soon claim him, too, but it would be a fight to watch with awed gapings and bemused expressions littering his attached audiences. So close, and yet too late.

Lord, I am not worthy

The ceiling was less comforting. Soon it would be the time of mitigation. The torn and battered warrior readied himself for the sting, and slowly rose, ignoring the hopeless cries of the crows that flew overhead.

Lord, I am not worthy
but speak the word only

No bed to comfort him now. Only high grass to lie in. The sun shining like a great, golden disk on his reptilian back. Against his surroundings, not so mechanical, now. More beastly than ever before. He cleared the sediment and debris on the ground behind him with a side-to-side motion of his long tail.

If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word

He was surprised that he was hiding not from his friends, but his former friend, now enemy. An enemy he had betrayed but once, while his friends found their hearts sinking in the light of his several betrayals and deceitful mistakes. In his head, the recollections seemed so loud. So much sound to come from a simple series of black and white polaroids.

O my people, what have I done unto thee

A strong wind blew from the west. With it washed along the memories, rolling to the back of his skull like lonely tumbleweeds, their weeping becoming only barely audible sobs lost in the weeds of denial. How would they look at him when he laid at their feet, suffering in final moments that he had wished for so bitterly? Through tears, or through clear stares that relayed their unanimous feeling: that he would have deserved such an end?

Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice

Will the veiled sister pray for
Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee
Those who are torn on the horn between season and season, time and time, between
Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait
In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray
For children at the gate
Who will not go away and cannot pray:
Pray for those who chose and oppose

Here now came the target. Dinobot raised his head slightly over the whispers of the dry, unattended grass blades. He was in the right place. There was the cavern harboring the aforementioned former friend, now enemy; soon to be ally for a very short time. He stalked the beating heart and unwitting eye with the grace of an action well-practiced. Stalked the beating heart and unwitting eye like death stalked the same of the company it chose. For this poor four-legged fool, there was none to bear witness to the perfection of the hunt. It cocked its head slightly, antlers shifting with the head, ears twitching to a sound unrecognized. The gazelle still knew nothing when it was dragged to the giant web constructed for it just outside the cave.

O my people, what have I done unto thee

He burrowed far below the surface of imperfect ground and covered his transformed, more-humanoid body with it, lying still like a corpse in a shallow, unmarked grave. Moments passed like decades. Time seemed to go by at a leisurely slither. For comfort, perhaps, Dinobot held his laser pistol to the ground above, threatening it to cave in as soft, eight-legged footsteps began to approach.

Will the veiled sister between the slender
Yew trees pray for those who offend her
And are terrified and cannot surrender
And affirm before the world and deny between the rocks
In the last desert before the last blue rocks
The desert in the garden the garden in the desert
Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed

Would they cry?

O my people

No more time to think of it. The former friend was his in a leap of a long awaited, well-timed coil of muscle, sinew, rod, and gear...

Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Scorched ground, as he had predicted, blackened with the effort of many, and surviving still with the dogged pursuit of one. This was the ruined landscape where his final struggle had taken place. A weak survey proved it to be fittingly ugly. He had never realized life to be so fleeting, that in but an instant all could come to a screeching halt. Or in his case, a slow-motion, blind crash into a brick wall. He had never realized life to be so precious; had never, not for a moment, realized his life to be so meaningful to the friends surrounding him now. Dinobot saw in their eyes that death, to them, was painful. To him, the dying, it was just a tedious process in which he now felt he was rushing toward too fast.

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings

His back hurt. But even that was flying away from him. The burns no longer ached so. The only thing left writhing in agony was his heart, as the hand of a beloved friend thought enemy came to rest on his with a grip so loving that, had he the ducts or strength, he would have cried. He had neither.

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savor of the sandy earth This is the time of tension between dying and birth The place of solitude where three dreams cross Between blue rocks But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away Let the other yew be shaken and reply

Perhaps he had saved the world, but it had not needed his saving, really. It would have gone on without the human race as its lover, ward, assassin. He would have liked to think, however, that the stars were smiling only for him that night, as his vision failed and his photographs began to fade. The grip on his hand was faraway. His breathing shuddered and hitched irregularly. Faces above his, concerned. A face closer, knowing that the final words would be the things that brought him through the dark times without the dying monster-angel on the ground.

Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea
Suffer me not to be separated

"The rest... is silence."

And let my cry come unto Thee...

And so it was.