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Suddenly Memories: Jedipoet
By Dac
On the edge of the setting sun he watched the clouds waft by over his head. They drifted slowly, hypnotically, from one side of his field of vision to the other. There was nothing forced, nothing preordained in the movement. The wind took them where it would, and they followed aimlessly, unbothered by the wind, responding to it like a lamb following its mother. Jedipoet watched them listing about and smiled serenely. He floated several feet above the mountaintop, feeling the wind twist under his ankles, around his clothes. His artificial hand seemed perfectly natural, sending all the sensations of a normal body part up through his anatomical frame to his mind. The wind felt slightly chilly. He opened and closed his hand reflexively and watched the clouds continue to drift.
No sound came on the wind. No cries for help, no whimpers of pain, no tears. No explosions, no hostile shouts. No friendly calls. Nothing. He was alone up there. Just him and the clouds. He felt the solitude, so often denied him, wrapping around him like the red light of the deepening sun. There were no missions up here. No conflicts between his friends in the Family, no splitting off into groups like the Rogues. No attacks by the Guardsmen, no summons from the Outcasts. No Jessibelle. No Dr Lionel. No Data. No Erok. No one but him. He spread his arms, closed his eyes, and inhaled deeply.
Solitude. It felt strange. After so long in this world, surrounded by old friends he had grown to love and care for closer than family, he had felt the weight of responsibility. He had long wrestled with his role as leader, and though he had mostly come to terms with it now, it still weighed a heavy burden. Where the Family went, conflict followed. Whether it was the Guardsmen, the hero hunters or some other threat entirely, he had spent months living in a state of war. Even when alone then, he constantly felt the presence of others, surrounding him, looking up to him. Isolation was not an option.
Even up here it was little more than a delusion, he knew that. He would return to the mountain, to his friends, and to conflict. That was life here. But after all he had seen, all he had done, his fights, his tears and his laughs, surely he could be permitted his indulgences of isolation, that rarest of luxuries long denied.
He spread his arms, lay on his back in the air, and dreamed of better possibilities. Could they ever stop the Leader? Could they ever get back to their own world? He didn’t know. But he could dream, and for long periods of time under the falling sun, dreaming was what he did. As the last vestiges of red light slipped away and darkness took its hold on the world around him, he dreamed.
Slowly he became aware of something moving in the sky above him. A bright light, shifting slowly across the sky. His eyes followed it lazily. He had seen shooting stars before, although never that slow. Curiously, it seemed to be growing in size as well.
His eyes narrowed and he sat up in mid-air. Something was wrong. That wasn’t a shooting star, or a comet. It was moving unlike the clouds. Something guided its path, and it was moving with a purpose.
Moving towards him.
He stood up, his eyes wide with astonishment. It couldn’t be. Something he had not seen for a long time. Someone he had not seen. But someone of the utmost importance to him, his friends and his enemies. Someone who knew the answers to the questions that had been left hanging in his mind.
The bright light grew closer, burning through the sky, until he beheld it only a dozen feet away, where it hung in the sky. He squinted, but he frowned with suspicious recognition.
“Caretaker.”
“It has been a while,” said an ethereal voice. It emanated from the core of light before him, but Poet would have recognised the voice anywhere. It dug into the very corners of his mind and resonated with a tone unlike any other in the world. It was a sound that shone in his ears with the feeling of seeing the moon’s glow at night, or the polar ice caps seen from space. Otherworldly. Mysterious. Incomprehensible, yet familiar.
“A while,” said Poet breathlessly. “A while.”
“I have watched you,” said the Caretaker in his haunting, ephemeral voice. “I have watched you all from afar. You have done much in such a time. So long to you, yet brief, very brief for me.”
Poet stared at it, unsure what to say. He felt like he had so much he wanted to ask, but to behold the thing before him, actually see the Caretaker again after so long, sent all of it spiralling into a void.
“You have gained mastery over the skill I gave to you,” noted the Caretaker. “Would you join me among the skies? I would like to talk with you.”
It floated upwards. Poet stared after it, his mouth still slightly open and his skin pale. Soundlessly he followed it, flying higher and higher. The temperature dropped dramatically, but he felt something slither around his skin, and he felt warm again. He studied his arms, but could see nothing that wasn’t there before. Another trick of the Caretaker. The glowing light halted among the clouds and waited for him there. When he finally reached it, he found his voice again.
“I’d usually feel a bit of a strain doing this,” he said. “Now I don’t. Is that you too?”
“I would rather you feel comfortable while we talk,” said the Caretaker. “There is no sense in you feeling fatigue.”
Poet regarded the light cautiously. Though it had no face, he could feel it turn its attention southward. He could see more mountain peaks that way, although none penetrated the clouds high above them. They seemed to glisten in the starlight that broke through the dusky cloud cover, shining eerily above the dark world below.
“Spectacular,” murmured the Caretaker. “Here is the world at its finest. Murky, shrouded in impenetrable darkness and mystery, and beautiful because of it. I have such an attachment to this world.”
“Why this one?” asked Poet. “You can reach into other worlds. That’s how you brought us to this one. What makes this one so much more special than the others?”
“That is a long question,” replied the core of light. “One of many I can see that you have. One with a long answer. The simplest response I can give is that this is a world where wonders are real. On your world, for instance, only fiction matches the reality of this world. You yourself are proof of that. On your world you were a simple human. You have abilities here you could only dream of there.”
“That doesn’t prove anything,” said Poet. “You gave me this ability. You put me in this life. There’s nothing natural about me in this world.”
The Caretaker took its time answering. Poet wondered idly if it was digesting its response, but its voice held no tone, no sign of emotion. Aside from when it had regarded the mountaintops, the Caretaker betrayed no feeling, and it kept that up as it spoke.
“You remain argumentative,” said the Caretaker. “It is an odd trait among humans.”
“Not just humans,” said Poet. “Any animal will challenge something that can change its reality. Humans are the only ones that can verbalise it.”
“Profound,” said the Caretaker. It glided downwards and towards the mountains, and they continued to talk as they drifted through the cold air that they could not feel. “That is something you have gained from your time here, but I did not grant you that trait. It came to you after your environment changed, and you adapted to it. What does that say to you?”
Poet said nothing, flying side by side with the being made of light, looking around the mountain range and taking in the sights. He felt oddly detached. His isolation was gone, he had the company of another, but the world below seemed separate to him, something that could not touch him.
“Look,” said the Caretaker. “There is ice forming on that mountain. I can see it as it freezes.”
“Are you freezing it?” asked Poet.
“No. That is not something I do.”
“Why not?” asked Poet. “You have the power.”
“I have many powers, but the natural world is not something I touch. I deal only with life that has achieved a mind of its own. The rest, I simply observe, waiting. Some day life may spring from that ice somehow. It may not, but it may. Until then, it is a curiosity.”
“So you only meddle with things that can understand the fact that you’re meddling,” said Poet. “If it’s not smart enough to get a basic idea of what you are, you don’t worry about it. Is that it?”
“Still argumentative,” said the Caretaker, and Poet could have sworn it sighed. “You harbour, in your mind, some resentment towards me. Is that correct?”
Poet looked around the area. An old tree bent in the wind, its thin branches twisting. A small animal, maybe a squirrel, scrambled down the trunk and across the ground.
“A bit,” said Poet. “But that doesn’t surprise you, does it?”
“No,” said the Caretaker. “You are human. I brought you to this world, set you a task, and you had not seen me since then, until this moment. Humans resent abandonment. That is natural everywhere.”
“Abandonment?” echoed Poet. “Leaving a puppy in a box on the side of the road is abandonment. What you did is more than that.”
“Is it?” replied the Caretaker. “You were left to fight for your lives. Your puppy in its box must do the same. Often it will die. Other times it will live, and thrive beyond the imagination of the one who left it there, as you did.”
Poet’s eyes narrowed. “It grows up savage.”
“That is irrelevant. It survives in a harsh world. How it achieves it-”
“Is what defines it,” interrupted Poet. “Thanks. You’ve just answered most of my questions. Dead puppies usually do.”
He floated backwards and slightly up, folding his arms as he stared at the glowing form in front of him. He stroked his chin as he stared, and felt a slight chill of cold satisfaction. The Caretaker was hesitating. His answers were coming, and the Caretaker was giving them without realising it. That alone said a lot, for a supposedly omniscient being.
“You said you deal with sentient people. With us. With humans,” said Poet.
“That is correct.”
“You brought us to this world. All of us. The Family. The Guardsmen. The Rogues, and everyone else. Gave us all powers.”
“Yes.”
“But you just said you don’t bother with how a sentient person acts.”
“You used the metaphor of a puppy. I carried on with the same metaphor,” said the Caretaker gently.
“Yeah, you did,” said Poet. “But you were trying to convince me that we were just like it. You said what you did to us was the same as ditching the puppy. Now you’re trying to say it’s different. I’ve only been talking to you for a little while and I can already see the holes in your logic.”
The Caretaker was silent. The light seemed to ripple slightly. It floated upwards until it was level with Poet, hovering there above the mountaintop. Poet had the feeling that he finally had its full attention. About time.
“Why’d you bring us here?” demanded Poet.
“To stop a destructive-”
“No,” said Poet. “Not just the Family. You brought all of us here, Guardsmen as well. You just said that. You’re responsible for Data and his guys being here just as much as for me and my team, and however many others there are around the world. You brought us to stop Data, so why’d you bring Data?”
“You have contemplated this before,” said the Caretaker slowly. “You are allowing your anger at my abandonment of you to colour your temperament.”
“Don’t avoid my question,” said Poet. “Why?”
The Caretaker was silent for a long time. The light rippled more, twisting and shifting across its surface. Poet felt the chill again. He was cornering it. The mighty Caretaker, with the power to twist and alter reality, cracking under the strain of a few pressing questions. Poet fought the urge to grin.
“My reasons are my own,” said the Caretaker finally. “I do not expect you could comprehend them.”
“Oho,” said Poet. “Now I know you’re bullshitting. You know, we always thought you were all-powerful. I gotta admit, it’s kinda disappointing, but if you really were all-powerful and all-comprehending, you’d be able to pull off something a little more convincing than ‘forget it, you wouldn’t understand’. That’s the kind of shit ex-girlfriends pull when you don’t know why they’re mad at you. I ain’t buying it.”
He floated in a circle around the light, sensing its attention following him. He thought hard. It was waiting for him to make another move. He thought more about what it had said, how it had referred to life without sentience: a curiosity. He had a feeling there was more to it than that.
“You brought Data,” he said. “You brought him for a reason, and when he didn’t work out you brought us. Why not fix him yourself? You have the power.”
“That is not for me to do,” stated the Caretaker. “Why should I destroy when I take my enjoyment from creating?”
“So you do feel enjoyment,” replied Poet. “You create. Is that how you see us? Your creations?”
“That is a simple way of putting it, but yes. I created you, reflections of your fictions and my realities. I released you into the world. Not abandoned. Released. Gave you your independence. That is something all life desires, in varying ways. Independence to live life the way that it seems natural. With your new abilities, you and your team found a way of life that was natural to you and lived it. I understand your anger towards me, but I do not begrudge you it. It is normal for creations to rebel against their creators.”
“You didn’t create us,” spat Poet. “We existed already. You just tweaked us a bit and brought us here. Everything you’re saying is a load of shit. Curiosities. That’s what you said before. That’s what you really think. We’re all just something here to amuse you. You throw a bunch of us against each other and see what happens.”
“Your collision with your former friends was incidental.”
“You wanted it.”
“That is irrelevant.”
“You’re full of shit,” said Poet. “You’re not a God doing what’s right for the world, you’re not a creator looking out for his creations. You’re a kid putting ants in a box and watching them battle it out.”
The Caretaker glowed brighter. Poet shielded his eyes from it, wincing. It did not expand in size or change its position, but its luminescence flared blindingly for a moment before rescinding.
“You assume much,” said the Caretaker, still flat and toneless, but its voice had long since lost its haunting, resonating power. Poet felt no awe or fear at the sound of it. “You assume I am the only one with power beyond the infinite. You assume I have no purpose beyond observing that which I create.”
“Why should I believe anything you say?” snarled Poet. “You act like you’re morally superior in a way lesser mortals can’t understand, but if that were true you’d have the power to make me see the way you do, and understand the way you do.”
“Your mind would not be able to handle it,” said the Caretaker.
“Then why come and see me again?” demanded Poet. “Why’d you come to me now, after all this time? You say you’ve been watching us since we last saw you. You’ve seen what we’ve been through. I’ve seen some of my best friends try to kill the rest of them. I’ve seen people die, some of them I know. I’ve killed people. I’ve been in war zones, in ruins, in torture labs, and I’ve seen a shit ton of horrible things. Just a little while ago we held a funeral for one of my best friends for something I did, and I have to live with the fact that his death is on my hands. We’ve been into hell and it doesn’t look like we’re getting out any time soon, and all of that is because you put us here and cut us loose. You knew we’d resent you, but you don’t get just how much. Everything that’s happened, good and bad, is because you stuck us here, and you hold yourself so far above the whole conflict you don’t know what it feels like to be a lowly mortal in the heart of it.”
He turned and flew back towards the mountain that held the Outcast base. The Caretaker made no sound, but floated alongside him. He could tell he’d made his point, and for a while they flew together in silence. When they reached it, Poet landed and looked up at the light floating in the sky above him. They stared at each other, still not saying a word.
“What you do with your abilities and your life is up to you,” said the Caretaker. “And only up to you.”
“Fuck you,” replied Poet simply. “You have no sense of cosmic responsibility.”
“On the contrary, I believe it is you who is attempting to shift the blame of your troubles,” said the Caretaker slowly. “You have long wrestled with your role as leader, Jedipoet. Recently, with the death of Baraxis, your doubts resurfaced. You have waited for the opportunity to unleash your frustration, your anger at your inability to save your friend, on me. I am an easy target, the one who brought you to this world. Humans always seek to blame someone or something other than themselves. You are a good leader to your team, you do not try to blame them, so you instead look to whatever is above you. In this case, me. Tell me, if you lived your life on your old world, and a fire killed your friend, would you yell at the fire as you have at me? Would you tell it to be more responsible in what it did?”
Poet blinked and opened his mouth, but no sounds came out. He stammered mutely, but his insides suddenly felt leaden. The Caretaker drifted closer to him.
“I let you determine your path,” continued the Caretaker. “All of you. Sometimes chance conspired against you, but that was not my doing, nor yours. That is the way of all universes. In this one, life is harder because you are stronger. You have abilities beyond that of your old life, so your life here must be harder or else be wasted. That is chance, and I am just as powerless in its path as you.”
Poet breathed heavily, and the light began to circle him, just as he had done to it. His muscles tensed as he followed it with his eyes, his teeth gritted.
“I am not in control of your life and so cannot be blamed for your troubles. You must come to terms with that, as you have done. I have observed you. You have come to terms with them before. I came to you now not to condescend you, as you seem to think.”
“Then what?” hissed Poet.
“To tell you something I have never told to anyone I have dealt with before. I have been acting as I have for a long while. Data was not the first, but he was the first in a long time. I created him with a specific purpose, unrelated to yours, and when he rejected that purpose I created you, in the hopes that one day you would take his place.”
“What did you come to tell me? Spit it out.”
The light descended and coalesced, and Poet beheld the most frightening sight he could call to mind. The Caretaker reshaped itself into human form, a shining silhouette among the darkness. It reached out and laid a hand on his shoulder, and he felt a strange sensation spreading through his body, as though his blood had been replaced with liquid mercury.
“It will happen soon,” said the human-shaped light. “Data must soon fulfil his purpose, and if he does not, you will have to take his place. I came to tell you that I believe you are ready. You have overcome so much, I have felt something I have not felt in eons: surprise. You are ready.”
Poet stared into the light, and it seemed to dance with colours before him. A fountain of light, and within that light was incomprehensible sensations borne of life beyond mortality, billions of years swirling in a single semi-corporeal entity. The Caretaker removed its hand and the strange sensation dissolved from Poet’s body as it stepped backwards, a few paces away, and stood still there.
“Why did you make us?” he asked breathlessly, the most basic but important question he could muster. “Why did you give us powers?”
The head of the being made of light tilted and watched him, and Poet felt as though his very soul was being laid bare for it to read, to probe and pick apart at its leisure. “Let me ask you,” it said. “When you received those powers, why did you use them to help rather than harm people?”
Poet stared at it numbly, his mind racing incessantly as he tried to think it over. His brain clanked and whirled thousands of times a second as he tried to think, and more than once he stopped himself before giving an answer, feeling the half-formed words were incorrect. It took several attempts before, instinctively, he knew the answer. The one he had always felt.
“The world needs us to,” he said slowly and softly, almost to himself. “It needs heroes, heroes who will put aside themselves and come to the people who are scared and afraid and can’t deal with any more, and to put a hand on their shoulder and say, ‘you are not alone’.”
The words seemed to hover in the air, and Poet, entranced, could barely believe he’d said them. They seemed too direct, too open and honest. Listening to them in his head, they tickled his brain with a sensation he didn’t know. Even as he contemplated them, the light gave a shudder that may have been a tiny breath of laughter.
“That is right,” it said soothingly. “That is something we have in common.”
The light seemed to pulsate back into something formless and indistinct. It rose from the mountaintop above Poet’s head and hovered there, and Poet felt its attention trained wholly and utterly on him. He felt strangely weightless as he stared at it.
“This is a world where your fictions became your realities,” said the Caretaker. “But you, all of you, the many of you that were brought here at various times, despite reinvention and redefinition, have made yourselves, your fictionalised selves, become real. You have believed yourselves to be different to what you were, and so you have been. You have become what you should always have been. In your minds, humans imagine what you could do if only you had the ability. The imagination is the breeding ground for fiction, the accounts of what life could be like if something changed. Your life has become something more. Something out of fiction is real for you. Imagination has escaped the mind and become tangible, and now, what has seemed to you fiction has become reality, and you have become something great. That is the most important thing of all. Remember that, when the time comes.”
It rose into the sky. Poet watched it as it receded into the darkness, and slowly the Caretaker vanished from view. Poet scratched his head and stared into the blackness, until slowly the sun began to rise in the east. The wind resumed its dance and the clouds listed again across the sky. Still Poet watched the sky, waiting in case an answer came.
1/28/2012 7:41:48 PM
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