“My fellow Children of the Night!”
The voice was strong and clear. It belonged to a pale old man with shaky limbs, wild hair, and a great white scraggly beard who stood up before the assembly gathered around the crackling fire. The others immediately stopped what they were doing and turned their attention to the old man.
“As you know, once upon a time there was a great and terrible empire known as the United States of America.”
These words were met almost instantly with loud hissing from the audience. The speaker paused for a moment and waited for the ruckus to die down. A bemused smirk pulled slightly on the corners of his mouth and ignited a playful fire in his eyes, which glistened in the flickering light of the fire. Both parties—story master and audience—had performed their roles of call and response, teller and listener, so many times before that the beats of the story were as familiar to them as the soft curves and jagged edges of the cave in which they dwelt.
“America boasted the world’s most destructive arsenal of NUKES; bombs and missiles capable of destroying entire cities—caves made of steel and glass, big enough to hold millions. These weapons… these NUKES… could be launched from underground siloes, land-based artillery cannons, planes, and even submarines.”
The audience now began to murmur in response, many of them repeating “nooks, nooks” in soft, low voices amongst themselves, keenly aware that the story master was sharing terrible knowledge, even if they failed to comprehend precisely what was so awful about it and why they were groaning in response. But they didn’t need to understand in order to appreciate the performance of the story or to be moved by its telling. They had learned long ago that recollecting the story of How the World Came to Be wasn’t significant because it imparted knowledge, but because it was a communal ritual that provided catharsis they could feel. An experience that was as tangible and real as the cold, hard stone surrounding them.
“And even though it was a sad fiction, the mere existence of such powerful armaments allowed The Few to convince The Many that The Whole was unassailable. And so, for a short time, at least, America—and Americans—enjoyed relative peace and prosperity, which they foolishly attributed to their hoarding of such apocalyptic weaponry. And so, as you know, my fellow Children of the Night, however odd it may seem to us now, the idea of stockpiling the very Seeds of Armageddon itself took on a kind of twisted logic which perpetuated itself to the very height of madness.”
The well-practiced tale rolled off the story master’s tongue like thunder, growing in intensity, rollicking the gathered crowd bodily as they twisted and contorted themselves in answer to his words. Occasionally someone in the audience would shriek in feigned terror and their neighbours would immediately turn to them with comforting words and gestures. Although the story master held the leading role, the performance belonged to, and was the product of, the entire community. All present were well-practiced in their role, as the story—one of the few that remained to them—had been repeated countless times before. And thus the phrase “Seeds of Armageddon” required no instruction. Without prompting, when the story master uttered these words, the rumbling murmur of the audience suddenly rose in volume and intensity, forcing the story master to bark out the tale in a voice as hard as granite just to be heard over the din. The faint trace of a smile sketched itself across his withered face as he watched the fracas around him, his dry, cracked lips peeling back just enough to reveal the blackened roots of what remained of his teeth.
“Naturally, the United States’ military kept America’s NUKES under constant lock and key. The weapons were carefully monitored by at least a dozen different agencies with interlocking jurisdictions. However, as you know, my fellow Children of the Night, none of them were able to prevent the software malfunction that initiated the countdown sequence on 4% of the missiles in the American domestic stockpile.”
Here, the hissing was renewed. The cave now sounded like a den of agitated vipers.
“Within seconds, various control sites around the continental United States went from humdrum mundanity, typical for a Tuesday morning in peacetime, to an all-hands-on-deck emergency of absurd proportions. They squandered what scant minutes remained to them in panic. Not that a calm, rational reaction would have made a difference. As you know, my fellow Children of the Night, there was no circumventing Calamity that day.
“Any actual launches were prevented at the last minute, it’s true—often by manual override—but none of the detonations could be prevented or aborted because of the severity and rampancy of the error. The technology they had trusted to protect them like guardian angels proved to be, in the end, a god as false as all the rest. For each time technicians attempted to abort the countdown sequence on one missile, another missile somewhere else was activated. Thus it was quickly decided at the highest levels of power that the known devil was preferable to the unknown one, and hasty evacuation and shelter-in-place orders were issued in lieu of further attempts at prevention, which was soon understood to be futile.”
Now the gathered audience sat enraptured in stunned silence. They understood the emotional, if not the narrative, beats of the story being told and the hush that descended upon them reflected their perceived need to contemplate words whose meaning was deaf to their ears but not their hearts. The story master, too, lowered his voice, adding poignancy and melancholy at just the right moments, like a great stage actor delivering the performance of a lifetime.
“They had no answer. No way to avert tragedy. No way to save their world. And so, as you know, my fellow Children of the Night, just a few minutes after the whole ordeal had begun, the bombs began to blow.”
A few wails erupted from the audience again as they reacted with intense devastation to the news of the death of a world they had never known.
“Yes… yes… I know. A tragedy! A tragedy like no other… They misused the Light and so we are doomed to Darkness. Fated to scrounge whatever meagre, perverted living we can from the cold, dead husk of What Remains. And we carry this story, this memory of our collective hubris and failure, as you know, my fellow Children of the Night, in the vain hope that it may one day serve as a cautionary tale. A reminder of our paradoxical nature. An acknowledgement that our godlike intelligence is paired with a bestial nature and burdened by pathetic ignorance.
“Just 4%… that was all it took… A paltry 150 devices in total. A mere fraction of America’s nuclear might. And yet it was enough—more than enough—to cripple a hegemonic superpower in minutes. Enough to bring our entire species to its knees in less than a day. Enough, as you know, my fellow Children of the Night, to initiate the advent of our current epoch, the Age of Ash, the most dreadful age there ever was and… let us hope… ever will be.”
The story master’s words echoed in the deepest, blackest recesses of the cave, bouncing back to those gathered around the fireside like a bad memory springing unbidden into consciousness. Then the audience joined their voices as one and sang a lament for their fallen word and the story master, exhausted from his effort, shook fatigue from his limbs and, lifting his hands in the air and turning his face to the stalactite-covered ceiling, joined his iron voice with theirs, giving himself to reverie.
Wow that had me on the edge of my seat, lamenting at how slow I read ! Truly a brilliant story. The reality and truth of it...convicting.
That is positively dreadful and so poignant. Part and parcel of this existence we find ourselves in. And or possibly for some of us enduring. I completely appreciate the juxtaposition of wanting the end but living beneath it. Well done sir well done.
Cee cee