The Prisoner:

Stationhill.com

Fiction

The Prisoner:

Fiction by Spartacai

Time.

Too much time.

Too much time has passed, too much has happened.

My memory is so fragmented now, I sometimes forget how to be. Then I just sit, staring, for months at a time, years, decades maybe. Who knows?

The cave is warm and comfortable. A safe, dark womb secreted in the earth. It makes me want to sleep again.

I can remember some things. The important ones.

I showed them iron yesterday, they were amazed. Only a few days ago I showed them fire, they were terrified then.

They thought it was magic, that I was some sort of god.

Some irony there.

Once they had conquered their fears, mastery of fire was to prove one of their great turning points. That was their true beginning.

On a personal note I have to say that after that, they didn't seem quite so apelike to me. They were different.

So much time spent slowly changing, pulling their way up, I'm almost proud of them.

I showed them agriculture, and overnight they were changed. Hunter-gatherers became farmers, and Civilization was born.

I spoke to them in the wind.

I came to them in dreams.

I stormed around their mountains.

I taught them War, so they might better themselves.

I showed them how to conquer; how to hate, they knew already.

So this is my Punishment. It is the most miserable ever devised, although some may think well deserved.

Yesterday I showed them iron, tomorrow they will be hacking each other to bits with it, in my name. How else are they to learn?

You see, I was here right at the very Beginning of all things, the Creation, and not many can say that! But afterwards, it all becomes a little hazy, so much was stripped from me, you see? I do remember there being some kind of disagreement over management control, a power struggle. You could say it was like a hostile attempt to wrest corporate control.

Actually, it was more like a war, the War.

I lost.

That naturally makes me the Bad Boy of course, sentenced to this. Mind you, I'm sure He couldn't do much better! Clever to have come up with evolution though, most fitting. Wish I'd thought of it. Still, I can always plant a few well placed rumours suggesting they are all descended from just one man and one woman, and that they are special. That will muddy the waters nicely. I can blame it on him, to. I understand their nature so much better than He does.

He put their Destiny into my hands to teach me a lesson. Me?!

OK, I'm taught. I get the Message. Everything I try goes wrong, its just too tough a job and I want to come Home. But does He let up? No way!

I'm left here running the show by myself. I get the blame for all the World's ills, its just not fair! I am doing my best with what I've got after all.

Today I'm going to show them mathematics. I'm going to introduce them to a key that will eventually allow them to decode the universe, and when they do...

Just when they think that they've cracked it, when they're feeling all smug and oh so sure of themselves, that's when I'll change all of the rules again. There are no absolutes.

I can't make it too easy, or maybe I should, but He hasn't talked to me since our little falling out so I really don't know. More of the same I expect.

I wish I could sleep, but I don't remember how.

I just don't want the responsibility anymore. I am so tired.

It's not the way I thought it would be.

They are far less malleable than I might have hoped, still, I am working on them.

Its hard to believe that He intends the to be the Inheritors, but mine is not to reason why.

Time weighs me down.

I wish I could remember.

How much longer?

ENDS

Posted 06/29/2002