The Eternal Duty - Prologue

spoiler free warning:

While it contains neither violence per se nor erotica of any kind this prologue is probably not for the all too faint of heart or those who are put off by rambling depressives, so please skip towards the first chapter for a more family friendly reading experience. You will basically miss the introduction and inner musings of one the the main characters but none of the world building this story is centered on. For even more trivia consult the preface.

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Prologue: A day in the life of a lonely wanderer

In hindsight her elaborate plan seemed pretty silly all around. Hiking hundreds of kilometers through Finland was perhaps the most sensible thing to do, sure. It gave herself time to think things through one final time while being immersed in nature, seemingly far away from all the issues that drove her to the decision that she finally had enough of it all and wanted none of it.

But was it truly important to be far from anywhere she ever was before and everyone she had ever known? Did it matter nobody could have any idea about her current whereabouts or, if deciding to search for her -- who was she kidding really -- had no chance whatsoever of ever finding out where she was or ended up? Did it matter to choose a country she could travel to without needing any visa or leaving traces like personalized tickets, hotel registrations or even CCTV footage that possibly had face recognition? A country with some of the most remote and human free landscape that could still serve her purpose?

Was she so ashamed about what she was about to do, to go above and beyond anything even some silly tv caricature of an intelligence agent might consider mentally healthy? Looking at her punctured fingertips she had worked on with a needle to prevent police from being able to take fingerprints she wasn't so sure anymore. Hell she wasn't even sure it worked at all. It was a sudden idea and the last time she had done something like this was in preparation for some breaking and entering with her leftist co-conspirators to save the world from greedy corporations and climate change both in one fell swoop. God were they young and dumb back then, it was embarrassing as hell to even think about it now.

It all seemed a bit like the idea of a small child to show her parents what she was capable of when being cross. She did just that all those years ago by first preparing her kindergarten rucksack with some crackers and a soft drink, just in case. Moving out of her parents house for totally ever at the tender age of five she also couldn't in good conscience leave her most precious friend behind -- an otherworldly ugly stuffed bunny.

She could distinctly remember leaving the top zipper of her rucksack open so he could at least have a look and didn't feel stowed away in darkness. Thus ready she started to make her way towards her grandparents house one village over. Sure thing they would make her favorite dish, rice pudding with lots of sugar and cinnamon, if she asked nicely. And she could be nice of course -- if she wanted to. Otherwise she wasn't.

Making total sense at the time, it was in retrospect perhaps a less then stellar performance all around. Still a fond memory though, she thought. Where did Mr. One-Eye-Bunny end up anyway? Sleeping or trying to sleep with her small head on his even smaller belly she couldn't remember anyone being able to soak up her tears as easily and comforting as he did, not that she cried often anymore nowadays. Perhaps she should at that, there was ample reason for it that was sure. Anyway: that stuffed bunny was the certified bestest of pillows in all her life. Ah well, one more being left by her along the road to rot or be happy without her, in his case most assuredly the first. Those who earn it the least have to suffer the most in this world, true for industrial laying hens and ugly stuffed bunnies both, among many others.

So as to her parents -- both still alive -- was it them she was truly hiding from? Of all the people she had known and who had to endure a lot because of her, she truly believed they cared the most about her still. She was their child after all. To disappoint them -- well scratch that -- to utterly fail and hurt them was hurting her too. She knew how it felt to loose someone precious in such a way and it utterly wrecked her at the time. It still didn't matter quite enough though.

In any case: better to let them be in the unknown, the disappointing, ungrateful runaway child that never ever called or wrote something anymore. They had other children and grandchildren to focus on and hopefully the memory of her would fade into numb insignificance, if it wasn't there already.

Ignorant, reactionary, unhappy, emotional and sexual incapable (it had to come from somewhere) fucks that they were, they were likely too busy nagging at each other to notice anyway. At least she made an effort to spare them some pain, that is all the idiots could ask of her anymore in her book. Her siblings too for that matter, not that they will likely care much with their own busy lives and all. Thankfully her grandparents were already dead, so no harm done on that front or she would feel really shitty about what she was about to do.

But back to the business at hand she reminded herself. All reasoning and justifications aside in the end it was a pretty straightforward question: do I really want to do it? Sure her plan was made to assure maximal chance of success with the least amount of fuss for all possibly involved parties.

That didn't prevent her from second guessing herself though. Why all this drama and effort? Was it just a ruse to cater to her ego or worse yet, over-complicate and therefor delay something perfectly simple? Also, did she really, honestly do it for the reasons her brain so graciously provided and that 'coincidentally' made it right, good and perfectly logical? Thinking like that put her pretty much on guard because it was just the typical crap everyone would tell themselves to make their actions more heroic and morally or otherwise 'right'. There was no right here to be found in these snowed in winter forests at the ass end of the world, of that she was reasonable sure.

In the end though, she also had no problem to be an antisocial coward who didn't find a way to do her part and then choose the easy way out. Well, to give herself some credit: there were decidedly more harmful and cowardly exits to her situation, prime among them good old 'doing nothing'.

At least she made her decision instead of just soldiering on with some sort of more or less pointless hedonism. Also, it is unfair to say she did nothing until now or didn't try to make it work somehow. It was nothing to be truly proud of in the end though, nothing she could list as her accomplishments against odds staked high against here. Nothing one could reasonably call her legacy to be found and used by others for the next run up that darn hill of Sisyphus.

It also didn't look good for her to get anything like that done in her theoretically still numerous remaining years. The most she could in her mind reasonably hope for, was to spend her days pressing a band-aid to a gaping wound and forming a still happy, reclusive little life around that kind of futile action. Being a hermit cat lady for decades on end had only a very stale appeal for her though, she felt too driven for that. Well back then when she still had some drive in her that is.

But fuck nature and its solution to such problems. She wasn't going to fill her life with some hubby, kids and busybeeing so that the circle of jerks could continue into all eternity and she wouldn't notice anything anymore because her days were filled with enough sensible things to do. This was the luxury offered to her by being born into the rich part of the world and getting some sort of education, at least enough of it that she didn't need any god to project her inner turmoil on, explain things magically away or give her some prayer filled hope without any base in reality. Or force her to just plainly do what was expected of her because life was cruel and stingy in providing options for poor people. So yay to being rich.

So as to her other 'options': fuck us humans and our so called civilization with all this modern crap about sustainable living, being practical and therefor productive, doing right and being optimistic because one is alive and shit. Not that she hadn't some deep-seated respect for those people who actually got of their asses and did something practical that was of a tangible help to those around them, no matter how small or big.

It just seemed like a fools errand in the end, at least for her. To prove her point to herself, she read what they wrote, listened to what they said, studied their actions and still she was here, finally and despite trying hard for quite some time, uninspired by it all. In the end she just was no such person, she just couldn't believe in it and also, in some even now rather diffuse and by her poorly understood way, she lacked the necessary skill set. Perhaps she just lacked the strength or, in a less kindly thought, the naivety. Perhaps she spend her life barking up the wrong tree and some other approach to it would have wielded far better results -- for herself but also for basically everyone else she might have come into contact with.

She wasn't stupid enough to spend her time with what-ifs though, what is done is done and what she became is what she is now -- there is no other her and never will be. It had to do and quite frankly, it didn't matter much, even if it was her life and she had no other. There were over eight billion meatbags just like her, no wonder and no matter if some turn out to be rotten and a bad investment of precious resources.

She tried to remember some of the better documentaries about how energetic hands-on guys and gals make the world a better place and our future less gloomy. How she herself traveled around and tried her hands and mind here and there. How brave scientists far smarter then her never got tired of telling the world that something needs to be done and every little thing helps, even when nothing much was done year after year and the little people with their little things got drowned in garbage, suffocated in oil spills and whatnot else.

All it achieved was to give her more hope then she could have raised on her lonesome, only to have it crushed just the same again and again by cold hard numbers, desolate sights that didn't lie and a world continuing on despite everything, seemingly without a care. It didn't help that most of these essentially good people she read and watched, especially these bigger then believable historic ones of course, were long dead or at least past their active days.

The overwhelming majority in the smorgasbord of movers and shakers that shaped the world during her lifetime, either in the public or in her personal life, were assholes or incompetents of some sort. Not much different though from the vastly more numerous people who enabled them. How deserved that judgment truly was she didn't finally know, but mostly the people who thought the world was okay as it was now were billionaires and their turds. She wouldn't give those fuckheads a sip of water even if they were dying of thirst and she was the goddess of rain, well truth be told especially if they were dying of thirst -- good riddance.

So here I am she thought: fuck most of all privileged people like myself who stand around moaning how bad things are and how there was no rotten chance in hell they could get better with humans (and themselves first among them) the way they were. This while still living with all comforts, typically well above the global median and especially thereby being a central part of what they bemoan.

Self-righteous oxygen wasting pricks the lot of em, the wealthier and smarter the worse for them. Not much better then the aristocracy of old, perhaps even worse. Pah, as if being angry at someone or oneself ever helped. She visibly deflated after that train of thought. At least I didn't become an alcoholic 'the world is a rotten place' kind of person like my father she thought. Looking at the forest and the sunlight playing with the falling snowflakes she thought and then couldn't stop saying "At least there is beauty left after all."

She was at the end of her line now, had been for quite some time actually. Without any hope. Without any strong connection to those around her, not even to nature she loved so much but couldn't really face anymore head on. Being ashamed of oneself and feeling like a failure in front of the dignified majesty of a tree is a truly humbling experience, for her at least. It wasn't a still nice, spiritually kinda uplifting kind of humbleness either.

Her spirit felt utterly crushed, like an animated stuffed rabbit with cymbals at his hands and the cheapest of batteries that long ago gave up and turned its jingling mute. "Well the scenery fits." she said, remembering the old TV spot about never ever stopping to jingle if you bought just the right kind of batteries. Of course it had to be a stupid commercial that brain-farted into this to her precious moment of reflection. Still fitting in a way, she noted internally.

She was without desire to see it all go to shit even more then it already was. She was angry about it, sure. But not angry or strong enough to care anymore and endure the role of spectator to even more and never ending, soul-crushing desolation. Let others with more foresight and bravery then her find all the wonderful things that would make it all right in the end.

Or more realistically if she was asked to paint the picture of her personal prediction for the future: let them all soldier on, generation after generation forgetting a little more about things that once existed and made the world a beautiful, awe inspiring place until -- at some point -- it wouldn't be anymore. The whole erstwhile living planet finally a dead sacrifice zone to human development. The only animals left alive to be tortured in an endless line of short lived generations being chickens, pigs and cows.

Not that anyone will care about it then, they will be born without ever getting to experience it any different. They will grow up in a poorer world and just as beauty and rich experiences can make a soul grow and become more beautiful, their souls will likely be far bleaker then today's as a result. You can't miss what you don't know and you certainly can't profit from it.

Like people born, raised and dying on a garbage dump in some poor Asian or African country that had no choice but to import rich peoples trash to make a living. People who think burning plastic fumes is the way air is supposed to smell like. At least these people could hope to strike it rich and get somewhere nicer, of which they most assuredly had the wildest fantasies Bollywood or some such could dream up.

Rich CEO finds poor but beautiful south asian sweatshop seamstress and falls instantly in love, invites her to his multi-million dollar yacht *insert-sweaty-sex-scenes-full-of-passion-here* and soon after they sail (on a motor yacht) into the sunshine -- of course happily ever after. All played by jet-setting multi-million dollar actors or at some point in the not too far off future cheap AI. Even the dreams people were sold nowadays were shittier and more far fetched then any of the Hollywood crap that the last century produced.

She missed it already, that rich world she spend her lifetime to know intimately, long before her pessimistic outlook on affairs likely would become reality. How much was already lost and forgotten when she was born, how many desolate places she had experienced where once rich and thriving? She could wish that it was just her, that all was fine and there was just something wrong with here brain chemistry, nothing a pill here or there couldn't solve in order for her too to live happily ever after.

She couldn't believe that though, not for one silly second. The world seemed to her like that Douglas Adams story where a guy builds his insane asylum inside out. Only in her world there was no sane place, nowhere to hide and keep your wits about you. And nobody to share it with.

Some people she met accused her of being a doomsday prophetess, a negative person that only ever saw the bad things and yet worse outcomes. She considered this a valid critique for the longest time and at least in some parts up to the present day. For her all these more or less silly doomsday prophesies religions had as a means to make sense of a world that was beyond human comprehension were basically part of the same package deal: there was a beginning, there will be an end and here are some practical morals to guide your life while god watches over the whole she-bang, well or the gods quarrel over it like those Norse or Greek/Roman ones.

Then the end comes and everything grinds to a stop, end of story. Well perhaps those who followed the right morals before that end can hope for a place in heaven, but who knows? The gods may just be fucking with us humans out of boredom, a cosmic game to bridge those long millennia until something noteworthy is happening again.

Her world, the world she was born in and experienced daily had no gods watching over it. There was no need as everything was moving along just nicely without any operator, the most one could hope for -- if dumb enough -- was some invisible hand somewhere. It also had no beginning and no end beyond some scientific theories or billion year off physical boundaries, certainly no morals. There was no alternative to it, it was the natural way of things that in some form or other always was and always will be.

This poor excuse for a religion was preached day and night, in words, actions and consumer products, but rarely did anyone truly believe in it -- just like communism for example, only with a sinister twist. The genius of it was that nobody needed to believe in it -- or anything for that matter. Being a believer, either in it or some other make believe story about the world and everything, would usually be counterproductive towards success. It just needed people to make do, to deal with how things are and it rewarded those who took their pound of flesh with both hands and without doubt or mercy.

As soon as you believed in the reality you experienced, it had you, the morals you then lived by being dictated by what was smart in order to do well inside the boundaries of said reality. It shaped this reality so drastically one had to be an absolute outlier to notice something really strange, namely that it was a leech that took everything to sell it as its own and gave back nothing but scorched earth and souls, pointlessly drifting loneliness or callous indifference. Often all of them as a package deal, pay for two -- get the third for free.

If you believe in God there was someone in your head who cared about you, perhaps even loved you, someone or something that was at least there and listened when you needed it, no matter where you are or what you have done. No such luck with that religion, which is she thought the true reason it had so few actual believers. It glorified the winners (very few), sucked the suckers dry (those who worked and had to fork all the bills) and degraded the losers (the majority of people who were basically obsolete trash, plus all animals as well as nature as a whole). That was all.

But my could it sell stuff, even when it lied -- perhaps especially then. It goes as follows: at no point was humanity ever more happy, never before were we as a not-so-whole people so comfortable and free of pain, hunger, sickness and misery and so ... self-righteously complacent toward the whole world going to shit piece by piece. We -- well all but a few, mostly Americans -- even graciously acknowledge that there is a risk of it going to shit. We pretend to do something against it becoming a lifeless husk like Mars that some masochistic idiots actually want to settle for some reason.