THE STORY TELLER

The room wasn't much. It was dingy as every thing is on this god-awful Rock. Gray dust found it's way even into closed places covering everything in an ultra-fine film. The Hostel was one of the best in the enclave. There were four mining camps on the Rock each about five hours travel distance from each other. He looked around the room, bed clean sheets and old coverlet, ugly painted four-drawer dresser, bed stand and a lamp with an exposed bulb. He giggled at the lace doily on the dresser. He went to the window and looked down on the dark street, empty between work shifts. Large half pipe Quons lined up in a row across the dirt gray street, homes and business's all as drab as the next. He remembered the Home, blue, green, shades of brown and clouds like phantoms floating across the skies. Water... he couldn't remember the sound of water, fountains, waterfalls, rivers pouring over rock, and seas crashing on sandy shores.  He had forgotten, too, the smell of the sea.

He sat on the edge of the bed and poured out the contents of his side bag; two tins of mystery meat hit the bed first. The tins contained real meat and it didn't matter to him what species of animal provided the meat. He had eaten it before. It was consistent, gristle free and not bad tasting. There was a can of some variety of fruit and a can of some thing called Vegilly. The label touted it as multi-vitamined and mineraled. Two tins of custard and a bottle of pure water rounded out the fare. He fished in his overcoat pockets and pulled out the most expensive thing he had purchased, a small bottle of an eighty-proof booze made from a cactus that some how took a hold in The Rocks barren soil. There was no real sun only  a series of satellites circling The Rock and beaming down  weak rays, fueled by burning hydrogen. The light was as dim as a full moon on their home world. 

"Not all bad I suppose… the way things are." He muttered to himself.

She knocked on the door, two-three-two, as was her custom when he came to the Enclave. It was a business arrangement but it was always pleasant. He opened the door and looked at her. She hadn't changed much in the year since he had last seen her. Maybe she was a little more life worn. Still cute and petite, blond haircut styled short like his. She was made up like she was going to a social.

"What's with the paint?"

"Nice to see you too.

"Sorry…it's good to see you."

"Didn't know whether I was alive did you?"

"Well."

"True…I dressed up a bit…I heard you were coming."

"How did you hear …thought it was a secret?"

She pealed off her jumpsuit and threw down her sidebag. She was wearing a skimpy nice near- white lacy thing.

"Dinner too?" She squeaked.

"We are going to shower together."

"What?"

"I have a half hour."

"How did you swing that?" She looked down at the food on the bed. "Do we eat or get it on with the sudsy hugging?"

"Lets shower first."

"You want me without makeup, no perfume, no wig, no lace?"

"We are going to do it naturally. I had myself smoothed... I know you don't like hairy."

"God you are sweet…I have missed you."

They did it wet, long and nice. They ate their feast and then they did it again. They fell asleep and she left before morning to avoid any embarrassment. Their relationship was a tragedy and a farce, but they did hopelessly care for each other. She didn't ask for money. He sent her money each quarter-cycle to help make her life a little easier and to have her always clear her schedule when he came here.

It was an arrangement that worked for them.

He woke to the morning horn. The dim dawn came and cheered him a bit.

The Group wanted to be rid of the false suns because it was expensive and a useless ritual that just no longer mattered. They were shouted down by the citizens, apparently it did matter.

At dawn social clubs opened that provided music, free cheap brew and a place where unattached males and females could legally commingle. There was no mating without permits. Doing so without a ticket got you ugly time in the pen. It was easier and less painful to get the permit. The fee for the permit included mate-safe spray and a contraceptive, no disease and no babies.

He liked the newer clubs, certain relics and decor had been permitted from the home world. They were bittersweet reminders of home and perhaps another subtle cruelty heaped on an already beaten people.

He wasn't here to work and his appointment wasn't till late this afternoon. He decided to have a beer and listen to some music. He heard there was a club, close by, that had a band that played old-timey folk music.

He wasn't disappointed; he drank a great expensive dark and tipped the band copiously. He was almost lost in rapture and forgot for just a moment where he was. Tears of happiness rolled down from his eyes. As the band played he remembered the before times. The bar keep brought him another dark ale saying that the Group allowed him an open tab. He looked at the frosty mug and was further saddened. He used to be a pilot, once upon a time, and he laughed. He was surely now too old to fly even if he wanted to. He shook the hands of the musicians, once the most honored of his people. He praised them as the most important people on this Rock. They were young, not really understanding the words or emotions behind the songs they played. It was the playing them that mattered.  He went to the bar and sat staring at his reflection in the bar mirror; he wondered why he reflected back at all. The Keep told him he could have as many brews as he wanted. He told him to pour himself and the band members each a dark, bill the Group, dream of a better place and with honor, keep him in mind.

The bar Keep smiled and said, "Thank you honored Warrior we have been bettered by your grace."

He was astounded that the young man new the old customs. He stiffened and bowed to the Keep from his waist.

"Thank you for your kindness but I am now a working man and that is the only honor I ask for."

The Keep and the Band all nodded and smiled.

The Group called him and he came as summoned. It would be an insult not to appear. He sat on a Hassock …this was troubling. The Hassock indicated high honor and  grave seriousness. In front of him, seated at a half-circled low table, was the Group. The table was designed so that all members of the Group were the same distance from their guests.

This way each guest was assured that the case presented would be heard equally.

This was not such an occasion. There was no case. He was invited, without explaination, and that did not bode well.

"You are a Warrior…are you not?" The youngest female Group member blurted with a slight sneer.

"I am now a Miner…Group member with respect."

"I am sorry! That was rude of me."

He stood up and looked at her. His skin color darkening in anger. It was a long silence. He had the right to kill her for the insult. She was so young. He wondered if she even knew that it was an insult. There certainly was no need for custom or tradition here. He was tired and really didn't care, so he sat down.

"What the hell… the way things are." He muttered to himself while lowering his head.

The Group all had unconsciously fallen back from the table and now all were confused at their guest's show of diffidence. They were embarrassed and humiliated. It was not supposed to go this way.

Things quieted and the tension eased. His color returned to pink while most of the Group still remained viridescent in fear and subjugation. The young female stood up, walked out to stand before their guest. She dropped and lay face down on the worn carpet.

"So you do know?" He whispered to her so that the rest could not hear. "It does sadden me, Child. But it makes little difference. Thank you!"

 The rest of the Group watched in silence.

 He looked at her and wept quietly at the devotion to one so unworthy. She made a mistake often made by the Young. We have so few Young, intelligent and wise enough, to take on the responsibility of the Group.

He started to sing an ancient song of praise and devotion to the family clan and the honor endowed the First Compacts. The Group, each one overcome with emotion, for they have never heard it sung but only read the words in the Old Text.

He reached down and patted the young female's head with obvious affection.

"Raise up! No harm is done."

She with a tear stained face stood and returned to her seat behind the table.

It was the Senior Seat Elder that spoke, after a time of honest silence, allowing everyone the opportunity to compose themselves.

"Please Elder Warrior forgive us. We shame ourselves in our ignorance of the proper protocols. It has been too long since we have been so honored by someone of your stature. We are a shadow of what was. We offer no excuses just …"

"Speak no more of it. Yes, dear one, I am a Warrior but there is no war. Now I am barely a competent miner. We now sell the ore, we mine, to our former enemy."

The entire Group flushed red in shocked surprise. Then looking at each other for some way to respond. What he had done was the highest honor a Warrior could bestow. It was a revelation and put them in awe of the one they dared to have sit in front of them. A Warrior had spoken 'Truth' to them. They knew it was a way for him to equalize all in attendance. Plain and free speaking now was demanded.

The Second Seat Female composed herself first. She appeared not much younger than the First Seat.

"Warrior we thank you from our hearts and souls. Do you agree that because of the way things are… life has become intolerable?"

He nodded.

"The Fourth Seat spoke." There is no one alive who remembers the war except you. We apologize that the extra privileges given you do not in the remotest way repay what you have endured."

The whole Group nodded assent and waited for a response. It didn't come. He was sitting with his eyes closed as if he was remembering those awful days. A full five minutes passed in silence. Then he spoke quietly.

"It is just so!"

"Just so…"The Second Seat blurted in improper excitement. "We toil our days away in duty to each other. We can read the words of historians but its not the same. Will you tell us the story Warrior? Please!"

She stood. Her color was pale in Body Respect. She bowed deeply knowing the danger of this appeal. The others went pale and looked at the reaction of the Warrior. Then stood and bowed full at the waist. The Fifth Seat took a while to color properly; such disrespect to the Group will have him sent to the lower levels of the mines where he will die from heat exhaustion after a few years of toil.

The Warrior thought of words he had once read. 'How have the mighty fallen.'

He sat and allowed the full remembering to take him, shedding his miner's persona. Hormones flooded his body. His skin turned to Warrior purple. Even though the Group was to remain in the submissive position the Warrior heard gasps. He forgave them. The color had fallen to myth. He ripped off the jumpsuit. He would no longer need to be protected from the bitter cold of this ugly Rock. Body horns and scales began to form. He shamefully screamed in pain singing 'The Song' to control his responses to The Change. His jaw extended, teeth grew to their true length and terror. His body grew to three times his normal size. Claws grew from fingernails and a second thumb grew from the other side of each hand. A spiked tail grew from the tip if his spine. He howled for meat. He was exhausted and required an infusion of protein. The group had only hoped for this honor but they had prepared for it. A huge tray of meat was placed in front of him. The aide placed the plate and jumped out of the way just in time to avoid the swipe of weak but still horrible claws. He devoured the meat in seconds. Then he rested in silence. The whole transformation took a little less than thirty minutes during that entire time the group kept their bowed position. Any sharp movement would have provoked the Warrior and then the meat tray would have not been necessary.

Finally the Warrior spoke. "All is well! I have become Warrior and am no danger to you. There is no enemy here."

The Group stretched and sat starring in wonder at what sat in front of them. He was massive and splendid. He was a fighting monster, a horror and the vanguard of pain and death to the enemies of the People. They were in awe and ashamed to have him do this for them. It was the most intimate thing a Warrior could share and the most dangerous for those who witness the transformation.

"We found them first. We had just achieved star drive, as did they. In all the suns and planets of this galaxy our two races learned and grew on the exact same timeline. Not a day or a year or a century of development separated us. When the big beasts died because of a massive comet, it happened on both worlds. When the little furred warm-blooded ones came out after the disaster, it happened on both worlds. A bearded one came down from a mountain with clay tablets with the Word of God written upon them, pyramids and Saviors, Kings and Priests came like twins to both worlds. When the great empires died and the religions terrorized the world it happened on both worlds. Wars with arrows, wars with cannon, wars with tanks and trenches, wars with planes and bombs, wars with atomic weapons, wars with biologicals, wars of words, death and genocide, shamed both worlds at exactly the same time. Every political experiment, every philosophy, every noble and decent act, every time we touched God it was mirrored by them. Every time the Devil took possession of our hearts he won on their planet as well. Both world's were a polluted green and blue and in near ruin for our plundering and ravishings. Then came another asteroid to both worlds and our races were almost destroyed. Those that survived formed Clans and Houses. Centuries passed, the First Compact was signed by all Clans and Houses. And the Enlightened Time was on us and we both made advances in science, the arts, and medicine. Every citizen of both worlds prospered and glowed in health and intellect. But there was a snake in both gardens. We had survived so God must have blessed us as his chosen. Religion again raised its organized best and demanded that we again expand and multiply. There were other worlds and we need not harm the paradise we had made by excess and wasteful actions. We no longer had to pollute, over fish, deforest, or deplete the liquid energy deep underground. Both world's rich and prosperous Ministers preached the blessedness of science and so we went to the other planets to exploit their recourses. Then we went to the stars by the thousands in a religious frenzy, with biological computers and God's good graces. They found a living world first. God changed the rules. The third planet of a world circling a yellow star we called Ce-este . They had settled there just six months before. There were one hundred fifty thousand alien and heathen squatters on this our God-given planet. Our beautiful blue green world that God had promised us. We of course carried weapons on our ship. We rained down terror on the unfaithful and slaughtered those who did not die in the bombardment. On their bones and ashes we settled it in their place. They came, of course, in righteous vengeance and wiped our colonists out most cruelly. We could not let them have this planet so we came with a weapon of consummate arrogance and evil, we brought a world killer. We blew up the planet and all upon it. We destroyed the only inhabitable world within the reach of either species. And so the War started. It lasted two hundred years; war in space is tedious and each engagement took an enormous amount of time to develop. Once started it was no less bloody and horrifying. We and they needed a warrior suited to space battles, long lived, durable to changes in environments and pressures, a terrifying and powerful killer, a nightmare to look upon and in its brain an enhancement, a biological computer. The war was being fought to a standstill. Each world kept the battle in space, hiding the location of each other's world. They first found the world we destroyed and they found our home world first. They killed everyone on our planet with a nasty slow acting virus, although we were alike in most ways, each race changed by the environmental damage we had done to our home worlds, there were differences. When we created Warriors a genetic variation showed up in the whole of our species eukaryotic cells. A viral based metamorphic agent that created the Warriors escaped the labs on our world in an altered less virulent form. It had no effect on our population and wouldn't have for some three hundred generations. But it did leave a chink in our immune systems.

A frozen parasite that arrived on a rouge comet fragment twenty five thousand years ago found a symbiotic relationship living inside the gut of the enemy. It stabilized their genome and fortified their immune system. God again had shuffled the deck. We had Warriors first because they had to unlock the affect of the parasite's benefit. They captured one of our pilots and found the difference. They invented the bug and the antidote. God blessed them, not us. Even our Warriors were vulnerable to the disease. They colonized our planet in lieu of the one we destroyed.

When the long-range expeditions came back those two hundred thousand souls in those great star ships had found no home in the stars. Our enemy captured them as each ship entered the system. When all were home fifty thousand were executed. The rest were sent here to the Rock.

I survived because I was stranded alone in an escape pod for a five years, frozen and dreaming of victory. Instead, I was thawed and sent to this Rock to share the punishment for what our species did to theirs and for the unpardonable sin of destroying a world. Perhaps, a fit punishment, if we took the time to think on it.

We have been here these many tedious generations; I have suffered life for more than four hundred years. We will never be more than the number we killed on their colony. We will never be Clan and House again. We will never be allowed into heaven for our sins. We will dig in a great gray hole, here and in the afterlife forever.

I was the only Warrior to survive of our world. Their Warriors came home from war and knowing that there would not be another enemy to fight, asked to die. This was granted with the all the Honor and Glory they deserved. 

Their last Warrior to die said: 

"The way things are…may God forgive us and let us into Heaven."

And the saying has stuck with us in short form. The whole prayer is; "The way things are…may the bastards find an enemy in the stars more horrible and more powerful than us. Amen"

His face beseeched the Group to let him rest, to let him die. He knew he was his people's last symbol of hope. They would never grant him his request.

"Thank you for the truth. We dare to ask you one last favor."

"Speak!" He said.

The First Spoke. "Above the table to your left you will find an alcove. In it is a spherical object. It is a bomb. It is a very powerful device, which we have secretly built. We ask you, Warrior, to detonate it when you see fit. It will put our species to rest. The contest for survival has played out between the Humans and us. We are without hope. The Clerics believe that it is the same throughout the Universe, the will of God. He creates three beautiful worlds, on two he raises sister species and the third he leaves open. It is the truest of Trilogies. Space separates these worlds from the other sets of three. Each time there is a Holy War and one Species survives. And maybe there is justice; maybe the winner can learn to travel further and faster, find another sister world that has won their contest and they must fight it out. And on and on till there is only one race, a race of Angel-Beasts who will be humbled by God for there arrogance and madness. Then, God will empty the universe and start the game again."

" Elder, if the Clerics who brought us to this place are finally correct, then our souls must have a place in Heaven. One for all the sinful foolish and vain. One that was made before all else was made. He knew one must lose and one must win, no matter how it is done. In that place we will find rest and wait on the next universe. We may stay in the game a bit longer the next time around."

A gong sounded a deep mournful tone ending the meeting.

He asked the Group for accommodations and privacy. He returned to the shape of a miner. It took an excruciating three days.

So now he sat in his room. He worked in the mine for another year. He did it in humility so that if God could forgive them he would come as he was made in his mother's womb.

He opened the drawer next to his bed and looked with pride at his now shed fighting horns and tail spikes. He moved his bed, threw back the rug and opened the trap door. He had dug a vault and lined it with lead, in it he had placed the device. He took out the bomb sat down and put it on his lap. It will turn the Rock and all on it into dust.

The way things are.

He pushed the sequence and the red button. With the flash his last thought was...

"Thank God!"