The Sacrifice

I saw the dossier before I sat down at my desk.

Aw, crap. This one's gonna hurt.

It's my job. That doesn't mean I have to like it.

But I am well acquainted with the way the world works, the rules and regulations associated with The Great Sundering. Chapter, volume, codicil, guideline, verso, rectum ad nauseum. Believe me, when it comes to loopholes, we've tried them all.

Our orders are very clear: Oh, they think they're so smart, do they? They think they know how things work, and want to take over the reins? Fine. Let Them. Full consequences, full responsibilities. They want the accolades and power, but shirk the hard work? Nope. I did make them in my image, so they got the stubbornness full measure too. The world will likely burn before they admit their sin of pride.

Harsh? Yes. But fair. The boss is big on cosmic justice. Wanna be an all-powerful god? Fine, then suffer, like God does. You didn't ask to be all-seeing as well, and your lack sorely shows.

And honestly, you asked for consequences.

But that doesn't mean I'm not going to sit down and have a good cry about it first.

The really bad guys usually get the inklings first - the more powerful I am, the more omnipotent I am, the more control I have over the lives of others, the more I can mess with them. Because small minds can only think of cruel ways to maintain dominance, and killing is the best way to demonstrate that.

Pits of sacrificial victims, strewn across the planet like some sort of grotesque beaded necklace. Some well known, some obscure. Some are tourist attractions, some are solemn and sacred sites, and some are places of fear or disgust. But all of them hold the same obscene origin: a despot saying I'm taking all of you with me.

There's nothing like a megalomaniac twisting reality to suit themselves.

The truth? When a truly great person dies, a life tax must be paid for the vacuum created by their loss. But if people would just get over themselves, the tax pays itself. Contemplate for a moment: eight billion people on the planet, divide by the best and most influential people, divide again by cosmic math, subtract attrition and accident, don't forget to carry the two. Factor in the other living organisms that crawl around on this thin extra-crispy magma crust, and you have a good idea that the galactic-sized scales of justice can work just fine without undue influence.

But kings, and emperors, and dictators, and other sadistic bastards can't control themselves. They want to pick and choose exactly which ones get to pay their tax, and pay it off in early installments. That mindset just skews the balance further out of whack. There have been more than a few cases of earthquakes and eclipses that have been sent as warnings, and still the self-centered do not heed them.

And so even more people suffer.

My colleage sends the warnings. Floods, plagues, the usual. But, remember, we're given leeway. My colleague can be quite subtle. The inspired book, published at a serendipitous moment. The cure for a deadly disease. The drug that evens out those horrible urges. Global warming, that's an amazing one.

But if they are not heeded, the warnings become punishments. That would be attended to by another colleague's work.

A volcano that wipes out a city or four. The drought that moves populations. The earthquake that liquifies the ground, taking the city with it into the sea. The comet that explodes at a certain location, flattening everything within a deadly radius. The nuclear meltdown that scatters radioactive locals into the unknown.

The things that spawn myths and legends, the whispers of belief that crawl into minds. They all have their roots in fundamental truths that govern the universe, but have been bent and twisted by human incomprehension beyond their proper scope.

And still they kill, with war and death squads and prison pits and genocides, and it makes no matter. They can be subtle, too - denial of health care, lack of nutritious food, propaganda and material culture and marketing strategies for all the wrong things. All they do is spread suffering where it is not needed. The personal tax will still come due.

They do not think of the crowd that now waits for them on the brink of oblivion, preventing their proper crossing.

But what of the better angels of our nature?

That is where I come in.

My job.

But even so, the toll is high. When a good one dies, one of the best, then the best must be chosen to go with him. Not as attendants, but as companions.

It is the price you pay for hubris.

All of you.

Collectively.

No exceptions.

So I sit here, crying at a dossier that has Jimmy Carter scrawled in firm signature across the cream folder, and I grieve for what I must do.

Leeway.

It is all I have.

And I do it in the only way I can, the only way I can warn, the only message I am allowed to send.

The pain of martyrdom.

The innocents caught in the crossfire. The random shootings, that take the best of you. Why the bright ones, with all that beautiful future ahead? Why the disfigured, left behind in the carnage? Why the broken families, why the loving bonds severed beyone repair?

Because despair is a killing force.

Because injustice is supposed to galvanize you to action.

Because otherwise, inertia and laziness and the constant grind of institutions designed to strip you of your will and indignation will take it all from you.

The coin of injustice has a reverse side, that of apathy. And it kills more than any despot, if you give in.

So I push. I lean on the minds of the broken or the soulless. I push, and I push, and I lean, and I poke, and when one of them snaps, they always seem to go for the truly innocent. Sure, they claim that they want revenge, but so many of them seem to miss the targets they want to destroy, and spread chaos, pain, and confusion.

It is meant to scream wrong to your inmost mind. It is meant to hit you deeply, through the layers of dulled emotions and mental exhaustion that you wrap around yourselves, so you can sink into unfeeling numbness.

Even as his soul clings to me, begging for compassion, begging that his own soul be sacrificed for theirs, and his wife beside, begging for the same, I must do this to inspire you to change.

Not war. Not vigilantism. But to become the people that break the system from within, overthrow the tyrants, and make a peaceful new world that is much kinder than what you have now.

Because if you do not, more despots shall rise, and the sacrifices become useless. Bodies and wasted lives as an obstacle to step over, futures annihilated, for the insatiable greed of hollow power.

Will you let them win?

Will you put aside the pretty distractions, and actually do the work?

Or will you finally pay attention to the blood of innocents, and learn the lesson?