Them #26
It was J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb.
I remembered the quote but never knew it came from scripture.
I thought he’d made it up, said it because it was merely true.
But then I realized that the only spiritual connection I’d found since hiding in the bunker… I shared with the destroyer of worlds.
Oppenheimer wasn’t Death. He didn’t want to be Vishnu or Krishna. He just wanted someone to tell him that he was only human. To share the burden and face his judgment not alone. We’re two endcaps on the same bookshelf, he and I. Two pieces of the same prophecy.
I put those feelings down for a long time.
Shackled them in the cellar of my mind. I never wanted to, of course.
I wanted to stare at the consequences and dwell on my role.
Be punished for it. Perhaps find some slice of self-respect.
But the more I gazed into history, the less I felt an agent of it. Yet I’m not helpless. I never was.
The rat race is indeed over. The maze has broken down and there’s no one left to repair it.
I wasn’t running toward anything, only holding on to this thin idea that I could make things a little bit better, but what I really wanted was to stay alive.
I’m no Oppenheimer, and I certainly wasn’t trying to save anyone with Project Artemis.
None of us were. We weren’t fighting for anything grander than our own ambition.
I don’t deserve the reassurance of Vishnu.
I’m a broken man who’s since turned to hundreds of gods, worthy of none of them.
I don’t even deserve Death. There’s enough ammo here for Superman to put himself down, but I shouldn’t get to rest. I haven’t done anything yet.
And let’s face it: Those were selfish thoughts for a selfish man.
I wasn’t strong enough to bear my own guilt.
I wondered if my courage would ever return.
Even setting pen to paper still hurts. I tried so many times to get the words out.
To say something. Anything. For my own sake.
Because if I could write it all down, then maybe I could come to believe that someone might read it someday.
I could tell them everything. How sorry I am.
Whatever hope I held on to shattered when the radios finally went silent, and everyone was gone.
The scariest thing in this world isn’t the monsters we brought home.
Nor is it the decrepit artifacts and the humans who left them.
It’s the idea that I shouldn’t give up, ’cause Lord, all of them, whichever one, knows that I really want to.
Gods, I want to give up so very badly. It would be the easiest thing to do.
But that idea. It fights me like a bull.
Or like the wildcat scrawny little boy I used to be.
That kid who never gave up, not because someone was watching him or there was a promotion on the table, but because he was compelled to by no force other than the strength of his own heart.
That’s who’s been fighting me this whole time.
And not just since I first hid, or when I sold my soul to keep this world compliant with our bastardized definition of “safe.” He’s been fighting me ever since I tried to forget him—ever since I tried to grow up.
But sometime recently, that buried innocence became an idea, the notion that someone might read the words I’m writing down.
They’ll hear my lonely broadcasts and actually meet me in Washington.
If I give up now, there’s someone down the line that’s going to pay the price for my cowardice.
Anyone left needs to know it’s not their fault.
I can still be of some use to this world I have wronged.
I feel it in my bones. I realize I must be halfway insane—and only half so much as I deserve—but something is different now.
These words aren’t for nothing. I am sure.
There will be someone to apologize to. There will be someone I can help.
There will be a reason for me to gather up my guts and leave this cowardly place.
I can’t believe it; I must simply know it, as tangible as the sky is blue and the monsters are real.
It doesn’t matter if I sound like a madman, because the only truth left in my old, scarred heart resides within the madness.
You heard me. You must have. Through whatever invisible force binds us as a species I know that you did. Something changed. An aberration in the static. A tap on my shoulder. A whisper over my grave. Something was different today. You heard me.
The doubt has already gnawed my courage to the marrow, but I don’t care.
There’s that voice within me, one that isn’t quite ready to die yet.
I’m already dead so long as I trap myself inside this cage.
I constantly tell that voice this is all my fault.
I ought to rot or be ripped apart, whatever this dead world should judge the worst for me.
But the voice doesn’t listen. “So?” it asks, as if my crimes against Earth don’t matter. “You still have more to do.”
“But I can’t undo what I’ve done,” I tell the voice, that slice of myself that used to dream.
“But you can still do something, right?”
Yes. That’s right.
I look over my shoulder, to where the waiting door whispers.
And I know it’s time to go.