Demian hovers above the massacre, hunting for the seven forms of sympathy.
At sunrise, a tribe of pale warriors had met a tribe of dark warriors on the grassland. Now most of the pale warriors lie on the churned grass, staring with ruined faces at the darkening the sky. Hundreds of dark warriors crash into the last remnant of their pale enemy. They crush corpses underfoot, as they slash at the pale warriors with curved swords and splintered spears, smash their skulls with shields and rip their throats open with dirty fingers, shrieking like demons crawled out of hell.
"I've been here twenty days," says Chuck, floating beside Demian on hoverboots. A forcefield surrounds them, making them invisible to the tribesmen. "I've watched the savages mash each into other a bloody pulp. I've watched them rutting like dogs. I've watched every act of savagery I thought were extinct for a million years. The only thing I haven't seen is this sympathy magic."
Demian watches, as a dark warrior lunges forward into the ranks of his enemy and splits the skull of a pale warrior with a stone axe. The dark warrior roars, his grinning face splattered in blood. Suddenly a spear bursts out of his throat.
Demian wonders what these savages would think if they knew of the world outside their island. A world where men strode through the sky and lived hundreds of years. A world where steel birds shot through the sky, taking you from London to Canberra in a few minutes. A world where men fought with atoms, where wars were won and lost in milliseconds. A world where men had become gods, and made their own heaven from light, glass, and steel.
"Say something you, stubborn bastard," says Chuck.
"General Malo sent us here to find the seven forms of sympathy-"
"I swear if I hear another word about seven forms of sympathy, I'll snap your neck. You're obsessed with it. If these savages had some voodoo magic, we would've known long ago. But we're still here, watching them hack each other to a bloody pulp. We haven't seen one form of sympathy, let alone seven. I hate to break it to you, but sympathy doesn't exist. I'm going home. Back to civilization."
Demian remembers on the top floor of a skyscraper, halfway across the world. Where General Malo had looked into his eyes and spoken, "If you discover sympathy, I will make you an Imperator. Your name will be known until the oceans are dust and the mountains blow in the wind, as the man that saved mankind."
Chuck's stupid and wrong, thinks Demian. The seven forms of sympathy are somewhere on this island. I'll find sympathy, even if it takes a me a year, a decade, a lifetime. He would return home an Imperator.
"You can go back if you want to," says Demian. "I'm staying."
A shout goes up from the battlefield.
"Why are you so bloody stubborn-"
Suddenly, the screams and clash of swords fall quiet. Demian looks down. The dark warriors have stopped their onslaught. They gasp for breath, their dark bodies gleaming in sweat. Their Chieftan towers before them. A monstrous savage, with a bulging belly, arms swollen with muscle and hands that could crush a man's skull. He wields a huge club, splattered in blood.
The line of pale warriors melts for a burly warrior, his body stained in the love bites of swords and spears. He stumbles towards the dark men, dragging a bloody axe on grass. The pale warriors stare at him. Some call his name. The burly warrior does not meet the eyes of his people.
"What the hell's the savage doing?" demands Chuck.
"Chuck, please shut up." For weeks Demian had sweated and toiled under the hot sun, watching the savages, and scribbling notes until his hand burned. Trying to answer the question that had tormented him for the last few days. What are the seven forms of sympathy? Was it a magic that could rip planes out of the sky, or murder men from a thousand metres away? Now, the answer could be right before his eyes. The show of sympathy. The moment that would make him an Imperator.
The dark warriors glare at the pale man stumbling towards them. As the pale man gets closer, they shout in their guttural tongues, beating swords upon shattered shields.
The pale man stops before the Chieftan. Standing before him the pale man looks fragile, like an ancient hero who has come to slay a monster.
"The little savage's got guts. Show us some sympathy!" Chuck's voice echoing in the forcefield. "Get the big bastard-"
An axe clatters onto the ground. The pale warrior falls to his knees.
Chuck sighs. "Look at these cowards. One taste of battle, and they're on their knees, crying. They're just like you, Demian. No wonder they haven't evolved over millions of years."
You've lived your whole life in skyscrapers and never worked an hour in your life, thinks Demian. What would you know about battle?
The Chieftan towers above the kneeling warrior. The blood-splattered club clenched in his huge hands. Demian sighs. He would see no sympathy today, only the poor bastard getting his skull smashed.
Demian hates to think this way, but what if Chuck is right? What if sympathy does not exist, and he spends his life chasing something imaginary? Just like the ancient explorers who spent entire lives chasing after mermaids and cities of gold. He would stay an outcast his whole, fantasizing about becoming an Imperator.
You can't think like this.
But how else can I think? Demian feels the despair rising around him as he starts drowning. I've been watching the savages for four weeks without seeing a single form of sympathy.
The Chieftan roars below. Demian does not bother to look down. The savages probably started fighting again. How could these savages have seven forms of sympathy? Men who wiped their arses with leaves and ate earthworms-
"What the hell are these savages doing now?" demands Chuck.
Demian looks down, to see the Chieftan smiling at the pale warrior. Suddenly the pale warrior starts bowing his head onto the ground. The Chieftan growls with laughter and claps him on the back.
Demian's translator picks up the Chieftain's words; "You fought ferociously against me, little man. Now you will fight ferociously for me."
Suddenly, the Chieftan shrieks. At first, nothing happens. Then, a dark warrior stumbles towards the pale warriors. More and more follow, until the whole tribe of dark warriors flood across the churned grassland.
"They were trying to murder each other seconds ago and now they're going for a walk?" says Chuck. "These savages are stupid beyond understanding. I'm going home, to what I understand, to pretty women and hot showers. Join me or stay behind, it's your choice." Chuck clicks on his hoverboots and shoots into the distance, leaving a foamy trail in the sky. Demian watches the trail fade before turning back to the savages kneeling on the grassland.
Demian remembers every time he'd watched a party ship floating overhead, or a beautiful couple striding past on the street. The sounds of laughter and company wafting to him, like the smell of food to a beggar. The bitterness in his heart as he walked away, hands shoved in his pockets, clenched so hard as if he wanted them to crack. The bitterness he still feels now, thousands of kilometers away from the nearest city, floating above this lonely island. When he became an Imperator, that bitterness would be buried in the past. Everybody would love him. All he needs to do is find sympathy.
The pale warriors watch them, their broken swords and shattered spears raised as if expecting the dark warriors to lunge at them. Instead, the dark warriors kneel beside the broken corpses, and start digging. Slowly, the pale warriors drop their weapons, and kneel beside them, grunting as they dig.
Suddenly, Demian remembers what he had seen in the village. The Chieftan handing out bowls of rice to a starved mother clutching a bundle of bones. Naked savages crowded around a pyre on which a dead man burned; their tearful faces washed in the glow of the flames. Chuck had called them the acts of stupid savages. Even Demian thought they were primitive rituals. Yet every time he'd watched those scenes, he'd felt touched by a warmth deeper than anything he'd ever felt. The same warmth he feels as he watches the warriors bury their dead.
Could it be? The answer to his question right before his eyes. The seven forms of sympathy.
"I swear on my life," he murmurs, "that I will not leave this island, until I discover the seven forms of sympathy."
Demian watches as a train of ragged men march into their village of mud huts.
Their feet fall upon the dirt path like a dry rain, bringing up clouds of dust. Pale and dark warriors march together. Men with sunken ribs and sunken eyes, their lean bodies covered in scars, slashes and punctures. Some men talk and laugh. Some men scream, clutching meat stumps with bloody hands. Some men stay silent, their heads lolling forward, their feet dragging on the path. Their souls remain on the battlefield broken and bleeding, staring up with bewildered eyes.
A dark crone stumbles out of a mud hut as if she is remembering how to walk. She gropes at the warriors with wrinkled claws, growling at them. Demian's translator picks up, "Where's my son?" She is the oldest creature Demian's ever seen, yet she is probably only fifty.
The warriors march past her. A few glance at her. After a while a pale warrior tells her that her son is dead. The old woman grabs the pale warrior's arm. She stares at him, trembling like an ancient tree in a storm.
The pale warrior jerks free of her. Suddenly, the woman starts sobbing.
Demian wonders what the ancient woman is worried about. Just like every other human, he'd never known his parents. If his parents learned of his death, he doubts they would shed a tear. It's civilized life, he thinks. The people around you die, you find new people, and eventually you die. You might reminisce the people you knew every now and then, the strange ghosts of a past life, but they are gone.
Below, the old woman is shrieking. "He never did anything wrong! All he wanted to do was fight for his village, and you pale bastards butchered him…"
Demian clicks off his translator. He wonders if he can understand the old woman's pain. A few days ago, her son was alive. A child that she has raised from birth. Now he's lying on a battlefield, as maggots eat his eyes and beetles make their home in his flesh. All those times she had shouted at him, laughed with him, or nagged about grandchildren; moments that seemed worthless an hour ago are suddenly worth the world. Demian realizes that if he was in the savage woman's place, he would be sobbing. Anybody would be sobbing, even a snob like Chuck.
I'm feeling the woman's grief, Demian realizes. The old woman is another being, her thoughts and feelings locked in a prison of flesh and bone. Yet at this moment, he's reaching into her, feeling her misery.
The street below is a rabble. Demian looks down at the village and sees more and more savages coming out of their mud huts, standing around the sweaty, bloody river that oozes through the village.
He sees women in rough dresses. A few clutch rag bundles at their breast, humming as they search anxiously among the scarred, sweaty faces of the warriors for their husbands. He sees packs of scrawny children sprinting by the river, laughing, and shouting names. He sees walking corpses, floundering at the river's muddy waters. All of them searching for the fathers, husbands, sons, uncles, and brothers who stumbled off to war. Boys shrieking as they throw themselves onto their fathers. Sobbing women embrace their husbands. Blind fathers clinging on to their sons.
Demian watches, feeling stunned. It isn't just me, he thinks, it's the whole village. A delicate web of emotion connects every savage in this village. The web is invisible, but the smallest tremble is enough to bring an old woman to bitter tears.
Demian doesn't need to guess to know what he's discovered. It's sympathy.
All he needs now are the seven forms. Sympathy between old and young. Sympathy between men and women. Sympathy between pale and dark men. Sympathy between dead and living. Sympathy between mother and child. Sympathy between father and child. Sympathy between full and hungry. Demian's sure that there are thousands more forms of sympathy, but he doesn't care. All he needs is seven.
Demian has dreamed about being an Imperator for as long as he could remember. A great man. A man who's invited to those midnight parties on floating ships. A man who's friends with singers and athletes, beautiful billionaires. A man who's never lonely.
His old classmates, wherever they were now, would see him on their televisions, and they would remember the quiet, little boy they used to beat up every lunch until he was sobbing and bleeding, the quite little boy whose books and snacks they stole, who they called names and laughed at. The quiet little boy, now the youngest Imperator of all time. All those bastards now willing to throw away everything in their own lives just to be in his place.
And now, the dream is finally coming true.
Demian glances at the savages one last time, as they stream back into their mud huts. He loves every one of them, the naked children, the frail old men, the blood-splattered warriors.
"THANK YOU!" he screams, as he shoots off into the distance.
Demian stands in a huge office, on the top floor of a skyscraper. Landscape paintings of forgotten ages cover the walls. A field of golden wheat, under a fading blue sky. A man in a waistcoat stands on a rocky beach, as the frothing ocean crashes towards him. At the far end of the room sits a monstrous desk with six computers. Dog-eared books and half-scribbled papers drown the desk. Behind the desk, sits General Malo.
"Sir, I'll warn you now that this is only a rough theory. I only discovered sympathy a few hours ago and-"
"Demian," interrupts General Malo. "What are the seven forms of sympathy?"
"Sorry sir." Demian smiles awkwardly. "It's hard to explain. Somehow, these savages can reach out and feel each other's emotions. Let's pretend that my mother's dead, sir. Let's pretend that makes me very sad. You've never known my mother, but if you wanted to, you would still be sad. That's sympathy, as strange as it sounds. I've seen it with my very own eyes, and so has Chuck. Honestly, I think it's a pretty useless magic-"
"The sharing of emotions?" General Malo smiles. "Hmm. What are the seven forms then?"
"Sympathy between old and young, men and women, pale and dark men, dead and living, mother and child, father and child and full and hungry," recites Demian.
"Hmm," says General Malo. "That's interesting. Would it surprise you that once upon a time, we humans could share emotions with each other? Just like these savages."
"I never knew that sir."
"Most people don't. It's just another trait we shed, along with marriage and family, for this brave new world of atoms and fibre-optics." General Malo sighs. "The world moves on. I'm sure that this sympathy of the savages is the sharing of emotions we once had."
"Thank you, sir. Also, if I could just ask a quick question-"
"It's about your Imperator promotion, isn't it?"
"Yes sir," says Demian, his heart pounding.
General Malo chuckles. "It's done. I just entered your name into the records. You, Demian, are now officially an Imperator."
Demian has played out this moment in his head thousands of times. He's worked hard enough to become an Imperator a thousand times over. But when the moment happens, he's still dumbstruck. 'I'm an Imperator, he thinks, tasting the words, trying to understand them. The youngest Imperator of all time. A great man.
"Sir, I'm honoured. I…I…"
"You deserve it Demian. You've worked hard for this. Now go off and have some fun. Go fly a party boat or whatever you kids do these days."
"Thank you so much sir. Thank you."
Demian turns. He is grinning and giddy, feeling like a man with five grams of heroin crashing through his veins. Suddenly, he remembers something.
"One last question before I go," he asks, turning to face General Malo. "What will happen to these savages?"
"They'll be eradicated. We need the island to build a new communication tower."
"Oh. Thank your sir, for making me an Imperator. But why did you need to find sympathy then?"
"I'm sorry Demian, but the information's above your paygrade. Now go off and have some fun. Don't concern yourself with these political boredoms."
He can't help but pity the savages. What a unique people they were, able to sense each other's emotions. And now they are going to be bombed into ash. But that is the way the world works. You're an Imperator now. Isn't that what you wanted? Why are you still worrying about those savages?
Demian walks out the room, pulls open the wooden door, and steps into the sky.
Demian floats on his hoverboots, breathing in the cold morning, watching the world move around him. People streak past him, blurs of skin, coats and blowing hair. Some take their time, striding across the sky like proud gods. Planes shoot over his head, leaving the sky covered in bright, wet brushstrokes. Skyscrapers rise around him, so high they disappear into the sky, the sun twinkling on their steel and glass bodies. I'm in Heaven, thinks Demian. And I am the greatest man in Heaven.
To tell the truth, he does not feel any different. That's because you're in shock, thinks Demian. A few minutes later and you'll be bouncing around like a toddler, grinning and laughing. And the world will be laughing with me. All the classmates who had knocked him onto the ground, the teachers who had told him he had no chance, the parents he had never known, his colleagues who laughed at him behind his back. They would be proud of him. They would, wouldn't they? How could they not! He was an Imperator.
But what if they didn't care? What if it's all for nothing?
Don't be stupid, thinks Demian. You're an Imperator now, not a bullied child. Don't act like the bullied child, act like an Imperator-
Demian sees a blur from the corner of his eye. Before he can scream, something crashes into him. Demian is flung backwards and smashes into a wall so hard that he feels his body shatter with a horrible crunch. His bones disintegrate. His lungs tangle with his liver. His teeth shatter. His life flies out of his mouth in a bloody glob.
Demian does not know how long he floats in the sky. All he knows is that suddenly, he is lurching to his feet, finding his balance on his hoverboots. Something runs down his temple, feeling itchy. He wipes it absentmindedly and finds his hand slick with blood.
A tall man in a suit hovers above Demian, wearing a silver watch, watching him with cold eyes. He is the type of man the Demian has learned to fear his whole life, from kindergarten to the workplace.
"You blind or something?"
"I'm sorry," mumbles Demian, unable to meet his eyes. He does not know why he is apologizing. The man should be apologizing to him. He knows if he were standing a few inches closer, he would have become a bloody smear upon the wall. To apologize is a reflex to him, something he has learned to do his whole life.
"You should be. Bloody idiot. You should be glad that I'm such a good-tempered person. If it were anybody else, they would be smashing your skull against that wall. Wait, you're emotionally stunted, aren't you?"
Demian says nothing.
"Too stupid to say anything huh?" The tall man powers his hoverboots to life.
"I'm an Imperator," mumbles Demian.
"You're nothing but a retard." The tall man shoots into the distance, off to run over another innocent pedestrian. Gritting his teeth, Demian starts to stumble forward.
Demian drifts into his apartment. He shuts out the roar of planes behind a rusted door. He slips off his hoverboots, his leg burning, his mouth tasting like blood. He stumbles into the living room and collapses onto the sofa.
What's the point he wonders?
Demian remembers the flight back to his apartment. He remembers couples floating past him like angels, handsome men in dark suits and sunglasses and slender women in fur coats and fingers glittering with rings. He remembers kids no older than ten, and men with grey hair and faces smooth from anti-aging treatments, men that had to be at least two hundred.
Every one of them, from the children to the old men, had looked at him as if he were a cat's maggoty, stinking corpse. None had spoken to him. As soon as they looked and him and talked to him, all of them knew what he was. Nobody wanted to speak to the emotionally stunted bastard. A stupid title would never change how people saw him. It seemed foolish he could have ever believed that becoming an Imperator would have solved his problems.
Demian remembers how he had felt before seducing himself with dreams of greatness. He had been hopelessly lonely, feeling like the last person alive in this world, when there were twenty million packed into New York City. The feeling of hopelessness, not knowing or caring what tomorrow would bring, not knowing why he was still alive. He had felt like he was drowning, treading water every day until his limbs were burnt and frozen, and he felt happy to let the water wash over his head. And now, it is all starting to return.
Demian thinks back to the savages. He wonders what life would be like if he had been born there, knowing nothing but that microscopic world of mud huts. He would marry one of those brown-skinned savages. Have children and watch them grow old. A life like that would be perfect. Demian thinks he must be the only one in this metal city, who wished to live as a naked savage for the rest of his life. To live in a world with sympathy.
Suddenly, Demian knows what he wants. Sympathy. It is what made those savages so heartwarming to watch. He wants friends, who were more than people you got drunk with and slept with, people you cared about. He wants to be a father, to watch his children grow up before his eyes. He wants to live in a world where everybody treated each other like members of one huge family. A world where you cried for your friend's losses and celebrated your friend's victories as if they were your own. Demian knows only one person who treats him like that, and that's General Malo.
Demian remembers what General Malo had told him, that once upon a time, humankind had known sympathy. If only he had been born a few hundred years earlier. People like Chuck might think of themselves as advanced and cultured but when it came to emotions they are just as savage as the naked, dark tribesmen they looked down upon.
But it does not matter. In a few days, the whole island of savages is going to be burnt into dust. Life would continue as it had done before, a hopeless journey with no end in sight. He despises it, but that was the way the world worked. What could he do about it? A stunt against the whole of civilization.
Finally, he knows what he wants but he cannot have it. His life feels like a cruel joke.
It is still bright outside. Even with his door shut, Demian can hear the screams and laughter of his people. Friends getting drunk together and shooting up their veins. They would probably sleep with each other at the end of the day. But they didn't really care about each other. They stuck together because they had fun, and when the fun evaporated, they melted away back to their apartments to get drunk and shoot up their veins themselves. There's no point of him staying up. His people wouldn't care either.
Demian fumbles a pack of pills out of his pocket. He pours two pearl-white pills onto his palm. The savages would be wiped out, and sympathy with them, and life would continue. He would take pills, wake up, struggle through the day, and take some more pills and the cycle would repeat. One day, he would find the courage to take more than the two pills he needed. But that wouldn't be tonight.
He swallows the pills, and the world around him melts away.
The phone is shrieking in a warbled, savage tongue. Barely conscious, Demian stumbles out of bed, his mouth tasting like bark from the pills. He stumbles towards the shrieking, groping until he feels the cold metal of his phone.
"Yes," he mumbles.
"Demian. Get to my office now," says General Malo.
Demian stumbles out into the hallway, slipping onto his hoverboots. He pulls open the door and shoots off into the night.
"It's funny how much can change in a few hours," says General Malo. Demian has never seen him look so irritated. "Yesterday, we were a few days away from invasion. Now everything's fallen apart."
"What's happened sir?"
"Our scouts are disappearing. Half of the scouts we sent to the island are gone. Their transmissions dead, their locations unknown. Somehow, these savages are smarter than we thought. They are murdering our scouts. That's the only conclusion there is. I need your help Demian. Are you up for it?"
Demian nods. "Will the invasion be delayed, sir?"
"No. We'll strike when the iron's hot. We're firebombing the island tonight. We'll burn the whole island down to ash. As Imperator, you will lead the assault."
Demian feels sick to the stomach. "Sir, I'm… I'm honored. Who will be coming with me then?"
"Who do you think you bastard?" comes a familiar voice.
Demian turns, to see Chuck standing behind him. He's grinning like a madman, a flamethrower clenched in his hands.
The moon sits in the sky like an ancient, yellow coin. Darkness drowns the village below. Demian feels like he is looking at the depths of nothing. The way the universe must have looked once upon a time. Before this world became a graveyard of burning stars and swollen planets and brilliant supernovas, like the aftermath of a colossal battle. Before the hairy imps on a faraway rock called Earth grew a few brain cells and started thinking themselves gods.
Now, two humans float above a village with flamethrowers and gas tanks strapped to their backs, getting ready to burn it all down.
"We'll strike fast," says Chuck. "Burn every one of those huts down. Leave no savages alive. And then we fly back home. Sounds good?"
Demian remembers savages he had seen last night. The scrawny boys shouting their father's name. The old crone, sobbing for her dead son. The bony woman, sobbing as she embraced her husband. The dark men and pale men, cursing and laughing as they stumbled home from battle. Now, the village is silent. All of them in their huts, curled up on straw mattresses like the victims of a plague. Every hut filled with the snores and moans of the sleeping. Every man, woman, and child at peace for the world, even if it is only for a few hours. Every savage about to be woken by sudden and horrific violence. The silence shattered by screams. The mud huts blackened and crumbling, as fire devours all.
"Why don't we wait until the day?" asks Demian, holding his flamethrower. "We'll be able to see better."
"The dark makes the fire prettier." In the dark, Demian can still make out his grin. Chuck points his flamethrower downwards. Demian hears the trigger click.
The flamethrower spits a shrieking, writhing stream of fire onto the mud hut. The mud hut starts to melt. The thatched roof shrivels up and blackens as if touched by death. The walls blacken and start oozing, as if the hut is made of chocolate. Soon, the hut comes down with a groan. As flames consumes the blackened, straw carcass.
Demian hears no screams. The savages had probably been sleeping. He doubted any of them knew that death consumed them; all they would have felt was some heat. And then, their sleep would have been eternal.
"LET'S GO!" screams Chuck. "BURN THE SAVAGES!"
He points his flamethrower at the next hut and starts to burn.
I should be screaming at Chuck, thinks Demian. Begging him to stop, to tell him that these savages are the greatest people in this world, far greater than our stupid cities of glass and metal and you're burning them alive like a nest of wasps. I should lunge at Chuck and knock the flamethrower out of his hands. Maybe he should even turn his flamethrower upon Chuck.
Maybe a better man would do something. But Demian's been doing nothing his whole life. Why should he change now? It didn't matter. These savages are going to die anyway. That's the way the world worked. Life will go on. What's the point in fighting back?
Demian's body moves before his mind can catch up. His fingers click the trigger. Fire shoots out of his flamethrower and Demian starts burning. He does not think. He just burns. The hut melts before his eyes, his face washed in the fiery glow. He hears the crackle and sputter of wood, straw, and flesh like boiling oil. He hears the screams coming from a thousand miles away. Demian carries on burning. He smells an acrid stench so strong that every breath feels like he is eating the blackened sludge below. Demian carries on burning. He feels the heat, his face dripping in sweat and he feels like he is slowly melting like butter. Demian carries on burning. Let it all burn away. He watches as the hut melts and blackens and shrivels. He feels like a monstrous deity towering above the village, with the power to change and destroy at his fingertips.
The flamethrower is slick hands. As fire spreads through the village like a sickness, leaving nothing but withered, black ooze that might have been flesh. The night is choked with putrid smoke, the sky as bright as sunrise, blazing like a fever. And what could those straw huts ever do against such a sickness? Chuck's roaring with laughter. Demian's silent. His fingers trembling, his face pale and sweaty.
Suddenly, he spots something through the smoke. A dozen dark shapes sprinting out of their burning hut, onto the dirt road. Demian lets go of the trigger. Chuck sees them too. He drags his flamethrower away from a melting hut and towards the savages.
"CHUCK!" shouts Demian. "STOP! THOSE ARE LIVING PEOPLE!" Only now does it sink in. Demian realizes he has been burning living people this whole time.
Chuck doesn't listen. He is high on death, shrieking with laughter as he brings the flamethrower towards the savages with trembling fingers. The savages are screaming, sobbing, and sprinting. Every time Chuck's stream of fire crashes across the dirt road like a fiery whip from heaven, it barely misses the savages, leaving the dirt path scorched.
"CHUCK. PLEASE LISTEN TO ME-"
The stream of fire slashes through the group of savages. Half the savages fall onto the dirt, shrieking and writhing like men possessed by demons. Chuck points his flamethrower and pulls the trigger. As a stream of fire washes over them, melting their flesh into soup, their bones crackling, their skin peeling, eyes popping, the dirt under them burned as black as obsidian-
Screaming, Demian shoots a stream of fire above Chuck's head.
Chuck turns immediately to stare at Demian.
"I was just trying to get your attention-"
Chuck whips the flamethrower up. Demian pulls the trigger of his flamethrower, and a stream of fire consumes Chuck's face.
A horrible, gurgling scream bursts free from Chuck's throat, writhing consumes his body. And for a second, the fiery face of hell stares at Demian. Suddenly, Chuck explodes with a skull shattering roar. A wave of blinding light smashes into Demian. He is flung backwards. Suddenly he's falling. He screams through the sky, falling for a thousand kilometres, falling for a thousand lifetimes.
It is a relief when the ground smashes into him.
Light burns in his eyes like acid.
Demian wakes with a start, his mouth tasting rotting sewage. He lies on a straw bed. The air around him is warm and earthy. He notices a scrawny, dark boy sitting beside him. When the boy sees him, he screams, scrambles to his feet, and sprints out the door.
What did I do to scare him like that, wonders Demian. He feels so weak that staying awake feels like he is running a marathon. The events of yesterday slowly come back to him like dissolving memories of a dream. Was it even yesterday? Demian feels like he's slept forever.
A roof of straw rises above his head from which sunlight drips through. The walls are hard mud with wooden benches and a wooden door. The floor is dirt. Demian realizes he's in a mud hut.
The door creaks open and light spills onto the dirt. A tall tribesman stands in the door frame.
"The tribesmen think you're their protector god," he says.
Demian nods.
"They tell stories about you. They say that you fought the demon king Harnashucer with fire and magic for a hundred days in a hundred worlds until you finally reached the world of men. The demon king tried to burn this world. You saved them."
Suddenly, Demian realizes the tribesman is speaking his language.
"Who… who are you?"
The tribesman chuckles. "I am you. A little boy who's been mocked and called names his whole life. A little boy who never really fit into the flashy world of glass and metal. A little boy who cried himself to sleep every night, feeling miserable and alone and not knowing why, who thought he was the only one in the world like this. A little boy who wanted something more out of life."
Demian stares at him, dumbstruck.
"The doctors tell you that you're the only one like this. That you are emotionally stunted. When you look out the window of your skyscraper you believe them. Why wouldn't you? All you see are beautiful, laughing people. So, we suffer in silence, thinking of ourselves as outcasts, thinking we're the only ones in the world like this. Guess how many people in the world have our problem?"
"A few hundred maybe?"
"Ten billion. Half the world is 'emotionally stunted'."
"Ten billion people? How… how do you know?"
"I worked for the government, crunching numbers. Sometimes, I see numbers that I'm not supposed to see. A few weeks ago, a man called me. You probably know General Malo too. He told me he would make me a great man. An Imperator. All I had to do was go to an uncontacted island and discover a magic called sympathy."
"Did you find it?"
"Of course, I did. It took me a day. I watched the tribesmen celebrating a ritual and discovered sympathy. I could've become an Imperator, but I didn't want to. I feel in love with the tribesman and their sympathy."
"And now you're one of them?"
"I stumbled into their village one day, covered in blood. The tribesmen took me in as one of their own. There are dozens of defectors like me, scattered all over this island. I'm guessing Malo told you something else. That we'd disappeared-"
"He said the savages murdered you."
"The sly bastard. I'm happier living with these tribesmen than I've ever been in my life. By the way, there are a group of tribesmen waiting outside. They come here at six every morning and wait until eleven at night."
"Waiting for me?"
"Who else. You're a god, my friend. The slayer of the demon king. Now are you going to greet them?"
"But…I…I burnt their huts. I murdered their people. I slaughtered them-"
"Do you want to tell the tribesmen that? Or do you want them to have hope, to think that their god has come to the mortal world. The tribesmen have been waiting outside for hours. They already know that you've awakened."
Demian stumbles to his feet.
The savage grins. "That's the spirit. Do be careful thought. That landing beat you up bad. Your body us burnt and broken. My name's Cele by the way. What's yours?"
"I'm Demian." His whole body burns as he limps forward. He feels like an old man. Demian grits his teeth and follows Cele outside into the cheers and screams.
Demian limps down the dirt path. Every step feels like a rusted nail is being hammered into his kneecaps. His legs feel like jelly, kept together only by power of will. It would be a mercy to crawl like a baby. Instead, he grits his teeth and stumbles forward, cursing.
An old man ducks out of his huts and growls. Demian waves back at him, hoping what he's growled is something encouraging. He has started to learn the language of the tribesmen with Cele, growling and spitting until his throat was dry. A few days ago, every tribesman in the village had crowded around their mud huts just to watch him. He had felt like an actor walking the red carpet. The tribesmen did not seem to mind his burns- he was a god after all. Only a few tribesmen duck out of their huts to greet him now. Demian supposes that the novelty of watching a god stumbling through your streets fades fast.
Demian lives in a hut a few hundred meters down the dirt path, with Cele and a family of tribesmen. That is where he limps towards now, looking for something to eat. Demian has only limped a few meters, yet he feels like he has walked a thousand kilometres, his feet bleeding and blistered. Behind him the burnt huts slump on the dirt. Every time he sees it, Demian remembers the screams from the burning houses. He remembers the creatures writhing on the ground, their skin covered in charred crust, screaming ripping free of their throats. The creatures that hardly seemed human that night.
I made a conscious choice, he thinks. The flamethrower was clenched in my sweaty hands as I burnt the huts down. Cele told me that we all make mistakes. But in what world was the massacre of families merely a mistake.
A short child with long, dark hair runs past him. Demian watches with envy. He recognizes him as Mlehau. Demian calls him. Mlehau turns back and makes a face. Demian makes the same face and Mlehau giggles with laughter and runs off. Out of all the tribesmen, the children were the most fascinated by him. He does not blame them. If he were a little tribesman, he would be fascinated by a man with the face of an angel, twice as tall as Chieftan and covered by charred patches of flesh. Demian knows that a few nights ago it could easily have been Mlehau sleeping in one of the mud huts he burned.
As he stumbles forward, he passes a few more tribesmen. A gaunt couple walks towards the beach. Demian recognises them as the tearful couple who embraced after the battle. It seems like a thousand years that he floated above this village, watching the warriors come home from battle. The seven forms of sympathy don't exist. Sympathy is something that the tribesmen keep on giving, without expecting anything in return. Demian has spent four days with the tribesmen as a burnt cripple, living in a mud hut and eating burnt fish and grass every meal. yet he's happier here than he ever was living in a skyscraper, eating lobster tail and wagyu steak.
Thinking about it, Demian feels a little better. He would give back to these tribesmen. He would teach them about circuits and gravity. He would show them the world beyond this little island.
Demian pushes back the door, and limps into the mud hut. The hut is silent.
"Cele?" he calls. "Nlehet. Yuxaf. Nlahe?" Where are you?"
That's strange. Cele usually helps him at the door and asks him how his legs are recovering. The children would be laughing as they chased each from the mud kitchen to the room of straw mattresses. He sees the little girl curled up on the floor, sleeping. She is from the family that shares the hut with him.
"Nlahe?" he calls. No response. It's a strange time to be asleep, thinks Demian. But the tribesmen have plenty of rituals he doesn't understand. Feeling uneasy, he tiptoes around the sleeping girl, into the room of straw mattresses.
Cele lies on the floor, with the rest of the family. None of them are sleeping. They stare up at the thatched roof, light shining on their mangled faces. Half of Cele's face has been smashed into bloody smithereens. Behind him, Nhale's mother and father have been shot in the head. The gunshot wounds are like blossoming roses, the blood dripping down their temples. Cowered in the corner of the room, is the little boy. His head is slumped downwards, blood dripping onto his kneecaps.
Demian stumbles away from the massacre, feeling nauseous. Cele. The family. They had been alive this morning. And now they were empty husks out of which their blood fled. He feels the need to see that room again, just to make sure they are dead. That this isn't a mistake.
"Demian."
Demian turns. General Malo leans against a mud wall, a black handgun dangling out of his fingers.
"Look what the savages have done to you," he says, pointing at his scars with the handgun. "Back in New York, a surgeon could've fixed that with his eyes closed."
Demian stares at him.
"You've had your fun now. You're an Imperator. You murdered Chuck and half the savages. Now you're living with the savages. My question is are you ready to start acting like an Imperator."
Demian says nothing.
"Don't worry. I'll make sure your pardoned. My question is are you ready to return to civilization?"
The mud hut is silent for a while. And suddenly, Demian starts to speak.
"After I became an Imperator. I got drunk. I shot some stuff into my body. I didn't know what the hell I was doing. The next day I woke up with the savages. The savages led by Cele tortured me."
"Who's Cele?"
"The defector you shot. They burnt my body and broke my bones. They laughed as I screamed and wept and sobbed for mercy." Demian swallows, his voice growing quiet. "I didn't know how to get off this island. So, I stayed, waiting every day for rescues, for the day I could murder every one of these bastards."
General Malo sighs. "I'm sorry Demian. I've wrongly accused you. You can murder these savages as soon as you want. But we've got more important things to attend to. Do you know why I sent you here to discover sympathy?"
"I…I don't know," admits Demian.
"Our world is falling apart Demian. Fifty percent of our people are depressed. Every day, a million people throw themselves off buildings or intentionally overdose. The birth rate is stagnating because everyone wants to sleep with each other, but nobody wants children. The other fifty percent are a lot of bloodthirsty monsters who beat their partners. For the first time in a thousand years, people are living on the streets. This society won't last. If we do nothing, heaven will crumble. That's why we need bring sympathy back to mankind. You would want that Demian, wouldn't you? You've been bullied your whole life, without anybody to care about you. Now imagine a world where people care about each other, not money or drugs."
Demian nods.
"It will be slow at first, but the people will learn. Sympathy will be taught from a young age. Children will be taught in school to treat others how you would like to be treated. I can make it happen Demian. I can fix this world. But at the end of the day, I'm a mortal. I will pass away one day. That's why I need you. You will follow in my footsteps, feeding sympathy to our world. And on one morning, maybe even in your lifetime, you'll look down from the top floor of your skyscraper and you will see the sun rising on heaven. So, what do you say Demian? Are you going to come with me to this new world?"
"Yes sir," says Demian, limping towards him.
General Malo smiles. "We'll build this heaven together Demian. The two of us. The saviours of mankind-"
Demian's fist smashes into his teeth. He rips the handgun out of Malo's hand, stumbles back and points it at his head.
"Don't move," he snarls.
General Malo stares at him. "What…what are you doing?"
"You killed Cele. You killed the family-"
"Those savage playthings? Surely you don't care for them that much-"
Demian pulls the trigger. The handgun clicks. With a scream, General Malo crashes onto the floor, clutching his stomach.
"Come on, Demian. I'm sorry about those savages, but you need to see the bigger picture. If you love these savages so much, we'll take them into our world. We're talking about saving mankind here! Your people!"
"My people are in this village."
"You can't be bloody serious-"
Demian shoots him in the shoulder.
"Demian," gasps General Malo, "If you're going to kill me, then do it. But please don't turn your back on mankind. You can save your people. Their future is in your hands. Show them light in the darkness, show them sympathy-"
"No."
"But they'll have sympathy," Malo breaks off coughing, spitting out mouthfuls of blood. He tries to cough into his bloody hands. Mankind is horrible now, but you can save them. Don't you want that? So little children like you will never be bullied again. You might hate them, but they're still your people-"
"No."
"No?" General Malo's voice is twisted with agony. "Don't be a fool. Please. I'm pleading with you, as a dying old man. As much as you hate them, don't let your people go. Please-"
"I'll never help those savages ever in my life."
"You're a fool!" roars Malo, blood flying out of his mouth. He continues shouting, hacking out mouthfuls of sticky blood. "A stupid, cowardly bastard. I gave the order an hour ago. These savages will be wiped clean from the face of earth, their mud huts melted, and all the men and women and little boys and little girls will be burned into dust. If I can't save mankind before I die. I'll take consolation in knowing that the savages you love so much will be erased-"
Demian pulls the trigger. Malo's head smashes against the wall. His body twitches and he does not move again, blood drooling down his chin.
He had failed these tribesmen twice. He would not fail them again. Now, war is coming. He would protect these tribesmen, even if it meant giving up his own life. He would slay every bastard that tried to harm this island. He would be their protector god.
"I swear on my life that no tribesman will die before me."
Demian throws the handgun onto Malo's corpse and turns around to face the slaughtered tribesmen.