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 Way of the Warrior  (20 ratings)by Igor Raffaele Page 1 of 10 Who rules the night?
A comics hero of old, dark cape and black mood, asked himself that very same question more than once. Actually, his doubt was just one of the many devices authors used to make their characters more seemingly human: it was back in the times of ink and paper, long before holograms were perfected, when fractal plot generation and neural simulations of behavioural patterns had not even been invented. Every bit of the work was done by hand with painstaking care, and readers had to wait a whole week or sometimes even a month to read a new episode of their favourite comic. Had he been a real flesh and bone crimefighter, he would have known that the night was his to rule, and he would have backed that with the arrogant and absolutely total self assurance that distinguishes every hero from the people they live to protect, the people they die fighting. Sometimes however, on a quiet, soft night like this one, I stop on my rounds and look out from one of the platforms. Sometimes, I stare straight into the void filled with lights and bustling activity. I think about the events of my day, the things I found out during patrol. Under the flickering car lights like stars, I make a mental map of the city's power structure, bad people, good people, and poor people. Then, all the pieces in place, I ask myself that very same question. I am a Knight of the Temple of the Flame. That flame is dying and forsaken, just like the high ideals of Truth and Justice it tries to represent. I am sworn to uphold those ideals and to fight with my every breath all the miscreants who oppose them: at my age, my dying breath is coming along on the double, and if I wanted to really uphold my oaths, I'd have to wipe every trace of life from this planet. Perhaps then I could start again with pallid squirming things in the deapths of the ocean, and hope they get it right this time. A long time ago, so long that the yellow sun sailing open blue skies is a thing of children's fairy tales, mankind was on the run. Most of the fertile land was contaminated by a radiating death, legacy of the Shrine Wars, and every scrap of uncontaminated soil was needed for growing crops. Seeking to pack as many people on as little land as possible, four archologies were built. Four towers, one for each power block. Six years of work on those self contained tombs for humanity's soul. Ten billion people were divided amongst those plasteel and concrete monstrosities. All nationalities and cultures were forgotten as the various corporations substituted souls with money and violence with justice, in an olocaust that is nowadays known as the Migration. In that world of grim resignation, a group of young idealist fools stubbornly refused to follow the crowds under the decay of corporate rule, and struck out towards the wasteland. They gathered in a place once called Italy and founded a great temple amidst the mountains. Some were the greatest techinological innovators of their time, others brought resources and riches, others yet carried faith and the Flame burned bright in in their hearts. The temple grew and became a mighty stronghold. When the time was right, the Founders decided to reach out in to the world to spread order, and trained their brightes children in the ways of the Templar knights. Born in the Temple, I know what the wind on my skin and the sun in my eyes feel like; sometimes the memory only pushes me to fight for another day. I was educated in the arts of fighting and in the codes of the law. With many others I was sent to the archology to show people the way, and to keep the holy flame alive. My mission is to show them that there still are things pure and beautiful to fight for, and to protect them from whoever wants to enslave their dreams, to make them think otherwise. In a fast moving world where the puniest hoodlum operates according to sophisticated probability ptojections and thinks with cybernetically enhanced brains, most raw recruits just set up electronic early warning perimeters, and then sit behind computer screens in their offices, waiting for alarm lights to go off. They regularly ignore muggings and murders on the streets, they try to go after the big fish and constantly monitor information exchange centres and the many trendy clubs. I am not here for the big fish, I am here for the people in my block. Every day I walk my block, trudging on and on, looking after my people the same way the look after me. I know I cannot possibly cover my whole territory on foot. I am supposed to take care of more than two thousand square kilometres, all scattered along a tangled nightmare of six different disctricts, each placed on a different hanging platform. Like sick intestines huge geothermic collectors rise from the ground far far below, and function as pillars for square platforms that house buildings people and other pillars on which yet more platforms rest, on and on to infinity. Some people believe that the Archology truly is the full extent of the universe, and tales of an outside world, of an universe, are just for books: for someone born and raised in this cruel grey mother, this hard shell full of so much human horror, it would be easy to come to suck conclusions. The deepest levels dig so deep into the earth that the rock around them is more liquid than solid, and air compressors are used in the highest reaching levels to make the thin air breathable. Copyright © 1999, 2000, 2001 Igor Raffaele, sffworld.com. All rights reserved. No part of this may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the author. 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