A thousand liquid needles bombarded the dreary white half circle target of a street
lamp's pondering halo and the subfuscous recess of darkness around it gaped with a homicidal
malevolence as if the lofty spectacle of nature took pleasure in laying this false and sterile world
to siege. The rain skimmed down as if rapier like machine gun fire; butting a concrete paradise
from an obscure diagonal angle like a maddened bull thumping its scarred and nobbled skull
against the forbidding structure of its oak thick pen. If some being forced this humid deluge to
earth, that being's art was influenced by a surreal stimulus. Cleaving, clawing bolts of lightning
grasped the blackness and tossed it aside like a deformed, rejected runt of a factory toy; thrown
aside as if failed to compare to the other flawless consumer creations which the plenipotentiary
production line churned out. Jabbing the quaking ground with murderous barbarity, a piercing
electrical bolt whipped into nothingness and made something explode. There were two forces in
nature; perhaps both indistinguishable in the eyes of the creators; one violent, one tranquil.
Such paradoxical duality was typical of a nature which humankind could either ignore or
struggle to comprehend. If there were two creators; one good, one evil, it was clear they were in
constant confrontation deep within this sloppy establishment of a false human dominance. If
they created everything, it was humankind who placed them in adversity over such an unnatural
aberration as a city; a mismatched gaggle of vague shapes and forms swaying uncontrollably
between the natural and the industrial; between heaven and hell; fact and fiction. A ghostly
arena neither good nor evil which proved the only viable battle ground for the two disconcerted
forces.
Times Square boomed with neon furnaces which sprayed their blinding, multicolored rays
across a congested road and over pedestrians like fireflies over food. Thunder echoed like a
distant volcano as chattering rainfall blundered over canopies and the bonnets of taxi cabs and
blended with both color and non color as if under an expert camouflage.
Within the nameless catacomb of another series of crossed block streets filled with muffled
hazes of stringent grays and blues and dense wallowing smog accompanying that ever present
lingering chill, Martin Iron pondered the question of emptiness. What was emptiness? The wail
of the wind? The squalid spectacle of darkness? If we encounter nothingness when we die, what
are we encountering? Something beyond us? How can we encounter something beyond us
unless we cease to be 'us'? If we cease to be us, what do we encounter? Nothingness? How do
we even go about thinking of nothingness? The empirical mind is incapable of understanding
emptiness because it is a thing we cannot find in the material world. As such, emptiness is a
vital aspect of our lives. Without the unknown, we are so in control that we are lost, and if we
realize this fact we become fortunate beginners. So what was it? Contingent, eternal, surely non
existent, yet still there. So many questions; so many answers; but none sufficient except the
only incomprehensibly perfect one; that emptiness was something abundantly full.
Iron trudged through a bouquet of trash cans and dreary gray bricks past a bombarded
building sculpted artlessly by some ancient and malignant demon, and into the circus of
maddening lights. Ducking out of the searing colors, he entered a hidden, shattered world
through a leaning stone archway which would have better befitted a gothic crypt than a modern
metropolis. Behind the noxious glare of perpetual hypnotic advertisements and honking drones
of traffic stood a cube of four open rooms separated by a cross of charred and blackened brick.
A bare, dimming light bulb hung on a precarious wire in each of the quartet of somber sections;
illuminating limited areas for four groups of wily characters who continued to conduct their
business as if in truly separate properties. Drifting through the entrance as if out of the
commercial frying pan into what appeared a far more treacherous Transylvanian furnace with
its twisted, crooning gargoyles leering from feeble overhangs and multicolored splinters of what
must once have been stained glass in a previous, less sinister existence, Iron noted the savage
array of weapons arranged on tables tucked into the far corner of each quarter room and
wondered why the ingenious architect had had the bright idea of simply dumping such an
uneven rectangular blight of a building slap bang into the middle of an old churchyard with no
appreciation of the bygone civilized culture it represented, and furthermore, without even
demolishing the rest of the original building before commencing the devil's construction work.
Undoubtedly such mock conservation was dictated by cost cutting as opposed to reverence, but
Iron was well aware of how God moved in mysterious ways, although this specific mime of his
appeared particularly bizarre. The whole scene reminded him of ancient Myan landscapes
where jungle vines burst through the gargantuan building blocks of vast abandoned cities; the
new world giving way to the old. A pointless window backed with bricks clang to the wall
opposite him and a long swaying punch bag hang like a bloody corpse on an old blunted meat
hook. The dozen or so inhabitants of this sub terrainian world were instantly recognizable in
duplicate dark blue military uniforms; the traditional dress for officers of the new regime. To
Iron, being so tirelessly versed in the coincidental discovery of such badly guarded
establishments, recognized it immediately as a military checkpoint. Such things had been
springing up all over the city since his friend the president took over. They were intended to
make the whole place more secure; rudimentary trained military men crammed into paltry little
holes in order to enhance their already overbearing presence throughout the City State. This
particular center of military activity was clearly in mid construction, but that didn't seem to
deter the battle hungry minions from swarming into work in advance just on the off chance they
might get some opportunity to elevate their thuggish reputations should some crazed pedestrian
with an overbearing curiosity drift by. And of course, pleasure aside it was all in the name of
their beloved despotic autocrat, who they loved according to.... Well; according to their next
pay packet. In actual fact, Iron thrived on such chance discoveries. It was like finding buried
treasure; a welcome reward for all his constant unavailing searching. This was an opportunity
to kick Heir Volscenzi right in the teeth; he only wished he was in a position to make such an
action literal.
Goren Yavanov; a tall, official looking character splashed with military awards and
puffing a grand cigar, nodded in the direction of the intruder with a persuasive jab of a finger.
In the military, you learn how to obey commands before they're even given, and if you respond
a little late, a show of personal strength and skill is often enough to gain the superior officers
semi genuine respect once again. Sure enough, Officers Hsu and Strovanovich obediently leapt
to their feet as a handful of whispering colleagues watched in elated expectancy; the rest
ignoring what they assumed would be a short lived rebellion. But that expectancy was soon to
be shattered as Iron hurled a leg out to the side, hacking into Strovanovich's throat like a wood
ax before Hsu fell to a deceptively similar fate. Without even indulging in the luxury of bringing
his leg down to earth before throwing the second government officer to the floor; let alone
breaking a sweat; Iron shrugged his dissatisfaction with limited concern like a millionaire
having lost a five dollar stake on a ball game, and lifted and dropped his feet fidgitingly as if
pacing pickily through a crevice covered snowclad hill range. As the victims spluttered
helplessly in the montage of dust which attacked them like an army of starved alligators in
shallow water, Yavanov and his peers surveyed their embarrassment with disgust. Iron flashed
a guiltless smirk and proceeded towards Yavanov's table, which was soon left unoccupied as the
local big cheese and his two subordinates rose in preparation for combat. But not; as it
transpired; as prepared as they might have anticipated. Iron however, had found that
preparation often revealed itself as a double edged sword. The more you grow accustomed to
preparing yourself for every conflict the card deck of life deals you the more psychologically
dependent on that preparation you become. Better to relax and let the all pervading flow of life
carry you along like a broken twig in a galloping mountain stream. Intention can easily be
adulterated; instinct tends to take you where you need to go. Bearing this in mind; or not as the
philosophy requires; he burst into action without warning or hesitation as he used both arms to
provide the extra velocity for a spinning hook kick. The pace of the motion even surprised him;
his victims fared far worse. Officers Chennet and Gucumatz had always been best friends;
they'd grown up together, joined the corporate 'revolution' together, and now; cradling almost
identically splintered jaws; fell from moderate grace together. Yavanov turned out to be no
more imaginative. He toppled head first into the steadily crumbling back wall as Iron ducked his
optimistic drunken swig of a punch and performed a full circle back leg sweep which the
floored commandant would be forgiven for thinking had swung around faster than a bat to a
baseball. But by now what had begun a routine scuffle with a doomed social misfit had become
a proven challenge to the stability of a local militia checkpoint. That qualified Iron's actions as
treason, and in the eyes of Officer Ruel Thompson; whose mind was focused more on the
possible rewards than the immediate consequences; personal hero worship beckoned. To this
unlikely end he hastily leapt off his chair and galloped at his target armed with a vehement
rusted dagger. Iron was more than equal to the challenge. He sidestepped thoughtfully and sent
a straight legged swing like a rigid pendulum into Thompson's craggy chin; cracking his teeth
painfully together like a pair of colliding automobiles and hurling the rest of his body into the
collapsible table which had stood beside him. Casey Gyes and Jin Juketti then took the stage,
but quickly received a closer introduction to it. Iron emitted an almost lackadaisical grin as he
placed both hands on the sooty floor and flipped forward in a maneuver reminiscent of a
cartwheel; both heels finding unguarded facial targets before landing safely behind the
mesmerized recipients, who dutifully collapsed on either side of their eccentric opponent.
Accounting for injury and deserting, three nervous looking officers remained; congregated
around the philandering punchbag; which hovered and glided as if a tipsy specter; like a gang of
drug dealers desperate to avoid capture on their last day of parole as police sirens began to ring
in their ears like melodic representations of their own acrid consciousnesses. But that swaying
sack was soon to burst into more decisive action; Iron thumping it sideways with a blazing
roundhouse kick. Unfortunately Emmanuel Ropa; another averse acolyte; was watching the
man not the bag, and was unexpectedly floored by the latter. Marcel Fontare was not willing to
fall to the same fate. He backed away and snatched what appeared to be a mediaeval mace from
one of the few standing tables. Victory through unsporting competition; he presumed; was
preferable to no victory at all. But as Fontare burst forward weapon first, Iron remained
characteristically unmoved. He snatched the attacker's arm as if catching a bluebottle with a
pair of chopsticks and twisted himself around; throwing the aggressor turned victim over his
shoulder and into the unsuspecting Ricky Patroklos, causing both to collapse as if being rolled
up in a foldaway sofa bed. Ropa, meanwhile, had decided that lingering astringency aside, it
was to be his day after all, and in unsteady tandem with another fallen accomplice; Thompson,
he took a firm grip of the intruder's arm; both officers disabling his defense as Patroklos and
Fontare rejoined the action like downed and dejected grid iron brutes spurred into unanticipated
animation as more illustrious teammates trespassed for the first time in the match into their
opponent's territory with the philanthropic promise of a touchdown. Yet again though, the four
attackers were to be gifted with a wholly unwanted surprise; this time involving a cool, circular
arm and body movement which resulted in Thompson and Ropa flying towards each other and
clashing heads with an excruciating thump at the spot where Iron had stood not less than a
moment ago. But the monomatic mortification was not to end there. Before he could work out
what had happened and indeed, before Thompson and Ropa had concluded their hazy swagger
by admitting an effectively autogenous defeat and toppling like felled pines to the floor,
Patroklos found himself a part of the pile; Iron directing him into the other two with an
opportunist shoulder throw. "Last for everything;" Fontare grumbled to himself as he drew a
machete from an oversized coat pocket and discarded the sheath; "Last to join, so I get all the
flak. Last to be reassigned here, so I end up the errand boy. And last on board when the whole
sodden ship sinks." Preoccupied with banding around blame rather than the battle at hand,
Fontare had conceded defeat before even throwing a punch; not to suggest that this concession
dissuaded him from doing so. He lunged half heartedly with a mindless swing of his brazen
blade and thus left himself with barely enough energy or commitment to watch Iron leap above
the gliding object and place a hooking sidekick into the fragile cranium just above his eye,
which efficiently persuaded him to prematurely give up the ghost before he himself became one.
Iron surveyed the emptiness all around him. Silence; calmness; a tranquil alaraxia; a glorious
lack of activity. His nerves, respiration and heartbeat settled into a resplendent relaxation in
one simultaneous action like a colossal industrial machine whirring down for the night. He felt
as if he was in two dimensions at once. His fractured, incarcerating shell of a body was without
question here where it should be and where it spatially appeared, with his mind and soul
hovering dazily somewhere he couldn't quite locate. But maybe that was the point; you can't
locate emptiness. Both aspects of this duality were unconnected in space or time, but he was
fully aware of both all the same. In one dream world he stood, surrounded by either semi
conscious or woefully unchivalrous government officers in a smoky, gutted building. In the
other, he felt himself washed calmly in unintelligible ecstasy on the tip of a wave in an
ostentatious ocean which appeared to fill the observable universe. He had a strange thought;
"what if we aren't only here; if we're somewhere else as well at the same time, but aren't aware
of it?" Though the original 'world' could be perceived by all the traditional senses and the new
one could not, both an almost awkward physical feeling and an innate recognition of his second
home like an orphan returning to the place of his birth for the very first time forced him to
decide he was locatable in both; he was indeed of dualistic substance. He felt the second world
pass through him as if his body were that of a transparent apparition who was undoubtedly an
object residing in this world, but alas had no physical attributes to prove it. "Maybe this world's
people are another world's spirits, and vice versa. No wonder we can't prove that the spirit
exists; it's not here, but that doesn't mean it's not real. You don't refuse to believe the moon
exists just because you haven’t been there. You don't deny the principles of Newtonian physics
just because you don't understand them. Emptiness is the nature of all things. It's a spiritual
thing, but that doesn't mean we can't experience it; just that we can't define it. Skeptics say that
it's convenient for spiritualists that they claim they can't put their realizations into words.
Actually, speaking as a spiritualist who would love to be able to share what rare realizations I
have with others, I'd contest that it isn't convenient at all." When asking himself which world
was empty and which full, he decided the word 'emptiness' more accurately described the new
one, since there he was empty, and the fact that the world was unequivocally full was of no
consequence, because a world's properties are decided not by some objective rules which apply
to something external, but to the opinions of the individual involved. Without subjectivity there
is no objectivity since only a contingent, subjective being with a concept of 'I' and one of 'not I'
and with the mental vocabulary to distinguish between such debatable notions as reality and
fiction can ever even attempt to approach the question of objectivity, let alone solve it.
Identification causes fragmentation: without differentiation, everything is free, as nature
prescribes. And, as he left this particular hidden alcove of contestable reality into the
resounding fantasy land of scolding billboard lights and brain baking advertisement boards, the
second side of the aforementioned duality continued to silently conspire to drag him like a
teutonic field medic pulling a heavily armored and severely wounded combatant out of no man's
land towards some inexplicable, inestimable destiny.
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