Threads of Fate
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Completely unknown to him, Shinji had actually gathered a few admirers at school. He was not all that 'cool' to the boys, still something of a nerd, but to the girls he was more appealing.
It was by simple matter of selection.
First off, he was clean and orderly. Boys as a rule were dirty, sweaty and rude. Shinji was not merely neat, he did so on his own without seeming to notice and without looking a like a pretty boy. Orderliness without being told was the first sign of maturity.
Secondly, while was smaller than most of his classmates, he seemed /more/ than them somehow. His eyes were deep and unflinching, and he had a well of silent self-assurance. Whereas he was once a recluse for the lack of it, now he was set apart because he had /too much/ of it.
Thirdly, he was mysterious that way; independent, aloof. Many of the children knew that those he lived in were not his parents and unfortunately being taught to be an orphan was fangirl fodder. Whatever shyness and awkwardness they could see, instead they believed as a plea for caring and attention that would be honestly returned.
A Space Marine feared nothing, and his every step was to purpose. The books however told little about the ways of human interaction, specially towards the opposite sex. There, he was lost.
If only girls was more like the Adeptus Sororitas! Then there would be no problem. He had never thought women would any be weaker than men. Unfortunately, the Sisters of Battle and their pyromania and religious fanaticism would also be hard to find.
Ever since the event years ago, in which he pulled out a singular Waaagh! that he swore never to repeat, he had learned to keep his figurines at home. They were too precious to risk, despite the emotional comfort they provided. He kept their existence to himself.
Thus, he was lost. He had no idea how to relate.
Shinji's little crush was a girl taller than him, and so delicate she looked like made of flowers. He felt himself hesitating every time he even gets close to her. Though he was smaller he feared as if his slightest touch could damage her somehow.
"Shinji?" her opinion of him. "That little weirdo? I don't know, he kinda creeps me out. Always just standing somewhere, staring into the strangest things. I saw him stare at those flowers for like, almost an hour."
"Eeh, Minase-chan? So you WERE looking…" was the reply of another girl, her voice peevish.
"Oh, just drop it, Acchan. Why are you asking me? I don't care."
It was just by accident he overheard. He would swear! He was just walking along the bush. It wasn't stalking! Fortunately he was indeed very good being unnoticeable when he needed to be. Like his father he was prone to possessiveness, and now he had found a new target.
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"What should I do?" He paced the room and asked himself. He looked at the figures at his desk and as his gaze rested on each of them could almost hear the Warboss respond… /'I dunno'/, the Space Marine /'…have courage'/, and the Chaos Marine /'… you are… actually asking… ME?'/
He picked up the Farseer. "You're a girl. What should I do?"
/'Shinji, I'm speaking only as a figment of your imagination,'/ her voice was almost at his head. /'How do you seriously expect me to solve your problems?'/
"Aah!" he began to spin around. 'What should I do?'
Learning about the school band was a fortunate turn of events.
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He had his cello. He had a manual, and later his guardians would find him a teacher. In the meantime, he put his stick to rest at a string and filled his head with illusions of how he'd show her his skill in music, at how they would create music combining and completing each other…
He slid it against that string and killed his eardrums.
"Aaaagh!" he screamed. It was horrible! It was impossible! She would hate him! Hate him utterly!
He turned to the Space Marine at his desk. "Don't look at me like that. All right, I'm not giving in to despair! I gave my word of honor!" And to the Chaos Marine up on the shelf. "So you can just stop celebrating right there!"
Shinji could not really talk about it to his guardians, and so turned to the only companions he knew he could completely trust.
His old friend the Warboss was an asexual being that reproduced through spores and the blessing of the Ork Gods, and could only offer advice /'Stop overfinkin' and go bash somefin'./ A good dose of violence would let him forget ALL about this love foolishness. It's so puny humie of him.
"I AM a human." he retorted.
/'Yous a bloddy ork inside-'/ The warboss seemed to shake. /'And don't you forgeddit. Wez got da blood to prove it!'/
The boy sighed and lay back on his bed. "She's never going to like a creepy, violent crazy weirdo like me…"
The Space Marine continued to stare. /'This uncertainty is unworthy of you./' He seemed to say. /'Remember that doubt is for the dying.'/
/'I agree!'/ an imagined voice that was harsher, even less forgiving than a Space Marine's put in. Though mortal and frail compared to the surgically transhuman knights that were the Imperium's finest warriors, the men of the Imperial Guard were the hammer of the Emperor. /'To lie to oneself is the first step into lying to others! Guard your thoughts, boy. For such thoughts lead to Chaos!'/
"Oh, Commissar-san!" Shinji noticed one of the regimental Commissars by the flowerpot. He was orderly except for one thing, he was apt to pick up his figurines and absent-mindedly place them back down one he has finished a 'conversation'. That was the likely reason they were always all over the place. "Thanks. That really cheered me up."
/'Yes… sure…'/ ground out the Thousand Son Chaos Space Marine over at the shelf with his oily voice. /'Gang up on me. I have NOTHING to do with his thoughts, though I follow the Gods of Chaos, even I find such whining disgusting. Why do you think we send so many cultists out as meat shields? We will not suffer even such emos in OUR presence.'/
He was still confused, however. He was almost half-asleep when he heard a commanding female voice say /'To look too far into the future leads to madness. To Hope is to be Disappointed. If you must plan, Shinji, then you must define your goal and choose the paths that will lead to it. Choose the best future nearest, and see only that future. Do the steps that will lead you to that. Then the next simple outcome. And the next. Only then will you find that which you seek.'/
He turned and saw a skirted figure near his head. "What do you mean, Farseer-sensei?"
The other figurines made outraged noises at that suffix of respect, and various warnings about never trusting an Eldar. Chaos, self-recognizing as evil and misleading, was even the loudest at it. Shinji could almost feel her pride. His eyelids were heavy, and through his wavering vision he could almost certainly see her turning her head and lowering her arm from its salute with a sword. The Eldar placed her hands to her hips as Shinji began to cross that boundary between sleep and wakefulness.
/'Time is planning, Shinji. Many believe that the future is what you make of it. You mon-keigh are determined to force fate to your whims.'/ She radiated amusement. /'Only we Eldar see that the future is already set. The future only calls for events to be altered to suit itself. It is the present that is malleable, never the future. Do you want me to teach you?'/
/'Eldar witch!'/ the Space Marine spat. /'I will not have him as your pawn!'/ The others made similar cries.
/'Silence! He is not your Emperor's! Not yet! I will not have his blood spilled just like any other meaningless fighter in a meaningless Waaagh! I will not have his beautiful soul consumed in Chaos! I WILL GIVE HIM WHAT NONE OF YOU CAN GIVE HIM!'/ She turned to him and spoke softly. His eyes already shut, Shinji could pretend freely he felt the barest of pressure on his nose, like a tiny hand pressed upon it.
/'I will give him a Choice. He will know just why it is he so willingly walks into Hell,'/ said the Farseer. /'I will give you A Mind Forever Voyaging, Shinji. Will you accept me as your teacher?'/
"S-sure, Farseer-sensei…" the boy mumbled in his sleep.
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The Farseer stood over him, her cloak billowing in the breeze. The world was all mist, dense and endless. She stood tall and proud, her armor the fruit of thousands of years of expertise in crafting and warfare; light and effortless to move in, unlike those crude slabs of armor by the younger races, yet no less protective. Her facemask looked even more severe, more disapproving than a Space Marine's. Their thick helmets merely made them look Angry, All The Time. The Eldar's pointed chin and frown instead made him feel all his insignificant years.
Maybe it was a bad idea. He knew full well he was dreaming, but even there he felt in complete /lack/ of control. What was a boy to an Eldar, a person thousands of years old, even if it was one he imagined into being?
The Farseer reached into the back of her helmet, and unlatched it. Unseen seams came apart with a hiss. She pulled up a bit, and removed her helmet to the front. As her face revealed itself, with one last flick away from its darkly discouraging mask, Shinji felt his heart stop.
There were illustrations, but they simply did not do her person any justice. She was an Eldar, pointy-eared and arrogant in the supposed perfection of her Race. Three thin red lines were marking the sides of her face, from eyes to chin, as if she had been crying blood. Her lips were as red, as if she'd been drinking blood. Her skin was smooth and seemingly glowing with an inner light, such was its silken fineness.
It was there Shinji recognized why he found Minase attractive. Her delicate, regal features was the closest to living Eldar he had ever seen.
The Farseer smiled. It was an unnaturally beautiful, frighteningly serene smile. "Shinji…" she said, her lips barely moving. "Clear your mind."
"…what?"
"The mind is full of noise, going hither and thither. The mind is a spoiled child. It is without order, without structure. The mind is a journey. Is it freedom to just let the wind and waves take you? To let yourself drift wherever it might take you on its whim? Is to take the helm taking away from that freedom? Freedom, is choice. This has always been the gift of the Eldar. To be able to decide where and when you want to go. To take that future, and only that future you want. You must clear your mind, if we are to begin."
She sat cross-legged on the imaginary ground, a wind helpfully setting her cloak out of the way as she sat. It was a standard meditative seat. "Shinji, please sit."
The boy nodded and complied. He looked at her for a while, so deathly still, so artistically perfect. A comparison to a spider would have been easy, as she was wearing black and bone-white. Shinji could not compare her to any creature, she was just as moonlight to him. Cold, but at the same time elegant light, hiding flaws, enhancing grace, holding secrets.
She opened her left eye and slightly quirked her lips.
Shinji turned red and quickly shut his eyes. "Clear the mind… clear the mind…" he muttered. She was right! It IS full of noise. Everything it seemed passed through the forefront of his thoughts. It didn't help that he had completely memorized all the codices, every angle he could view the miniatures, the sketches, the novels. Everything there, and constantly churned over in his mind, was what made him capable of recreating the personalities of fictional beings so thoroughly.
He began to frown. He began to sweat.
"Aaah! This is harder than it looks!" he had to say. It's unfair that the Eldar could do it so easily. Eldar seemed always at peace with themselves, without the internal struggle of the mon-keigh. It was a point of irritation that the closest thing to it was the simple crude mind, never without any insecurities, of an Ork.
"I would have been surprised if you succeeded in your first try, Shinji." She lifted her right hand and held it palm down in front of her. She then had moved it about in gentle, swaying motions. "The mind is like a butterfly. You can see it resting on a flower, but it leaves. It goes where it will. But it comes back to that flower again.
"It is perfectly all right to let the mind wander. As long as it returns. Then, the mind may be taught to remain. All life, is suffering, Shinji. All suffering, is in the mind. Only in the mind can one become free. Take your time, Shinji. Time is meaningless here. We can take as long as what proves necessary."
"Won't I just forget when I wake up?" He began to think of a butterfly. Come on butterfly, don't move. Don't move. Ah! No… bad butterfly! "This is a dream, right?"
"It is a dream, true. But a mind in control does NOT lose control. To wake is not to disappear. To wake, is simply to BE, to exert even greater awareness of the mind, as connected to body."
Eventually, Shinji realized that forcing the butterfly to remain still actually encouraged it to fly away. The butterfly, if left alone, will choose to return to the flower. It would flitter away, then return. Away and back again. By ignoring it, Shinji knew that he actually found the stillness he was looking for. Motion in stillness. Stillness in motion.
Time was indeed meaningless. It could have been minutes, or hours, or hundreds of years before he came to that conclusion. Eons more as he learned to be satisfied with it. That damn butterfly's never going to just stop at the flower. To fly IS the natural state of the butterfly. The flower's natural state IS to provide a place for a butterfly to rest.
"You're teaching me patience, aren't you?" he said after some time. "A clear mind doesn't equal an empty mind. Only that it knows."
"Very good, Shinji. We Eldar meditate to bring out knowledge that we have always known. You have always known this." She stroked at his mind and had him open his eyes. "Now, come sit with me, and we shall learn how to apply it."
Shinji scooted closer and prepared to enter a meditative state again. The Farseer stopped him. "No, I said sit with me."
"Um, so, closer then? Should I sit to the left or right?"
The Farseer patted her crossed shins, and motioned the boy to sit on her lap. Shinji just knew his face was flaming with a blush, but the Eldar still had her eyes closed and seemed unconcerned. Reminding himself that it was all just in the imagination, he complied.
She laid her chin right over his head, her long black hair flowing like dark rain to either side of him. She grabbed his hands under her gloves and crossed them over his chest in much the same way Pharaohs would have rested. Needless to say, Shinji had a vastly more difficult time at achieving meditative serenity.
"The future… to reach for it, one must first define your goals. What do you want, Shinji?"
"Want…? I want Minase to like me!"
The Farseer hmm'ed. He could feel the vibrations passing through the chestplate and into his back, going deep and prickling into his spine. "Vague." she said. "That is not a goal, not even an idea. A future must be specific for it to happen."
He closed his eyes again and reached for that timeless calm. "Specific, huh? I want Minase to SAY she likes me."
"Like you? In what way? Or for what?"
"Um, just LIKES me, I guess. I want her to say someday, Shinji I like you…" Wait. He could feel himself drifting. The was muddying the vision. "No… I want her to like my music. She can like me later."
And then, it suddenly came all tumbling into his brain. It was all so obvious, in retrospect. He gasped.
A myriad of possible futures, given what he already know of his classmates, his teachers, his classroom, and what they might be doing. What he had imagined, was hope. It was wish. What the Eldar had were a burden. The future was no mere fantasy. It was a series of specific events happening at specific points in time made by specific people. There is no 'might be'. There was only 'will be' or 'will not be'. An event once past cannot be undone. It only reduces it further, the choices available to it, closer and closer to one eventuality.
He can't predict Minase's movements or her opinions. He can mold events however, to arrive at a specific scenario at a specific time. But to lock on to that ideal would be to ensure it would never happen.
It was an odd paradox.
But there was a way out…
"What future do you reach for, young Mon-keigh?"
"I reach for no future, ancient Eldar. I see it, and it will come to me."
The Farseer kissed the top of his head. "And thus you have taken the first step in a winding road once traveled by the Eldar."
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The Eldar – what others may refer to as /the space elves/, with all the smug self-righteousness that implied – also had much to be smug about. A psychic and long-lived race, they wielded the powers of the Warp in way that was safe and refined, woven into their technology, while other lesser creatures risked their heads exploding or being eaten by daemons. They were sixty million years old, and their Eldar Pantheon fought the Star Gods and their Necron servants in the War in Heaven. And as both the Old Ones died off and the Krork devolved into brutal violence (becoming the Orks), they remained and they flourished. They claimed and expanded the Webway and became truly the undisputed masters of the galaxy.
The Imperium of Man could only dream of ever matching the glory of the ancient Eldar Empire, who captured suns in artificial dimensions for warmth, and made infinite skies out of the skein between the Materium and the Immaterium.
The Imperium of Man could also only look to the Eldar as an object lesson of mislaid power, they whose hedonism birthed the Chaos God Slaanesh, the Prince of Excess; tearing open a rent into the fabric of reality in the heart of their Empire; becoming the vast roiling expanse known as the Eye of Terror. All Eldar on their deaths, no matter how far from the Fall they've been born, all their souls would be claimed by Slaanesh to be raped and tortured forevermore.
The Eldar knew much about the secrets of the universe, but in the end they lost knowledge of themselves and empathy with all the other beings around them, and that meant their doom. Only the few, the Craftworld Eldar, survived the Fall by fleeing the very pleasures and intensities of their civilization.
And the Dark Eldar, who lived in the irrational scream-filled city of Commoragh, built within the Webway itself, warmed by captured suns. They who never stopped in their debauchery and malice, surviving by raiding and enslaving and bartering a few more centuries of existence by sending delectable other souls to Slaanesh.
The Eldar Farseer would never brook a similar fate born of ignorance and selfishness to fall upon her charge.
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Shinji taught himself how to plan ahead. He drew a line in the sand and took a leaf. He held it above the line and felt the Farseer ask. /'Now, which way will it fall? The right or the left?'/
"Left." he decided.
He let go of the leaf. It drifted slowly down, twisting over in mid-air now and then. It landed to the left.
No way! He had really, really focused on-
/'Do not hope, Shinji. The future is not built on hope.'/ she admonished soundly. /'An object does not move through time. It is time that flows around an object. The leaf, the wind, even you, and here only you can make the choice and only you can create the future that you desire.'/
Shinji picked up the leaf and held it up again, this time much closer to the ground over the left side. "It will fall to the left." And so it did.
/'What have you done, Shinji?'/
"I saw the future I wanted, and knew the steps that would have it happen. This was the simplest I could see."
/'Well done. May your sight serve you well in the days ahead.'/
People, because they made choices, were simpler to predict. It is unknown when Gendo himself learned this, but Shinji for all intents and purposes, taught this realization to himself. Information was needed to craft a scenario, for the future was a series of steps, each of which built upon each other, reinforcing each other, until finally there was no choice but to arrive at that outcome.
Shinji visualized a future in which his teacher would arrive and say "Sorry class, I… overslept."
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It was just a day after getting his cello. He did so by simply asking his teacher "Hisoka-sensei, why don't we just use China for farming? They've got plenty of space over there that they don't need, and we… we don't have enough people anymore. They still have lots of people."
"Um… shouldn't you be asking that to your Social Studies teacher?" A child talking about naked conquest was clearly not what he expected this afternoon. The boy had an intense burning stare and he just couldn't look away.
Shinji dropped his eyes. "I'm sorry, I just had to ask someone…" He backed away and ran out of the classroom before his English teacher could say anything more.
And because he couldn't say anything so Shinji, had to say it to himself. It got stuck in his mind as he went home. The boy watched him go. Shinji knew that Hisoka-sensei lived in a small old home with a multi-generational family.
And he just knew that he would blurt it out to his wife, as he thought things over on the way home. And also somehow he just knew, that Hisoka-sensei's wife would bring it up over the dinner table.
And he could see, though the faces were blurry, Hisoka-sensei's brother saying how stupid it would be, hadn't they learned from history? The horrors of the Empire of Japan should never happen again, and they were still paying for it morally and spiritually into the next century.
And if meaning was only land-lease, piracy in the sea of Japan was still a problem.
The father would just shout out to shoot them. The problem's from their side of the sea! All that land, and they wasted it, most of their population died of starvation, not the rising seas. Supply and demand worked like that. Manchuria was warmer now. He would froth at the mouth in nationalist madness. If not Manchuria, Sakhalin! Get that oil flowing!
Both Japan and China lost 3/4th of their populations - but while that meant about 25 million for Japan, that was over 300 million for China lost in the immediate cataclysm, in long-term climate impact, and their short but intensely bloody civil war. China prior to 2000 was on the verge of becoming the world's factory, but now they starved for foreign business.
A decade was too short a span to recover from the death of half the human race. Where others saw it a time for common humanity, others saw it as proof that one should put one's own selfish interests first and don't give anyone else an even break.
It would not be wise to rely too much on foreign assets, Hisoka-sensei's brother would say. Even if by some insane miracle they could just take it without anyone deciding to go to war about it, certainly they can't afford to KEEP it. Even if they buy it, someone else could just take it along the way. Food was the first strategic concern of any nation and should be self-sufficient. They learned that the hard way, half a century ago. Besides, the Chinese had nukes.
The father would retort: And so do we! Though to be precise, N2 warheads, almost the same anyway. They had the will and ability to preserve their own rights now. Damn it, he had enough of being forced to feel guilty.
And Hisoka-sensei would have sat there in uncomfortable silence, as his stronger-willed family got to shouting and debating. Each time he opened his mouth to speak, his father or his brother would say something hateful to each other. His brother would sneer at their father, who in turn would roar for the respect he was due as the patriarch of this household.
His wife would just pat at his hand and give him a look that said /'Yours is the only word that I trust'./
He would kiss her that night, but try as he might, he would not be able to go to sleep or concentrate on much anything else. A question like that brought out the discontent stewing in the family, and on a greater level the self-loathing of their generation. Some tried to overcompensate by being strong and putting down others, others found meaning in remaining civilized in the worst of times even if that meant giving others a smug superior air.
Too many died of starvation or disease in the first six months after Impact. No mere World War could .
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The next day, he did arrive late, his clothes crumpled with hurry. His eyes were bloodshot and weary. "Sorry, class…" he started to say. "You overslept, Hisoka-sensei?" Shinji said suddenly. "It's okay."
The teacher laughed weakly. "Yeah, sorry class. I overslept. People do that from time to time."
The children nodded, forgiving him instantly. They never wanted to get up early either. Until then, they just assumed adults did so because they wanted to, but even they were human. They paid a little bit more attention in class that day in sympathy.
Shinji caught him again by the end of the day. He felt guilty and just had to give him back his nights.
"Oh, hello, Shinji, about what you said…"
"I'm sorry to be bother, sensei. But I just thought, we don't NEED to go to China after all. We can use their land without taking it from them. That's selfish and bad. Can't we ask for help somewhere else?"
The teacher's eyes widened. "Yes… that's what I thought too. We can just lease it from them for a guarantee of production. They provide the land, we provide the seedlings, the technology and the expertise. We still have the best agricultural and genetics research after Impact, but it is true that when it comes to people... we just don't have enough anymore to choose between farming and construction."
He had no idea why the government was so obsessed with materials science and reconstruction, though it would all become clear why in the highly unorthodox wars to come. "China's greatest resource has ever been its people. Unfortunately the history between us is just too deep. There's too many things in between."
Japan had done too many sins to China, Russia and Korea for anyone to feel comfortable with their resurgent Navy. However, that had to be counterbalanced with the present threat of Chinese and Russian friction and the instability of South East Asia. This was why many merchants traveled in convoys despite how it it added costly delays - countries were secretly attempting to prevent each other from becoming too powerful too quickly in the Post-Impact world, but not to the level of provoking outright war.
Japan was a nuclear power now, and the fact N2 weapons didn't cause as much radiation poisoning afterwards made them even more likely to be used if ever someone dared to let the genie out of the battle. Which was why the Sea in the west of Japan boiled over with harassment and secret wars.
And even in politically safer oceans, the weather itself had grown more unpredictable and energetic. Convoys were necessary for ships to be able to rescue each other. Lone ships had a tendency to just mysteriously disappear.
"But that approach to America and South America, now that's different! It might be farther away, but they actually have the military power to protect their convoys, and without any need to ask for a guarantee of production. There would be less deliberate deal-breaking or lapses in piracy protection."
The US Bases in Okinawa were no more, the island as a whole was left barely habitable by Second Impact. However, the empty Pacific didn't need much attention. The years after impact was noted by mass sickness and starvation, and even ten years later food shipments were a nice easy and lucrative target. Very easy to take and offload and repackage.
But even so there was still one nation that was the foremost naval power in the world. Arrogant and self-assured about their place in the world as the Americans may still be, only a fool would dare to attack a convoy bearing the red, white, and blue.
He stared down at the little boy. "That was surprisingly deep of you, Shinji."
"Um… sensei? You said all that stuff."
"Uh. Right. I guess I did." He began to laugh again, at seeing his own ridiculous attention to the question… "But such thoughts you have. You should apply yourself more to schoolwork, Shinji. You're wasting your potential."
"T-thank you, sensei. I better be going now… Please stay safe, sensei."
The next day, Hisoka-sensei showed up early, smiling and well-rested. His wife made sure he eased off to bed, and his father and brother were finally off to another business trip. They owned a transport truck business. The teacher felt more energized, and ready to prepare his class for a world where cooperation was the best way to achieve anything.
And a certain child's eyes glittered with dark satisfaction.
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