Come On In, the Water's Fine

The last message of the Emperor Calus to his shadow of Earth, the Guardian

The title of this message must come as a shock to you, I know. An Emperor never needs to apologize, yet in this and this alone, I ask for your understanding my shadow, my friend, my Guardian. An old acquaintance of mind recently dropped by the neighborhood, and I am eager to renew our friendship. I’ve decided to pay him a surprise visit and go for a dip in his deep ocean.

I do not think I will be back, at least not for some time, and never again in the form in which you knew me. So this is goodbye, my cherished subject. Farewell. Saying this to you in person, seeing your broken heart, watching tears track down your face, listening to you plead for me to stay, all of that would be more than I could bear, so please forgive these cold impersonal words, the harsh black-and-white of mere writing, the cold unfeeling of ones and zeros compared to the warmth of my embrace. Know that they are written with love, my love, as generous as the sun, as wide as the galaxy, as deep as eternity.

Yet I do not lack empathy, I am not cold. Not that. Never that. My soul aches on your behalf. So I will not leave you entirely bereft. I am the gift-giver, lord of the open hand, and here at the end of all endings, here at the final parting I give you to my last and greatest gift.

I give you comfort, a promise, and a path ahead.

I do not claim omnipotence or clairvoyance. I see the way ahead but imperfectly. Yet in the universe of the blind, the one-eyed man is god. So it is with me.

I have a new shadow, a new guardian, Katabasis, and he tries his best but he’s no god-killer. I spoke to him through one of my avatars in the bathing pools. We’d found an ancient comet, composed of ice nearly as old as the universe itself, and I had it melted and fed into my bath water, relaxing as I listened to crystals billions of years old crackling and releasing gases imprisoned since the world was new. Katabasis stood to one side, stiff and rigid and scowling, suspicious, his arms folded across his chest like a fence.

I wanted to tell him: “It’s okay. It’s alright. Come on in. The water’s fine.”

Now, as I prepare to dive into the deep, I say those same words to you, my dearest and truest companion, my closest friend:

It’s okay. It’s alright. Come on in. The water’s fine.

A shadow is a thing of darkness, but you have burned so furiously bright. So restless, so driven, never satisfied, never at rest. You devoted your entire existence to the expansion of you might, and I have delighted in this, as your triumphs became my triumphs, your might a reflection of my might, your glory adding to my glory. Yet I worried for you, my shadow, I did. I did. Expending all this energy on a struggle that was doomed from the start.

You said the fate of everything hung in the balance. You said the universe stood at the brink. I indulged you in this fantasy, but let there be no more sweet lies between us. Let us face the truth:

Nothing hangs in the balance. The universe does not stand at the brink.

Yours is not the climactic battle between Light and Dark. That already happened. Long, long ago. That battle has already been lost. It’s too late to save the galaxy, my friend, all that is left is to enjoy what little time we have.

There may have been a time when the ending could have been averted. But that was millions and millions of years ago. For a while Light and Dark contested on something like an even footing. But the Dark won. It won. It has been winning and winning for millennia. You aren’t going to stop it now.

You can’t shoot a star to stop it going supernova. You can’t hold a blade to time’s throat and demand that it rewind. You can’t stuff heat back into a sun with your hands. You certainly can’t do anything to prevent the Darkness from winning. Thinking that you can is a special kind of miserable madness.

Take the Hive, for example. There’s no such thing as the “sword logic.” It’s the philosophy of a child. Killing is the how, not the why. They see god in a storm, and never learned about the wind. Life is not driven by death. Killing is just what we do to get more. Life is driven by life. Your life, my life, the desire for more, more, ever more. More life.

Katabasis caught me a wizard once. My psions peeled apart its brain to see how it thought. Such filth and depravity spewed out of its mind, like you wouldn’t believe. It claimed to be an avatar of death, yet it shrieked and howled when I dipped it, still living, in a pool of -400-degree liquid hydrogen (Come on in, the water’s fine, I chuckled).

You see? It was not so sure about how blessed death was when it was the one dying. I’ve still got its frozen corpse on display somewhere, I think.

Anyway, you get my point? Solipsism is the only honest philosophy. When you end, that’s the end. You aren’t going to your heaven, my guardian. There’s no other, brighter world where everything is alright. So make this world your heaven. Let that become your solace and strength.

The Hive go crazy when I annihilate an entire star system just so that nobody else will ever drink the wine grown there. It’s wasteful, they say. They get angry when I deprive them of their sport.

But have you ever noticed how they always leave their prey with an opening? A way out? Kill that ally, pick up that orb, stand on that plate. And suddenly the invincible become vulnerable. Do you know why they do it? I do. I think, deep down, they are terrified. On some subconscious level, they don’t want to win, because the thought of winning is the thought of self-annihilation, because they only win when everything is dead.

Don’t you see? That’s why they’re so unhappy. That’s why they’re weak. They’re afraid of the end of the world. Do you want to be like the Hive? Like them? Forever terrified of the inevitable end of the universe? No, of course not. There is a special kind of power in realizing how powerless you are. It’s amazing how nothing scares you when you have nothing left to lose.

That’s why I tell you all your fears are misplaced, all your worries are unfounded, all your energy wasted. The secret is not to fight against it. The secret is to sink into the tub, close your eyes, and embrace the end.

The Darkness is killing my world, you say.

My shadow, your world already lies dead. Look, just look about you. Look at the tiny remnant of your species, huddled beneath its broken-shelled god. Look at the wastelands stretching all about you. Look at the ruins. The devastation. Why would you ever think anything could be saved from this?

The Darkness is corrupting our souls, you say.

My shadow, every soul is already corrupt. Your leaders are incapable of agreeing on anything. The only thing they can protect is their own position. They are forever reacting to events, three steps behind. They stagger from crisis to crisis, each time coming closer to disaster. Why would you ever think they could lead you to victory?

The Darkness is infiltrating my city, you say.

My shadow, it’s already here. It’s everywhere.

The Darkness is winning, you cry.

It has already won.

This is not the beginning, but the end. Nobody is coming to save you. You are not the chosen one. You are not the Children of the Traveler, you never were, you were an accident, a diversion, an amusing way to pass the time.

Knowing that is the key to everything. Everything. Your struggle is not noble or brave or righteous, just pointless. A waste of time. You are not going to change the outcome. You are only going to hurt yourself, and others. You’re only going to make yourself miserable.

So relax. Put down your weapons, my shadow, take off your armor. Feel the Darkness rising all around you. Feel it closing over your head.

Don’t panic.

It’s okay. It’s alright. Come on in. The water’s fine.