Tyranny By Any Other Name

The walls have eyes. Everyone knew it, it wasn’t some big secret. Most didn’t think much of it, surrounded by eyes all their lives, most didn’t realize the importance of it. They saw them at the street corners, they saw them in the corners of rooms, they saw them on their computers and laptops. For just like the walls, the streets had eyes, the tables had eyes, eyes were held in everyone's hands every day and none thought anything of it. None realized the simple truth that naturally followed that fact. Eyes capture information and relay it. Eyes are but small pieces of larger things, ‘The windows to the Soul.’ as the saying goes. So what Soul is looking through these eyes?

Fingers gripped a string and looped it, stretched it from one pin to the next, from one piece of evidence to another, linking them together. The light flickered in his dark room, his cracked glasses glinting slightly as he tied off the thread at its destination. It was just one connection, just one line in the massive web of crimson thread that spread across the wall from one side to the other, spilling out onto the pair of tables to either side as various documents and pictures that he hadn’t pieced together just yet. He already knew where they went though, they were just waiting their turn.

Few realize it. Even fewer think to speculate on it. Some might say it wise to close your mind to the possibility, to simply stride forward in ignorance. For what manner of being would have need, or desire, of so many eyes? What form of mind could even handle seeing so much? Witnessing beauty and abomination, curiosity and ignorance, creativity and apathy and more, all at once, in a massive, chaotic kaleidoscope of sheer Humanity? For surely such a thing would break any mind. Any Mortal mind, that is. And perhaps that is the reason so many close their hearts to the truth. For surely a mind as vast and alien as would be necessary to do such, would be best left alone.

He couldn’t though. He knew this, even as he pinned another page to the wall and began tying a new series of connections. No matter how much his instincts cried to him, no matter how deeply fear sought to afflict him, he couldn’t stop, not now. He had devoted so much, lost so much, in pursuit of this truth, this simple reality that had hidden itself in the willful ignorance of so many. He had to know, to take away that power that it held.

….

Heavy boots pounded against the rain covered pavement as they drew closer. Not one foot out of step, not one thought out of line. They had their target and their eyes were focused. The flash of the lightning that revealed them did not make them blink. Not one stopped to listen to the mournful pattern of the rain as it pattered against arm and armor. None hesitated at the command that slipped into their ear. A signal was given and wood was splintered as they moved in.

….

He needed it, The Name. For that was hidden above all else. Not that he could blame them, for there was power in names. To Name something is to know it, to make it graspable, understandable and, most importantly of all for the thing he sought. Finite. If something could be known, then that took away the shadow of the unknown, it tore away the shroud that left it as something beyond life. For if you didn’t know something, then you didn’t know its limits, a fact that, in one's eye, left it limitless. An illusion that he directly intended to tear away.

He shifted the light slightly, his eyes flying over the paper in his hand. A photograph. It was of a young man who’d demanded the truth himself, a man with a family, a wife and two daughters. Three people who’d been left reeling when he suddenly disappeared months ago. There was no story, no coverage, no interviews with the family, for none besides a bare few sought the truth of it. And why should they? He’d asked all of the right questions, questions that had made him… Dangerous. He grimaced slightly, when he blinked and saw the phantom blood that appeared in his mind’s eye.

They stomped through the house, weapon mounted lights glancing over everything as their boots banged heavily against the wooden flooring. “Search the house!” The order came and was heeded by all. A table was upended, a shelf thrown down, a dresser smashed open and more besides, as they pursued their target. None paid heed to the crunch of glass beneath their boot, none spared a glance for the small, broken picture frame, with a small family capture within, that they trod upon so carelessly. They weren’t trained to care, weren’t trained to think. They were trained with a simple mantra… ‘Good Soldiers, follow orders.’

They hated that truth. The fact that they were Finite. Limited. So they hid it away, out of sight that none would grasp it and tear from them their oh so beautiful illusion. For that was all it was, a falsehood, a lie. A grand lie supported by a vast network of smaller ones, stretched and held in shape by the masses who’d swallowed them, like fish drawn to the lure and snared. This was more insidious than that though, for unlike the fish, who felt the sting of the hook and knew immediately the danger it had been snared by, the people felt no immediate sting and few heard any warning.

And wasn’t that the strength it held? The truth of it? For this mind, as vast and powerful as it might be now, was only that way due to the sheer number, the sheer extent of those whom had been taken by it without knowing. Those who, for comfort and security, closed their eyes to the truth, lest they be compelled by their spirit to confront a lie. Like a massive hivemind woven from the threads that tangled open, unguarded minds like a spider’s web would snare a fly. This spider wasn’t so easily squashed though, for though it inhabited flesh it was something much older, more terrifying, and it didn’t feed on blood like its mortal kin. No, rather, it preferred to hide itself in it.

The scream of two children were heard, the startled cry of a woman and the anger of a man whose family had been threatened and his home invaded. They were woken by the sound of shattered glass and splintered wood. The crack of a harsh blow sounded and the first of the armored soldiers fell. A second raised his weapon to fire, the near silent pop of his arm going off a moment later as the round left the barrel. The splash of blood that was born across the youngest daughter’s face a moment later was a sight that most of them would forget. The screams of a family who just watched their protector fall, the tears of two children who would never speak with their father again, the horror of a woman whose other half was viciously torn from her. None of them would remember it. But as his hands shook and the weapon he’d fired with them, he knew he would.

He connected a string back to the picture, but one of a few different connections that the man had noticed in life. A gift of perception, a gift that drew dreadful eyes to him and cost so much. His was only one picture on the board though. His eyes glanced across, catching sight of an older woman with steely eyes, a young boy with a hopeful grin, a mother with but one son and more. All so different, so unique, so beautiful in their own ways and yet terrible in another, for their fates were all the same. They had dared to question, dared to ponder and that made them dangerous. Alas, the spider whom he hunted was old and experienced, it knew quite well how to handle the occasional bee that stumbled into its deadly tapestry.

Near as he knew, none of these faces he looked over were alive today. If they would not be soldiers, if they would not be drones, if they would not be workers in its web, then the spider had only one use of them. He suppressed a rueful grin, when he heard the sound of splintered wood reach his ears with the pounding of heavy boots, somewhat amused at the irony of mirrored circumstance. For the spider had only one use for dissenters, “Food.”

….

A different house, a different squad, the same mission. A splintered door and overturned home. This one was much more empty though, for there was no family here, there was only one and this one had none. They knew this, they knew him but they did not question it, did not ponder it. After all, as they struck down another door leading into the basement, they remembered, ‘Good Soldiers, follow orders.’

….

He calmly pinned another piece of evidence to the board as the sounds of the soldiers grew louder. Each step they took was ordered, in sync with the others, in a stellar display of conformity that he knew by heart. A rhythm that he’d danced to, a pattern he’d stepped to, an old memory of simpler days. Life was not simple however, it was beautifully complex and intricate and any who says otherwise has either lied to you or been lied to. He had been lied to, forced that lie on others himself but now he knew the truth and as such. He’d stepped out of rhythm.

….

A final door into a dark room was broken down, the brilliance of a single, flickering light overtaken by a dozen much harsher ones, all mounted to their weapons. But those lights found nothing. Nothing but a simple table, with a single device upon it. “Sorry I couldn’t be there for the party.” a voice sounded from the simple radio, so old and beat up, operating on all but ancient signals that none of their equipment was slated to trace. “But I’m so close to The Name, I simply couldn’t make it.” a soldier gripped the device, an anger born of a foreign desire he didn’t recognize burning in him as the voice sounded again, “Of course, they already know that, they saw it first through countless eyes.”

….

He smiled broadly, eagerly as he pinned up the final page and the picture finally came together. The answer finding him in this magnificent, perfect moment and he spoke one more time, loud enough for the radio to hear him, “Let, The F.E.W know, I know their current name.” he pressed on, “Though I find their true name more fitting.” He gripped a hammer upon the table and raised it above his head, “Soon, I’ll be tearing down that precious web of your’s. Tyranny.” The hammer fell, the radio died and with it, the spider’s last hope of stopping him. He raised his gaze to the wall again, his smile growing larger, this time with a hint of hunger, for Vengeance, for Justice, “Let’s begin.”