(no subject)

Saturday, November 13th, 2005
Milliways

So.

This is what it's like to be Andrew.

This is what it's like to see your inspiration- not your hero, he was never my hero, but my inspiration, yes- this is what it's like to see him real and in the flesh, and know he's a story. And at the same time know he's not a story.

The Jedi stand on one side of the line. The Grammaton Clerics stand on the other. One the example, one the warning... I've seen a lot of world-lines here. Some of them I know. Some I don't. I don't worry about a lot of them, because they're either irrelevant or clearly not mine at all, but there are some... some that ring truer than others. That I fear, or hope for, more than others. River's timeline, for one. If she and her brother don't come of Egon Spengler's bloodline I'll eat my Torx set with Worcestershire sauce. Harper's future, for another; that's far enough out that I don't know if there's ever any way of connecting it to mine, but it might yet happen, or not. Who knows? It doesn't feel right, but there's something about what he's spoken of that puts me on edge. I don't dare ignore it.

And then there's Preston's world.

I know it's only a story in my universe. I know that because there's a DVD of Equilibrium shoved into my bookshelf between my copies of Star Wars I: The Price of Order and Chinese Single Broadsword: A Primer of Basic Skills and Performance Routines for Practitioners. But, but...

But it feels like something to be aware of. Something to watch out for. It's as gross an exaggeration as any utopia or dystopia might ever be, yeah, but c'mon! I live in a world where the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man can be unleashed by a single accidental thought! Who am I to talk about gross exaggeration? What if the nightmare could happen? What if- here's a thought: what if the river of slime that Peter mentioned, the one in the second movie- let's say that's a metaphor, okay? That five hundred (or however many) years of the accumulated schmutz of the human collective unconscious just keeps building up. There's good stuff in it, sure, but there's so much crap out there that it just keeps getting sucked under or floated off... and eventually it builds to the point where, whammo. World War III. And the only way anyone can see to go on, after the fire, is to dam that off completely...

I could see that. I don't like to think of what it would take to make that happen, considering all the other asinine ideas we've never been able to rid ourselves of completely, but I could see that.

So what do you do when you've got that possibility dangling in front of your eyes? How do you make that stop? You have to do something, right? Otherwise... well, otherwise nothing gets done. I can't say whether there's any guilt involved or not, but the fact is that if you don't do something then nothing gets done. And maybe that comes to pass, or not- I don't know-

Argh, none of this is making any sense. The English language hasn't got words for this level of conditional future-split. And I'm not enough of a linguist to start composing them.

The point is that I can't let that happen any more than I could have let Gozer win, or anything else that we ever fought that could've destroyed us. Only this isn't a ghost, or a god; this is a future, and an outright horrible one at that. Heck, maybe it's a metaphor too, some warning about choices gone completely wrong-

okay, I have to put down the keyboard now because I have this terrible urge to cast magic missile at the darkness-

Too late. Okay, never mind that. Brain's being weird again. Although maybe that's a healthy thing.

Fact of the matter is, I can't do a whole lot about a whole lot of people. New Yorkers are a stubborn bunch. I'm not a politician or a religious figure, and I'm only a marginal celebrity at best. And I am so not a god, no matter how many people keep ASKING me that. But I can do what I had in mind when I started down my version of the Jedi path.

I'm a scientist. That means I have to reach out for understanding.
I'm a parapsychologist. That means I have to accept that I'm trying to understand the impossible. And then I have to understand it anyway.
I'm a Ghostbuster. That means I have to protect my city from the things that go bump in the night. No exceptions.
I'm a Jedi's Padawan. That means I have to learn. Both the outer aspects of the Jedi way- the combat stuff, the meditative stuff, the physical stuff- and the inner. The Force stuff would be nice but that's not going to happen. All I can ever hope for is the understanding- of myself, of the universe, of the people around me.
I am- let us be honest here- an enormous geek. That means I have to live up to my heroes: Spider-Man, Captain Steel, Hal Jordan. It's not so different from the Jedi thing. I haven't got the super-powers, I've just got the brain, and the same understanding...

Knowledge is power; with great power comes great responsibility. Once I know what's out there in the world I have to do something about it, by whatever means is right.

I don't know how to make Preston's future not happen, but I know I have two nephews who look up to their uncle even if their mother disapproves. I can start there, and work my way outwards. Maybe enough people will listen. Maybe we don't have to seal the river up entirely. They cleaned up the Cuyahoga, didn't they? That river burned once. The actual river caught on fire. It's got muskellunge living in it now...

Well, let's see what we can do. One human being at a time.