Carnage by Aer-ki Jyr (the chimp paradox .TXT) 📕

purpose,” Paul corrected. “It feels like I’m buying time for no reason.”

“You should not have spent so many millennia in the warzone with the Hadarak.”

“What I did saved lives. More than anyone else could.”

“And who will save those a million years from now when you are gone because you didn’t attend to your own path?”

“Those words sound familiar. Did I say something like that previously?”

“You did. Why do you not apply it to yourself?”

Paul sighed as he sidestepped to avoid one of the taller natives whose hips were the height of his shoulders.

“Logically I should…but everything I do now is logic. I have no feel. Yet I sense that my logic is incomplete in some way.”

“It is never complete. You can only analyze based on the data you have, which is why one logical person can see something another cannot. It is not a failure in logic, but a lack of the prerequisites for a greater understanding.”

“What am I lacking?”

“It could be you have ascended to a level I have not, and my naivety is keeping my vision clear.”

“That doesn’t help.”

“What do you sense around you?” Cal-com asked, also using his Ikrid to peek into the unshielded minds of the natives and their commercial immigrants.

“People at the beginning of their lives who know little, and the more they learn the more hopeless they become. They think the young have it best, because that is when they see some hope. Adulthood, as they view it, is dark and dirty and full of betrayal.”

“What else?”

“They feel more than think. Their instincts drive them, and what little learning they do to take control over their lives is without wisdom and makes things worse in most cases.”

“Do they want to live?”

“Yes.”

“How much so?”

“It’s what drives them the most, though they don’t realize it.”

“Everyone is so eager to live, though they don’t understand why they’re here, what they’re doing, or how to go about it. The same is true on Star Force worlds, but it is amplified here because their culture is not based on truth but tradition, myth, propaganda, and many other deviants from reality. They fake most things, and when they do so they lose sight of reality, and in doing so they can’t calibrate. The lies are literally choking them to death, but they use them to gain advantage, position, or out of panic to avoid pain and punishment. They are newbs in the game of life, but they have something you lack.”

“And that is?”

“Motivation.”

Paul wanted to deny that, because compared to these people he was probably more motivated than the entire planet combined. “In what way?”

“You’re numb, and it’s because of a wound you cannot heal. The carnage of the galaxy creates such wounds, for I have seen it before, and suffered from it myself. The key to fixing your sight is by making yourself small again, and simply observing. So stop using your telepathy. Simply observe with your senses, and see if they are telling you the same things.”

“Will you monitor for danger?”

Cal-com huffed. “Why are you so afraid? They are no threat to you.”

“Even Goku can be taken down if attacked when he doesn’t see it coming.”

“That worries you?”

“I fear my luck will run out before I figure out what I’m supposed to be doing.”

“Then I will watch so you may relax. You are almost in a state of paranoia that you have probably annexed into an advantage, if I know your habits. Did you ever take a day off onboard your Excalibur?”

“What’s that?”

“You’ve never made yourself small and just disappeared into the masses,” Cal-com criticized. “You’ve been fighting with space monsters so much you’ve started to think on their level. Not everything here is trying to kill you, and with your skills you can handle what is. I will telepathically scan so you do not. Let down your ranged senses. Turn off everything else, including your Pefbar. If there is a threat I will deal with it. Just walk and observe.”

“While blind?”

“If your psionics are interfering with your navigation, perhaps your reliance on them is blinding you more than not using them.”

“Becoming small,” Paul said, trying to scale down his natural sensory awareness…which was not easy.

“No talking for a while. Just be yourself, with your sphere of responsibility ending at the boundaries of your skin. Observe but do not take responsibility for anything else. Continue this way until we come to the bridge.”

Paul nodded, knowing that Cal-com could see the gesture under his robe if he had his Pefbar active, which he would. He knew his friend’s psionic, combat, and Essence skills made him one of the most dangerous people in the galaxy, even if he couldn’t hold a candle to Paul’s skills. That was enough for his subconscious mind to give him permission to be reckless and let his guard down, for he knew Cal-com did not have a sense of humor about these things, and if he said he would stay alert then he would, for there was no duplicity between them, even for the sake of humor.

So Paul just walked beside him, unable to see more than a meter in front of his feet, and oddly his Jedi-like robe seemed comforting around him, for it blocked out all of the universe except the little patch before him. He couldn’t see out, and other than Cal-com nobody could see in. He was alone here, which was totally illogical. The fabric offered almost no armor protection at all, but as far as his basic senses told him he was safely alone inside his robe.

The absurdity of that made Paul think, for his senses didn’t lie. Why would he feel this way if it wasn’t true? If they were giving a false sense, that sense had to link to