Witch of Lurago Chapter 20: Deterrents

So that’s how our cycle ends.

Someday soon, your world will end. Ending is not as final as it sounds. Our world has ended before.

Nigel Willoughby

Nigel warned us the end is coming. Cycles always end. When and how don’t matter much. Because new cycles begin.

But we’ve heard it several times now. There’s something odd about this cycle. Something the Patterns can’t account for.

Dara and Madelyn see the final moments of our cycle. Masaki unleashes Hell’s Fury on us all. And it’s over in an instant.

I intentionally didn’t dissect the technology behind the doomsday weapon. Rootstock Saga is told from the perspective of those living it and not an omniscient 3rd person narrator, so I can’t describe what’s beyond the character’s understanding.

And I didn’t delve too deeply into the political and socioeconomic environment in which one person could detonate such an apocalyptic weapon. You get a sense of the desperation.

Subtext and context imply Masaki is in our present-cycle Japan. But Masaki is just a placeholder. He could just as easily have been Harry or Mohammad or Sahaj or Leonid. Who and where he is doesn’t matter as much as the why.

In our world, ideologies are dividing us. With each year that passes, we become more protective of the “clan” we identify with and more antagonistic toward the “others” with whom our clan disagrees.

Civil dialog and tolerance are the first to die. Compassion and objectivity succumb next. Suspicion and fear creep in to fill the emptiness.

From there, how simple it is for the haters to claim us.

That’s the ending I see in the Patterns.

We stop talking to anyone who isn’t one of “us” because talking to “them” is not only pointless, but risks us to falling prey to their lies. Instead, we read their lies from a safe distance and share our righteous indignation over their wrongness with those who are like “us.” Our like-minded and right-minded clansfolk rally together and fortify our walls.

The terrible weapons we build will only be used self-defense, we insist. Deterrents against THEM and their wrongness.

Cold war. Bomb shelters. Weapons of mass destruction. Chemical warfare. Bio-weapons. Sovereignty. Oppression. Escalation.

Masaki.