ALL THE WAY TO PERDITION
Fearing being alone more than the loss of confidentiality, Captain Dylan Hunt had not engaged privacy mode knowing that Andromeda would be checking, if not closely monitoring, his actions. An empty glass and almost empty bottle of scotch sat on his desk. Originally his plan was to drink until the pain went away. That plan had been modified so that he would now only drink until the pain caused by the scotch was greater than that he felt because of Tyr’s death . . . or until he passed out. Right now, there was certainly a question as to whether even that modified goal would require a second bottle.
"If you stare too long at the abyss, the abyss stares back at you." He remembered Tyr saying that once when they had just met. It wasn’t until now that he had wondered what it meant.
The plan had that created this final confrontation had been entirely his creation. Beka had agreed to be used as the bait, Tyr had bought it, and now the crew needed to get her back. Dylan had to make Tyr think that he was willing to negotiate a trade. He needed to evaluate what Tyr thought he was holding in Beka and what he thought Tyr really wanted. Tyr had been his crewmember, his friend, his . . . now he claimed to be the Nietzschean messiah and the ally of the abyss. This was not his Tyr standing in front of him. Tyr attacked with bullets and words and Dylan had no choice but to fire back. Tyr’s words seemed as toxic as the bullets Dylan had fired. Both had wounded deeply. He could see the big man, the beautiful man, hanging by his fingertips at the edge of the abyss. Another bullet and the fingers let go. Dylan couldn’t look as the darkness rose and the body and life of what was once Tyr Anasazi slipped away.
Cronus feared his children. He knew that they too would, as he had his father, kill him and take his place in ruling the universe. As their children were born he ate them and their bodies lay heavy in his bulging stomach. His wife Rhea saved and hid one child who grew to a fine man. This son, Zeus, returned and fed Cronus a stone that made him regurgitate his children who became the Olympian gods. Thus began the battle of the Titans. Eventually the Olympian gods prevailed and Zeus killed Cronus and threw his Titan brothers and sisters into the Abyss of Tartarus – the center of the earth where they would be captive until the end of time -- beaten and powerless to control humanity. Zeus won. Humanity lived.
His mother had told him that story. She loved to tell him fairy tales and folk stories from all over the known world. It would have been just another story had she not also told him of Zeus and his son Hercules. He loved the fact that his mother and Hercules’s mother had similar names and a similar story – at least hers made more sense. He hadn’t thought of his mother in a long time. She had been dead for centuries while the Titans were immortal but confined to the Abyss of Tartarus.
Perhaps Tyr was also an immortal . . .
There was once a race of immortals that walked in the darkness and subsisted by sucking the blood of humans. Draining of them of their life force so that they could live forever. Sometimes they selected a human to transform into one of their kind – not killing but converting. That story, which humans had feared for generations, became almost humorous when the magog arrived. Magog didn’t suck your life force, they forced their own spawn into the host bodies of humans to grow and eat their way our. Death and birth were united in one act with more than enough blood to go around.
Wiping something from his chin, he realized that he was so drunk that he could no longer even successfully transfer the liquid from glass to mouth. Still the pain was there.
There was once a group of immortals that walked the earth almost invisibly. They were immune to disease and injuries healed rapidly. They could die and come to life again, unless someone took their heads. To them it was all a game. They followed rules and knew that only one would win. Win what? Dylan realized that this had to have been another of his mother’s stories, salvaged from some earth legend. Still, when he thought about it, the characters seemed to resemble Tyr. Was he the last one in the game?
"This isn’t a fucking game. This is real." Dylan muttered, knowing that a scream would arouse Andromeda’s concern. He shook his head and the vision went somewhere else.
A fury in black and feathers fighting with the skill of a god, kicking at him with booted feet as he neared the edge and slipped into yet another abyss. Parental rage. Not his loving mother. His step-mother? Yet he was able to hang on the edge, pull his body up and come out fighting. It was her turn to slip and die. He saw her plummeting down. . . down . . . down and heard her screaming at him. Why couldn’t Tyr have pulled himself up? Tyr was strong and he wanted to live. It made no sense that his fingers betrayed him. Dylan found it easier to imagine future generations returning to find Anasazi’s skeletonized fingers clinging to the edge – dead of starvation because he would not let go and fall into the abyss. That would have made more sense to him.
"Where do these thoughts come from? Am I going insane?"
He saw two blonde women, a mother and her daughter, looking like identical twins except for their clothing falling into the abyss. The look on the mother, who was clearly the hero, was one of victory and sad goodbye, but he knew she would live. This was a revisionist story written long after it had supposedly had occurred. Maybe it was just creative fiction; yet it had endured for centuries more because it had struck something of the human psyche. That woman had been caught at the bottom in the arms of the Greek god of war, Ares. Ares could have been there to catch Tyr. One god of war and another’s namesake; together they would make such a cute couple. . . or such fierce enemies.
"These are not my memories. Why won’t they go away?" He called out, because the pain of screaming was less than the pain of holding it in.
The time of reckoning was at hand. He was in the presence of an angel and the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. The angel was calling for Death to cast the traitor into the abyss, but he was not about to let that happen. He wrestled with Death and they both tumbled in. He’d done it for love. Many people, including those who sat in judgment at the bottom, called it an intense friendship. How does that differentiate from love? It was almost that way with Tyr, though they couldn’t admit it. They called it friendship, respect, and sexual release and kept it hidden from others; but it wasn’t that different from love. Yet because the hero had given his body to the abyss to protect his . . . lover, they both were saved. Given another chance at life together.
"The beast that you saw was, and is not, and will ascend out of the bottomless pit and go to perdition. And those who dwell on the earth will marvel, whose names are not written in the Book of Life from the foundation of the world, when they see the beast that was, and is not, and yet is."
Dylan screamed the biblical quote in the original Greek, a language he had studied with his mother when he was a child. He remembered discussing it with Rev. Bem when Tyr and Harper had been captured by the Magog. If there was one name that should have been written in the book of life it was Tyr Anasazi, out of Victoria by Barbarossa, the last of the Kodiak pride. His name belonged in that book even more than that of Dylan Hunt.
All this mythology, all this religion, and still Tyr was dead. Unless Tyr is the beast that was, and is not, and yet is; but in that case, where in the fuck was perdition?
"Oh, come in. I’m . . . I’m doing a . . . little . . . thinking."
"I didn’t mean to interrupt, but I do need a drink."
"Really?"
"Bring it on."
"Almost out of scotch. I can kill this and get another bottle."
"Anything else?"
"Vodka."
"That’s good. Alcohol distilled out of everything and anything. No flavor, no smell, nothing but a damn good buzz."
"Damn good."
"Yea, but you got to be careful." Beka continued. "You can go from ‘this is a most wonderful time’ to ‘I can’t find my shoes or my underwear or . . . ‘"
"You’re safe here with me, Beka."
"Yea, I know. Just wanted to let you know that . . . I’m not . . ."
Dylan ran his eyes down the blonde’s body. He had noticed that her breasts and stomach seemed . . . rounder. . . than usual. His thought process was extremely slow. "You’re not?" Then he realized what she was telling him. The cause of the swelling must have been the rich food Tyr had served her, or just the normal influx of female hormones, and was not what they had both feared. It had been almost a month since Beka had returned to the Andromeda . . . a month since she had given her body as a sign of trust to Tyr Anasazi . . . an only slightly less time since the Nietzschean had let go and fallen into the Abyss . . . "Oh, good."
"Good?"
"Sorry . . . guess that was my gut speaking. There would have been alternatives."
"Termination would have been much more difficult philosophically than physically. Tyr was the last of his pride . . . and the Nietzschean messiah." Beka said.
"Now you don’t have to worry . . . about . . . that."
"A child would have . . . I don’t know if it would have been fair to inflict a child with the burden of carrying the memory of Tyr."
"Or you as . . . a . . . mother."
"Still the child also would have been perhaps the last true Nietzschean." Beka cringed. She wasn’t sure of Dylan was very honest, or very drunk. "Even if you don’t believe that messianic bullshit."
"And Tyr’s last chance at chance at immortality."
"This is too metaphysical for me, Dylan, let’s get drunk."
* * *
"To Tyr Anasazi." Beka clinked her third glass of vodka with Dylan’s. "Who was not as immortal as he had thought, hoped or dreamed." She downed the glass in one gulp as if intent on getting as drunk as Dylan as quickly as possible.
"Why did he have to FALL into the fucking Abyss?" His thoughts could no longer be confined.
"Excuse me?"
"Why did he let go? Fall? I never imagined that Tyr . . . would . . . let go."
"You shot him, Dylan. I doubt if it was something he wanted." A long delay, then a twinkle in her eye and an inappropriate smile, "You don’t always get . . . what you wa-a-a-nt." Dylan wondered if Stones were playing in her head.
"I know the rest of the words. Please don’t sing."
"I’m sorry. I know . . . "
"No, you . . . don’t . . . know, Beka."
"Take the fucking guilt if that’s what you want. You shot him, but you weren’t the one who fucked him."
"Only because I ordered you to," he answered. Beka’s comment was driven by vodka and not completely true.
"You didn’t see me kicking and screaming or filing harassment charges. I went willingly, Captain Hunt, and not just because you ordered me. I wanted him. I fucked him and he died."
"Please don’t flatter yourself into thinking that he died because after he had you, there was nothing more to live for . . . the universe would be littered with dead bodies if that were true."
Rather than responding Beka poured another glass of vodka and downed it quickly. For the next few minutes they drank in silence.
"I’m not, I’m just very, very old."
"He said that when the universe exploded, or was it imploded, I can’t remember, Dylan."
"It doesn’t really matter, Beka."
"Anyway when it all went bang, or poof, there would be three things left. Cockroaches and Dylan Hunt trying to save the cockroaches."
"That’s only two. What was the third?"
"Tyr Anasazi. Guess he was wrong there."
"He lives, Beka. He has to be alive. His desire for survival is to strong just to have let go – he had to have had an alternative plan."
"Believe it if you want, Dylan. I have to say I have accepted his death. I think you might feel better if you did the same."
"If not him, then his genes. I never believed he was the Messiah, it was too convenient that he suddenly matched Drago’s DNA. I’m sure he had been tested as a child. I am sure he tested himself when he retrieved the bones from the Dragons. Suddenly his blood matched. It couldn’t have been his blood, had to have been someone else. He had to have gotten the real blood from somewhere."
"You’re drunk, Dylan, tell me this story when you sober up."
"I have to tell it now. Before I . . . forget. The blood must have come from his son. The son he told me had died. I never believed that. If his son is alive, then either Tyr is alive and with him, because he never would have voluntarily given in to death; or else, he allowed himself to fall into to protect his son. A father giving his body for his son, now that . . . is . . . heroic.
"In that case, it is my obligation to find the son and protect . . . him . . . and the memory of Tyr Anasazi."
* * * * *
Beka tried to avoid pulling on Dylan’s hair or his ears, but she needed to lift his head and check for blood. In the middle of a deep breath, his head had crashed forward hitting the table hard and overturning the scotch bottle. She ascertained that he wasn’t dead, just dead drunk.
"Keep an eye on him Andromeda. I’m going back to my quarters. I’ve had a lot to drink, too."
"I think he is fine, Beka, my sensors indicate that he is just asleep."
"Asleep? Passed out."
"No, it was as if the sleep he had been fighting for days was finally allowed to come. Like the pain was gone," the ship replied.
"Well, then I guess I’d better get some myself, because tomorrow chances are we are going hunting for cockroaches - - probably all the way to perdition."
"I’ll have to check my coordinates."
February 16, 2004