The Judgement

     I have a close friend that I spend an amount of time with on a regular basis and he is, in short, the one friend I grew up with. We have an extensive history of semi-friendly battles and adventures and all of those sorts of things. Not often had either of us done something notable without the other. We were like brothers, him and I. About a year after we graduated and he started college in the neighboring town, I moved away. I move my life far enough away where communication between us was greatly diminished to the occasional sharing of recent adventures. It was up until this point that we had, more or less, a sharing of directions in our own personal developments. We both had found a deep interest in exploring new places which budded into an even deeper interest in the cosmos. We shared learned knowledge and came to our own conclusions based on a combination of what the two of had learned thus far about any given subject and this allow for a steady and side-by-side learning curve and ideals structure. That system of knowledge-sharing broke when I left for the desert.
     About the time I was getting the hang of living in such a strange new place, my friend, whom I shall simply call Dane, was just getting into his major classes for the semester. Every now and then he would give me some new bit of interesting information or some new thing to go and research on my own accord and very quickly we had come with an idea to get both of into space (the story behind getting into space is worth an entire new post in and of itself). We planned and conversed and conceptualized many new things that, dare I say, were on the edge  of space technology as it is (I had become an inventor for a short time, it seemed). As the year went on we began contacting each other less and less. As this happened I bean spending more time pursuing my own secondary education outside of my technical training. Over the summer I had taken a six week break from school and traveled through many very amazing places. It was this adventure that, I believe, was the pivotal point in not only the relationship between Dane and I, but also my own life, ideals, and belief systems..
     There had been a few hints of our growing separation towards the end of 2011 but I didn't really notice how big the gap was until I had finished school and moved myself back to the pseudo-jungles of Wisconsin and we had already caught up with each other in whatever stories there were to tell. We had gotten back into conversations of space and I had began to notice something darker about him--about his desire--that hadn't been there before. He would begin to space out and utter things I highly doubt he was consciously aware of; selfish things, greedy things, and, the perfect word came to me last night, Faustian things. His desire for space had turned itself into a desire for wealth and power. He would be more than willing cause the destruction of that planets in our own solar system simply for his own personal gain of exploring a new one. He would use a gift of eternal life to build an empire, rule and conquer, and eventually build a big enough vessel at any expense for his permanent leave of this planetary system. And it is extremely important that I am not saying these things as an interpretation of some casual conversation but actual utterances from a seemingly altered state of mind. And it's not to speak of the look in his eyes when he spoke, either. The look in his eyes; oh! the look was haunting even for someone like myself. In my previous post I had spoken of the look in someone's eyes when they are entranced by the television set and what I have seen with this companion of mine goes beyond entrancement--beyond dreaming. What I saw was a hint of possession by some terrible thing. I had once had a desire for outer space that had turned into a longing--a yearning-- of its own but the fire in Dane's eyes was one burning of lust. The desire I once knew he held had become a raging inferno of filthy and evil lust.
     Around the same time period that I had first noticed this change, or, realistically, about 12 hours before his first unwitting mention of building an empire, I had stumbled upon and read the short story by Brian Kindregan entitled The Judgment. (The story can be found HERE) It did take much contemplation, in fact, I hadn't even finished the story, before I came to the realization of the fact that should both of us continue on the paths we are currently treading, then our friendship is to dwindle and fade into something else. We have both set our own ideals deep within ourselves and even to this day we are still wading our own way through the think underbrush. I realized that there is a bond between that could never be severed by time. We would always be aware of each other in some way or another and that we just might become greatest enemies after all. It isn't so much that I'm opposed to space travel; no I'm more to support it. I am simply opposed to the kind of selfish irresponsibility that is to throw to the wayside the very foundation that allowed the end to be realized. The end does not justify the means. The end is merely a fleeting point in time that is the fuel for the means to occur. The end is only as pure as the means with which it was achieved. You simply can't make a fine stew with rotten meat. At the same time, I have nearly found here what I was looking for out there, in the vast sea of the cosmos. I have gained certain wisdom that has allowed me to see now what I was missing before. I realize that there is naught that I could do, much less desire to do, that would change the will of my friend. We both have our beliefs about how to live and I, at the very least, will uphold those values.
     Jumping back to present day I see that Dane and I are already, in a sense, mortal enemies. The internal strife between is as a single spore, at the moment; a single spore ready to grow quickly into a deadly mold. It is there and I can sense, but I'm not so sure that he can. It's complicated, the way fate works, but perhaps in the distant future we will but heads in a great battle of sorts. I cannot say for sure because not one year ago I would have never seen this turn of events. It's as if I'm to find my own course of action, at this point. I have the whole world in front of me and I wonder if this a time of judgment for myself. I can only hope that what I see of the future comes to pass before I'm grey and old. There are certainly things astir in the world; I can smell it as the moon rises every night and hear it in the song of the toads. What I'm still fighting with is myself and what, exactly, would I do should I wake up from a dream to find my home in smoldering ruin--it will happen one day. Only time will tell.