Playing God

I looked around and saw that the “enforcer” was still coming after me.

I put the “enforcer” part in quotation marks because nothing is really being “enforced” except for Kek’s desire for revenge.

I guess I’d better explain a bit about Kek before we get back to me being chased by one of his enforcers.

So, Kek had been one of two people who were supposed to fight in order to see who would become our new leader.

Kek became friends with the person who he was scheduled to fight though, and the two of them became lovers and she became pregnant with his child.

Then, they were still forced to fight, and Kek purposefully fell on his own sword in order to protect his lover and child.

His lover then became the new leader, and she was very fair and just.

She did not like the system that forced two people to battle to the death in order to determine who the next leader would be, though, and so she wrote a law that said that battles would no longer determine who the new leader would be.

She was murdered, though, before the law that she wrote was able to be actually set in stone; and her baby was murdered too.

Her name was Althea, and her baby’s name was Paloma.

A new battle was scheduled to determine who the new leader would be, and a winner was decided.

After he won though, he declared that, “I am Kek! His consciousness went into me after he died, and he wants vengeance for the death of Althea and Paloma!”

The people who had murdered Kek’s lover and child tried to run, but they were cut down by soldiers and their dismembered bodies were displayed for all to see.

The man who was supposedly hosting Kek’s consciousness (and was also going by the name of Kek) was not content for only the people who had murdered Althea and Paloma to die though, and he vengefully declared that his enforcers would kill all who either supported or were related to the people who had killed Althea and Paloma.

This is where I come in.

I am a cousin of one of the children of one of the people who murdered Althea and Paloma.

And so the enforcers are after me.

So, sure, I guess that they really are enforcing Kek’s rules; but I do not recognize Kek’s rules as being legitimate because our scriptures condemn punishing people for the sins of their family members.

I have committed no sin, but am merely being punished for being a family member of those who have sinned, and thus I maintain that when the rules made by a mere man conflict with the holy scriptures, then the holy scriptures should prevail.

Anyway, back to me being chased.

The enforcer drew out a weapon to shoot me with, but I ducked behind a building, which made it so that his shot missed.

I then heard someone shriek!, “You killed my sister with your weapon, you criminal! You will pay for this!”

The man was correct that the “enforcer” was now a criminal, even by Kek’s standards, assuming that the woman who he’d just killed didn’t happen to be a supporter or family member of Kek’s enemies.

The confrontation that broke out must have caused the “enforcer” to be stalled, because I managed to get away to safety.

And, by safety, I mean that I ran and ran and ran and ran and ran and ran and ran and ran and ran and ran and ran and ran and ran and ran and ran and ran and ran and ran and ran and ran and ran until I was miles away from the lands that Kek was the leader of.

I had never been outside of those lands before, and had no idea what threats might be awaiting me; but I hoped that things would be quite a bit less dangerous for me outside of the lands that I’d been born and raised in than they would’ve been if I’d remained in those lands…

Because I was too tired to run anymore, I sat down on the ground to catch my breath.

It turned out that sitting down prompted my body to go into “I want sleep!” mode, and I was unable to resist the compulsion to lay down and fall asleep.

The last thing that I saw before I closed my eyes and fell asleep was a squirrel curiously looking at me as she clutched a nut in her hands.

When I woke up, I found that I luckily hadn’t been bothered by any of the forest animals, and I wondered if I should get back to getting further away from those who wanted to do me harm.

It was then that it dawned on me that I had no idea which direction I had been running from, and this meant that I could accidentally run back home by mistake if I got really unlucky.

Suddenly!, a young woman said, “You’re awake! Very good. Us forest people don’t get visitors very often, you know.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, as I turned around to look at her, “I guess I just kind of ran without thinking about where I was going.

My people always told me that this forest is haunted, but I never really believed them. Is it haunted?”

“Haunted is the wrong word.” the young woman explained, “Though, I suppose that we forest dwellers have a different relationship with the forest than your people do.

This forest does indeed expel any who would do it or its people harm (which might make our enemies think that it’s haunted), but we see it as more protected than anything.

The fact that the forest allowed you to enter and sleep in peace suggests that you are someone who the forest seeks to protect and not someone who it seeks to haunt.”

“That makes sense.” I said, though it made less sense to me than my words made it seem like it did, “My name’s Adiva. What’s yours?”

“Good to meet you, Adiva. I am called Myrtle. So what brings you to our forest, anyway? You do not appear to have planned your visit, seeing as you don’t have any food or water with you.”

As she said those words, she offered me some food and water, which I gratefully accepted.

“I come from what are now known as Kek’s lands, and Kek decided to serve “justice” by trying to kill me for the sins of someone who I’m related to, even though punishing someone for the sins of a member of their family is forbidden by our scriptures.

I wasn’t really paying attention to where I was running. I just knew that I had to run.”

“We do not have scriptures,” Myrtle said, “but the forest tends to turn against people who try to punish people for the wrong-doings of other people, which means that the forest and your scriptures seem to be in agreement on that issue.

Would you like to come and meet my family? We can provide you with a place to stay while you figure out what you want to do with your life.”

I gratefully accepted Myrtle’s offer, and she began leading me towards where her family lived.

As Myrtle and I headed towards her family’s abode, my mind began to dwell on all of the innocent people who Kek’s forces were killing.

I knew that some members of my family had probably managed to escape like I had, but it was unlikely that they all had.

I tried to imagine myself in Kek’s position, and wondered if I’d get so blinded by fury if I were to have a spouse and child be murdered.

Anger.

Justified anger.

“Anger can be justified,” I thought, “but that doesn’t mean that the actions that justified anger lead to are always justified...”

I also knew that I did kind of pick and choose when it came to the scriptures.

I was happy to assert that the scriptures should win out when they said not to punish people for other people’s sins, but I was also quick to want to disregard parts of the scriptures that banned having more than one spouse.

I knew that there were reasons why the scriptures banned having more than one spouse, but sometimes people’s hormones got the better of them and they had kids with multiple people, and in those cases it seemed best to me that someone should be allowed to have multiple spouses.

And, so, since I had disagreements with some scriptures, didn’t that mean that it was really something more like moral intuitions that I was basing my beliefs on?

And, since many people had moral intuitions that contradicted other people’s moral intuitions, who was to say who was right or wrong?

So, neither the scriptures nor moral intuitions seemed to be giving me the certainty that I wanted, and so how could I be certain?

Myrtle had said that the forest sort of had a code for what behaviors were acceptable that it enforced. So were the answers to my questions about how to ground morality somehow woven into this forest?

That hardly seemed like a way to get a good grasp on what was moral and immoral though, because the forest was very mysterious to me, and seemed to be somewhat mysterious to Myrtle too.

I pondered…

Perhaps morality definitely existed, but it was more complicated than moral intuitions, holy scriptures, and even this forest.

How could one know if they were moral or not, then?

My musings about morality were suddenly cut off by Myrtle saying, “My family lives right over there.” as she pointed a little ways ahead of us, and so I responded, “Oh good! I’ll be glad to meet them.” and I put my internal struggle about morality on hold for a while.

Suddenly!, though, I couldn’t bear the thought of meeting Myrtle’s family while mine had been obliterated, and I said, “It’s all too much, Myrtle… I’m sorry… I gotta go…"

I dashed! away from Myrtle, and ran and ran and ran until I got out of the forest.

Then I heard Myrtle yelling, “You’ve gotta stop! You’re unlikely to survive in the desert!” but I didn’t respond to her, and I instead continued running straight into the desert.

Who cared if I died here, anyway? Life was just a cruel joke; and nothing made any sense. The scriptures weren’t of any comfort to me, the ways of the forest weren’t of any comfort to me, and trusting my own intuitions wasn’t of any comfort to me either.

I continued running until all that I could see around me was desert.

Then, I turned around and around and around and around until I had no idea which direction I had come from.

I then noticed that there were footprints that had been left by me in the sand, though; which meant that spinning around hadn’t actually caused me to not know the way back.

Then, it suddenly hit me with full force how thirsty I was.

I also realized that I didn’t want to die out here. I should have stayed with Myrtle. I needed to follow the footprints back.

I followed the footprints for a while, and eventually reached a person who was riding on a camel.

“I saw your footprints.” the person said, “You don’t look well… Here, have some water.

I guzzled down the water, and the man told me that there was a desert settlement nearby that I could travel with him to if I wanted to not die out in the middle of nowhere.

I nodded my agreement, and the two of us began to head off towards the settlement.

As the man and I traveled towards the settlement, he explained to me why he was on his way towards the settlement.

“I am an assassin,” he explained, “BUT I only accept jobs if I determine that the person who I’m tasked with killing is sufficiently deserving.”

This was troubling to me, for the scriptures warned that killing (even in the rare cases where it was not forbidden) would always damage the soul of the killer in ways that were irreversible.

The scriptures contained similar warnings about forced marriage, rape, torture, kidnapping, and unrepentant adultery.

But then I remembered that I had already decided that the scriptures weren’t always something that I trusted, and (while I still agreed with most of them) this assassin’s code seemed like it might be morally justifiable to me.

“Not to be rude,” I asked, “but (even if the killings are all somehow justified) isn’t it questionable to make money by killing people?”

“Yes indeed.” he responded, “I do not claim to be a good man. I am merely a bad man who has some standards.”

“Well,” I thought, “I guess I can’t argue with that… What would I do, try to convince him to be good?"

“It doesn’t bother you to be a bad man?” I asked, to which he responded that, “We are all bad people.

Well… We all become bad people, anyway.

We don’t start out that way, but claiming to be innocent eventually becomes a lost cause for practically everyone.

There’s always denial, and I have met many people who claim to be good who are very good indeed at denial. But you don’t have to do much digging in order to reveal that the claims that they make about being good are false.”

“Your logic isn’t actually merciful to the children who you concede are innocent, though,” I countered, “because that means that whenever you see someone who is innocent you always already believe that they’re doomed to eventually lose that innocence. You concede that they are good, but you deny them any hope that they will remain good. How is that fair?”

“I never claimed that life is fair, and I never claimed that I am fair.” the man said with a shrug, “I simply said that children are innocent, adults aren’t, and that I’m a bad man who has some standards.”

“Isn’t your claim that you have standards you saying that you’re not as bad as some adults?” I questioned, “And doesn’t that mean that you’re sort of in denial about how bad you are?”

“Perhaps.” the man agreed, “Though I don’t tend to see myself as being any fundamentally better than anyone else. I happen to find it distasteful to kill people who aren’t sufficiently deserving, and so I don’t do what I find to be distasteful. It doesn’t make me good though.”

“I’m interested in exactly how you determine who is deserving…” I grumbled, to which the man laughed and said that, “You can be a part of my decision-making process during this job then! If you and I both determine that the man is sufficiently deserving, then I will kill him. BUT, if either of us decides that his life should be spared, then I will do him no harm. Does that seem reasonable to you?”

I grumbled a bit about how playing god never worked out well for anybody, but I agreed to weigh in on whether I felt that his target was sufficiently deserving of death or not…