Fates and Family

Epilogue

It was still hard, beyond hard, being a slave. It was pure torture. And our kids were being tortured. All kids were being tortured. The ones pulled from their families most of all.

But we did give them something. We gave them all something. Pavlin and Kaktria and Mafalia and Olennen and Davi and Andronicha and Avelen and Levi and all the rest of them. We gave them a secret to keep. We gave them tangible hope.

And it helped them, late at night, when the torture became too far beyond too much to bear. It helped them.

The box was passed around from slave to slave to slave to slave.

It was hidden away. Underground and in dark corners and under clothes. It was simple, unassuming, and no-one would think it anything but a regular box. But still it was hidden.

It was secreted in many ways and snuck from field to field, mine to mine, house to house, factory to factory, ship to ship, warehouse to warehouse, store to store, and the list goes on. It went from place to place to place to place. And it went to the Earthpeople of every place.

In each and every place, the slaves took the box and whispered to it, talked to it, sang to it, cried to it. They told the box their fears and pains and hopes and dreams and wishes. They told the box of their love and their rebellion and their secrets and their truth.

They prayed near the box. And they talked near the box. And they kept the box close by as they bade their people good night.

And the box grew in its power. And it grew in its power. What seemed impossible happened. The box grew in its energy and its power and with it so too did the people.

The people treasured this treasure well. And it treasured them back.

We did not just give the people their box. We also taught the other slaves the lessons we had learned, and those lessons spread like wildfire.

The first lesson was how to withstand the pride of the masters.

The masters loved to be above us. They loved to flaunt that they were above us. They loved to make displays, both grand and subtle, about their power and their prestige and their wealth. Displays that were oh so insidiously dehumanizing to us.

It was always a horrid and painful thing to be wretched when the masters were up high. It was always a degrading thing. An unbearable thing. But we taught the slaves to have their own confidence and to have their pride within themselves. And we taught them that their own confidence, their belief in themselves, was more glorious, more powerful, than the pride of the masters. And this did not ease all the pain of the masters' haughtiness. Far from it. The hurt of being shown as unequal still hurt intolerably. But it gave the people strength and protection. So that they could take their souls and remain standing amidst the barrage of attacks from life. So that they could hold on to some strength, for themselves and for each other, for the present and for the future, amidst the pain.

The second lesson was on how to heal each other from the cruelty of the masters. The people had been helping each other and healing each other in ways big and small for all of time. And they had been helping each other get through the cruelty of the masters for as long as there were masters. But we taught them what we learned. That the sacred act of helping one another get through suffering was a powerful and transformative phenomenon. The sacred act of helping each other has power. It was power. And it played a sacred and undeniable role in bringing the new world. Whenever slaves helped each other, it was an act of revolution. It helped the revolution.

Of course the wrath of the masters still hurt. Their cruelty still hurt. It hurt intolerably. But the people knew that they had each other to turn to. And in addition to that they knew that they were building the revolution. That they were capturing and overthrowing the wrath of the masters. So even amidst the pain, there was hope. And that hope brought joy, however buried deep.

The third lesson was how to withstand the objectification and greed of the masters.

The masters only looked at the work and the hands of the people. They only saw us as things to be used in order to make them rich. They did not see us as real people, as whole people, as inherent people. We were not valued. Only our work was. And their greed was insatiable.

This hurt. No matter what it hurt. But we taught the slaves to know that their souls were not things. They were not things. Their souls were whole and real and entirely intangible and the masters could never harvest wealth from them because they existed on a separate dimension than that of wealth.

And that helped the people. It helped the people hold on to themselves and their sense of self in the midst of all the pain and suffering.

The fourth lesson was how to lie to the masters yet hide your real self inside.

For the masters expected meekness, submission, and a willingness to serve from us. They expected us to be satisfied with our lot in life. And we had to put up that front in front of them. We had to make them believe that we were. Make them believe that we were submissive and servile and complacent in our places.

It hurt to have to hide our rage, hide our pain, hide everything that we are and to smile and be polite. It always hurt. It always hurt unendurably. But we knew how to take our soul and keep it hidden away from them but in view to us. We knew how to separate the mask from reality. We knew that the mask was separate from reality. And even though it was often hard to distinguish between the two, especially when we had to live the mask all day, we still knew that our real selves were separate from the selves we put forth for the masters.

We taught the Earthpeople that there was no justification for the slavery we were under, no matter what the towerpeople said or believed.

We taught them that we were all one and we were all together in our struggle for freedom and equality.

We taught them how to meditate. How to feel their pain and their rage and their hope and their love. How to feel all the pain and the rage and the hope and the love of all past, present, and future Earthpeople. How to feel all of the Earthpeople in the world, who have ever walked or will ever walk the world, and how to be one with them.

The people taught each other. They didn't just teach each other our lessons, but also taught each other lessons of their own, that they had learned through their lives and their experiences. Lessons that they learned through their love.

And we grew stronger, all of us, year by year. Generation by generation. Through pain and suffering and toil and exhaustion and terror and grief and hope and wisdom and rebellion and secrets and love. We grew stronger and so did the power of the box, freed and nurtured by all of us.

The power of the box grew stronger than it had ever been before in all of history, in all of time. For thus now it was fed with tears as well as joy. Blood as well as water. And we were forged in a fire as well.

Gradually, gradually, gradually, as generations turned over to the afterlife and the line of ancestors became longer, we became insurmountable.

More and more ancestors' souls joined in holy union with the box and gave power to it.

And one day, in the distant future, long after everyone I ever met was dead, it was time to open the box. It was time to unleash the full force of the box upon the world. And it was time to unleash the full force of our rage.



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