The Truth Particles

Introduction

Night. Above, stars burn with incandescent flames that render the darkness of vast distances helpless. This light has travelled for many thousands of years, and its long journey is wasted on the insignificant beings that stare, sometimes, at the Heavens, to marvel pitifully at its beauty. They have named these stars as parts of Heaven but their tiny minds’ concept of Paradise would not fill the majesty of even one star. Their minds are ill equipped to deal with the pureness, the absolute perfection that is stars. They have what are known as gods: huge, intangible beings that pale into insignificance next to the absolute, unquestionable presence of stars.

Far below, two of the flawed beings sit around a fire that quakes in what is believed to be the wind. The fire, however, is shaking and sobbing with grief that it is only an imperfect copy of the splendour that shines, so consistently, above it. It also hates. Fires are said to burn out of control but they do not. They merely rage against the beings that committed such an enormous blasphemy against those colossal spheres of faultlessness by making them.

These two beings are unaware. They sit, thinking they are important, not looking at the sky, a cardinal sin, and stare at the flames. They stare because they are bored, and maybe will watch the mourning of the fire and call it dancing. One of the men is hunched, a position that improves him slightly, if only to reveal less of his utter hideousness. The sorrows of the flames make the shadows between the disgustingly deficient lines of skin on his face waver. His eyes reflect the fire in defective orbs that distort what little beauty there is. His hair was once brown, but in this light looks unimportant. His clothes, inadequate cover for such a perversion of nature as the human body, are also irrelevant. His companion is much younger, so his features have not yet started to rot and sag, but still there is an ugliness that cannot be measured written on his face.

The two men are murderers. They are thieves. They are oppressors. They are sinners. They will be described as some as heroes, but the arrogant, self-important speeches that men make to justify their actions, which these two will make in the fullness of time, do not take away the truths of what they are.

Perhaps now, after four hundred and three words, we should introduce ourselves. We are truth. We see things as they are. Lies are sins. You may give excuses, cases where it may be good to tell a lie, but these do not exist. We exist, particles of truth, and we know everything. We show things as they are, and we despise sins dressed up as courage by those who feel guilt that they are imperfect. We will show you who these men are, and what they have done, and it will be the Truth. We know nothing else.





Prologue

Daybreak. The exquisite radiance of the stars pales into oblivion against the violent streaks of sunlight that pierce the sky, which lifts its mood into a ferocious cobalt blue. The light slaps the faces of the two who lie sleeping on the ground, who have not seen the amazing shift of power between the stars and the sun, and so are punished, as is right. We do not ignore beauty, but there are those who do not appreciate it, and these are two of that multitude.

The two groan at the insistence of day, and rise like old oak trees, forced to move with the adamant wind. They shelter their eyes against the fierce blazing of the newly born sun, and turn to face their journey, which must surely not have begun on this dawn, for neither looks at its majesty for more than a few seconds, indicating that they have seen it enough times to be uninterested. This is perverse, but so many creatures act. We accept this.

One of the men, his name Tom, turns to the other. He is the one with unimportant hair. He has left a home, and his wife waits, even now, and looks upon the empty cot, which will never now be filled. Do not ask us how we feel about this. We have no feelings, only the truth. The truth is that when she lost their child, he did not believe that she could ever have one. He left, without an explanation, and is forever racked with guilt. She mourns her child, and blames herself, and waits. She will die before he ever returns. He will never know.

The young man laughs, an action that turns him golden. We are startled. So much beauty comes from that laugh, and we do not understand it. He laughs without a care, and indeed, he has no cares. He believes in justice, and that the world is good. He has not yet learnt the truth. We have not come to him. His name, incidentally, is Roger.

Tom, his name an inadequate description of himself, has committed atrocities. Looking now at the boy, whose name is hateful even if the boy isn’t, he is reminded of himself at a younger age. He sees in Roger the same trust in people that he once had. Roger is unaware of Tom’s past; otherwise he would not be around him with such ease. The old man, for now in the fullness of day and the harshness of the sun we see that he is ancient, closes his eyes. It has been a long time since he has thought about her, the one person in which we saw ourselves.

She was naïve, deluded, and often confused, but she was right, a situation in which very few humans find themselves. This ability, for it was innate, caused her much suffering, pain, and desolation at the truth of the world. She was lucky, therefore, that her death came early to her; another year believing in her morality would surely have sent her more insane. We mourn her, for she knew the value, the beauty, which there is in life. She knew. And therefore, we will look back on her life, and incidentally on Tom’s, and you shall know her.





Chapter One

The moon, wisely, covered its face in the lace clouds that bedecked it. Likewise did the sun, rising early next morning, and so the clouds were the unwitting witnesses to the beginning of her downfall. She stood, surrounded by autumn maples, her favourite tree, and they were the reason that she had chosen this place. The day, drowned in shadows, was burnt by the flame leaves, whose clarity seemed to focus her mind. She seemed to need the help more and more recently, but it was hardly a problem in the colder seasons, where the beauty of the world seemed to cut through the warm film layered across it in the warmer months. As it was only October, the panic had not set in yet. She still had six months before it really became a problem, which seemed endless then, at the start. By the end it would seem too short a time to live for, when most others who enter this story would live for many times that span. Nonetheless, she was hopeful. It hadn’t occurred to her that her life would end so soon, and how could she? We knew, of course, and we mourned her, even now. She surprised even us, though, and the remainder of her life was to be filled with more beauty than most people could ever hope for. It was filled with less love.

The maple trees seemed to shy away from her as they became gradually barer, and she had to move on when the leaves were gone, lest the warmth entered her soul again. Two weeks after your first encounter with this brilliant woman she was gone. Little remained to show that she had ever sanctified that place, except a woe that we, clumsily, instilled there. Sadness lingers there still. Now, she was riding towards a small village, and here our scope of perception will narrow. . .

At this, she slapped him, hard, across his brazen mouth, and felt he had to atone for and justify his deeds.