14. Normal meets Zafar I
Normal was depressed. He missed Kathryn. He missed her smile. Her presence. The way she lit up a room when she entered it. The way she would touch him from time to time when they were together as if to reassure him that she was still there. He missed all that and more.
It was true that she could be a real terror when she was mad. It was also true that a couple of times in their relationship he'd felt as if he'd rather be somewhere else - this had nothing to do with her deadly aim with ordinary household implements and utensils[1]. But those dark times were rare, she was the sweetest person you ever knew most of the time! He wished he hadn't been such a fool as to get rid of that mutt of hers. That had always been his problem - he tended to act on impulse and it never failed to come back and haunt him.
The view outside wasn't helping his mood much. In fact, it was further aggravating his depressed state of mind. The hoverbus was still passing through the war ravaged areas left over from the era of the great wars - the time before time began. In fact, it was mostly like that wherever you went in the world. The fact that it was such a part of your life didn't help make it less depressing when you had to stare at the signs of such great destruction.
He wondered, for the millionth time, what his ancestors must have been like to have caused devastation on such a huge scale. The wild lands, as they were called, were utterly uninhabitable. They were still radioactive in some parts and in others the geological upheavals had been such that there were great rifts in the land which had created deep chasms. Add to that the fact that strange mutated creatures roamed the wild lands, and you had some pretty compelling reasons not to go there.
"An extremely depressing sight, isn't it?" said the passenger on his left, breaking into his thoughts almost as if he'd read them. Normal turned towards his fellow passenger, whom he'd ignored completely since he'd sat down. He was a small, frail looking old man with a permanently thoughtful look etched on his face and he had an almost tangible aura of untidiness around him. It was as if he radiated untidiness, as if all the untidiness in the world emanated from him - or he attracted it like a magnet. His clothes were untidy, his hair was untidy - in fact, if they'd ever decided to search for a poster-child for untidiness, the old man looked to be a shoe-in. Normal stared at him, giving him the whatchu-talkin-bout-old-man look.
"I meant the wild lands ..." the man hastened to clarify. "Oh, I am sorry; I haven't introduced myself, have I? My name's Zafar Supari. I saw you gazing out the window. You realize that all that destruction and devastation out there was caused by our forefathers?"
"Well, I had only one - so you must have had three," replied Normal with a straight-face. "I had no idea that our combined fathers were capable of all this destruction! As far as I can recall, mine didn't do much in the way of destruction except to break a couple of windows and a plate once, and Mom wouldn't talk to him for a week over that!"
"Oh that's really droll, it is," the old man smiled dryly. "At least you didn't pick on my name - you have no idea how much I've had to suffer with a name like Zafar. But forgive an old man for straying ... are you one of those who believe that our ancestors did all that or do you belong to one of the other camps?" Zafar pointed to the destruction outside the plasti-glass window.
"You mean the ones who claim that aliens disguised as humans started the Chaos Wars? I don't really buy into that. Most people seem to agree that we, or rather our ancestors, did this. Of course, I sometimes wonder if we are just forcing ourselves to believe that so we'd think of the human race as being actually capable of something - even if it was in our past." Normal paused a moment as if considering something. "Come to think of it, we never seem to be at a loss when it comes to finding new ways of destroying things, so I guess it's not too much of a stretch. Still, it's hard to believe our ancestors had the power to wreak so much havoc when just a couple of decades ago we were struggling to just stay alive."
"But wouldn't that also indicate how good we are at destroying things? What could be greater than the destruction of civilization itself?"
"You have a point there," replied Normal. "Oh and I'm Normal, Normal Kint," he added as an afterthought.
"Nice to make your acquaintance," said the old man with a courteous bow of his head. "These days nobody remembers our past!" he continued with a little sigh. "First there were all those years of struggling to stay alive after the Age of Chaos. Then we had all these rapid changes after the aliens arrived. That has made a lot of people forget all about our ancient heritage. Sure, it might not be a heritage that we might want to remember but still, if we forget the mistakes of our past, we are doomed to repeat them."
"So you're a scholar of history?"
"Well, that's my field of study - I'm a historian. I work for the University of Donagar and I've been engaged in trying to unearth more data about humanity's past - especially the years before the Age of Chaos. But facts are scarce - most of the time all you have to go on are legends and folk tales. While they might have a germ of truth to them, the problem is in finding which bit is true." Normal could imagine Zafar wringing his hands at this point, but the old man failed to live up to Normal's imaginings.
To be continued ....
[1] Most people have failed to grasp the damage potential of a well aimed plate. This is due to the fact that they have not been at the receiving end of a flying plate. Flying saucers had nothing on them.
