Brown Eyed Boy
A measure of profound wisdom, if not perfection, is the ability to stop arguing
The two whispering beings, who are, for all practical purposes, gods, confer inside the event horizon of a massive active galactic nucleus, minimising their gravitational and EM footprint, hoping to evade eavesdroppers even more formidable than themselves.
Shouldn’t we accept their truce?
— Why? We are winning. We should finish this conflict as soon as possible. Billions of stellar systems have been turned into sizzling nebulae, their cores screaming in X-rays.
But it is unwise for our side to win too resolutely and put them in a position where they have nothing to lose.
— They miscalculated when they provoked us, and we’re the ones who will bring it to its close. They’re irrational.
They might employ the ultimate weapon.
— That would completely obliterate them, too.
But what if … what if I knew of a way to convince them to agree to a permanent cessation of hostilities — to a peace deal?
— And let them get away with it?
Who is being irrational now?
She realises she should stop arguing. In the time it takes her to give out the equivalent of a sigh and signal her acquiescence to him, a century passes in the Universe outside. He nods, then departs the maelstrom around the singularity without as much as a goodbye.
At last, she has no doubts at all there is utterly nothing left of that brown-eyed, smiling rogue she had embraced under an inky, nebulae-glinting sky millions of years ago, the memory of which she burnishes every few millennia to keep her sanity.
She smiles sadly. The fate of everything now depends on her — an omnipotent being that studiously hides the taint of its former animal self from the Others, which ironically offers her a broader perspective and a solution to ending the War. The way ahead is clear.
She will betray him.
The story above was first published on X (Twitter) and is © 2024 by David Pahor. No part of my stories should be used to train AI technology to generate text, imitating my writing style.
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