Prologue – The Truth in Myth
"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic." – John F. Kennedy
You probably already know what I'm gonna say.
All those tales you've heard? The stories?
Yeah, those are a load of horse shit. Well, mostly. A little truth in everything, as they say.
Things have, uh…escalated a little, though. Didn't take down a dozen Thunderjaws defending Meridian, for example. (There were only two.)
Sometimes, though, that's just what happens. You can't control it, because it's…it's just human nature. Our nature. We need something to inspire us to do more, be more. It's we look up at the stars at night – they inspire us to reach ever higher. So, because of that, we just sort of…add more to each "truth".
It's like a game of telephone. You get a few people together, tell the first person one thing, and by the time it gets to the tenth person it's completely different. And we pretend like that's a bad thing, a horrible thing that should always be prevented. But really, this…flaw…is kind of a super power, if you think about it. Humanity's own special brand of magic.
And even so, with all those "flaws", those little twists and turns that spin a tale into something it isn't, the truth at the heart of it all remains. And that's…that's just how stories end up. The ones that really matter. The stories your parents tell you when you're little, the ones that are full of darkness and despair but always have a happy ending. The stories that really stick with you.
They start out as a kernel of truth, then the truth becomes a story. That story becomes fable, and fable turns into myth. And myth?
Myth…myth turns into legend.