The focal point upon which it all breaks down is the misguided belief that time is linear, that it exists within a tangible and coherent structure that cannot be reversed or altered. Connected to this incorrect focal point, this rip in the fabric, are the flawed notions of destiny, of free will, of fairness.
If time is linear and irreversible, then Act A should produce Result B. This is how the corporeal mind reasons, I tell the Prophets, as I already begin to forget the pull of this reasoning. If Act A does not produce the expected Result B, corporeal beings experience a sense of disorientation, of wrongness. Because they cannot see the whole of time, they feel betrayed by time, and angry at the unfairness of it all.
Act A: A young Bajoran woman, born into oppression, finds the words of the Prophets inspirational. For her faith and her study, she is beaten and persecuted, but still she perseveres. She survives. She acquires position and power. She pushes and struggles and stays her faith, knowing that the expected result will be the love and protection of the Prophets. Result B is quite reasonable to her: her reward for suffering and remaining faithful to the Prophets shall be the love and protection of the Prophets.
When these expected results, this love and protection, never come, the young woman becomes angry. She becomes shrewd, while still maintaining her devotion to those truths she no longer truly believes.
Faced with the betrayal of those she served, she joins with the enemy of the Prophets…like a child joins with the enemy of its parents, bitter and resentful and full of righteous indignation at not receiving the reward she expected for her work.
This is what comes of linear thinking.
I. The Fires
It is better this way, I think, as I watch the fires come toward me. Better to die with my heart than to live without my soul. Better this one chance at redemption than a lifetime of empty victory.
I look into the eyes of my deliverer, the Cardassian who was my tormenter, my lover, my co-conspirator, and I find that I feel nothing for him but compassion. He is the tool of the Pah-Wraith. He will live with his destruction, while I rest in the heat of the Fire Caves.
I think perhaps I should be angry, but I feel a peace settling over me. I think of the warmth of his body, of the feel of his kisses when I still thought him Bajoran, never knowing except in my soul that he was my sworn enemy. I wonder, idly, did the Prophets send him to test me, or to deliver me? Perhaps, it was only by falling into the bottomless depths of my faithlessness that I was allowed to be reborn in faith.
Foolish things catch my mind as I prepare to die. He was a good kisser. I have not watered my plants today; I hope one of the vedeks will take them when I am gone. I still have several pages in the Book of ShaKiir to read; I suppose I will never finish the story now. I wonder who will be chosen as new Kai? Does it matter, now?
The Emissary has come. Dukat will be defeated, I know that. And my last moments, pitiable as they are, are moments of redemption.
I feel safe here as I die. Perhaps it is the warmth of the flames. As my body ages, I find it harder to get warm at night. Fire is a good way to go, I think.
It is through interconnectedness that the universe functions. We are not alone, as corporeal beings, nor are we finite. We are connected to each other, to our own thoughts, to the past, to the future. We are creatures of infinite possibility, only too blind to see what exists in the multitude of other potential realities. Corporeal lives are simply one strand in the fabric, a tenuous cord, neither more nor less critical than any other. A cord can be snapped without the fabric breaking, but each cord adds to the overall texture, design, beauty.
Without even a single thread, the whole is diminished.
II. The Camps
I try not to think about the blows, try not to feel it as they hit me over and over again. I must be strong. I must endure.
Still, the thoughts plague me, the doubts echoing through my mind. What do the Prophets care for a skinny camp girl, the voice in my head asks? Do the Prophets even exist? How can the Prophets exist, and let the bastard Cardassians do this to their children? And if they exist, are they good? Do they even care?
But I do endure, even as the blows come harder, even as I know I will never stop preaching the word of the Prophets, no matter how hard they beat me, no matter how hard they hurt me, no matter if they kill me. My faith is strong; my faith is pure. I will continue, I swear, even as a cry is ripped from my throat by the Cardassian who is issuing the punishment.
I hate the sound of my own cry, as if it were a mark of failure. A sign of my weakness. A sign that perhaps my faith is not so strong as I tell myself.
I am too young, I tell myself. Too young to die, I cry inside. Too young to be destroyed for a faith I cannot prove.
I want to be married.
I want to have children.
And most of all, I want to drive the Cardassians from my home. I know what the ones who fight in the Resistance think of me. They say take up arms if you hate the Cardassians. Fight. Kill. Prayers are for old women and tiny children. Take up arms, fight with us, or show yourself as a coward.
My blood is as hot as theirs, even if I never raise my hand in violence. My blows are the words of truth, the words of faith. My weapons are scripture, prophecy.
My fight is pure, even if I cannot kill even a single Cardassian. Even if this brute breaks me, crushes my bones, bloodies my face, I am still a warrior.
I can still fight.
I will not die here today. I will not fall to his blows.
I am a child of the Prophets.
To give up the idea of linear time is to understand the wholeness of time. The words of the Prophets are understood by corporeal beings as riddles, koans to test the mind and the faith and the courage. It is only when we are free from the illusions of now and then, of life and death, that we can truly understand the teachings of the Prohpets.
III. The True Believer
She is with him. I have to keep moving. I have to keep pushing. To give up now, now that we are so close, is to admit defeat. I do not admit defeat.
The trouble with Kira is that she confuses agreeable with right. She sees Bareil, with his soft manner and gentle ways, as somehow superior to me.
Bareil would not do the things she does, she thinks as she glares at me from her self-righteous tower. Bareil would find a way to make peace with the Cardassians, to feed the poor, to heat the winter and to teach the little children to sing, all without ever raising hs voice of melted butter even once.
She does not understand anything, the child. She looks at me with the same arrogance of all the Resistance types, of Shakaar and his ilk.
Guns and explosions did not drive away the Cardassians, I want to tell her. And guns and explosions will not keep them away.
She accuses me with her eyes, as if she can see straight through to my pah. As if I were the cause of his accident, as if I somehow orchestrated this entire sad affair.
The thought that I need him, need his skills at diplomacy, only further demonizes me in her eyes. That I would fight to keep him alive, long after I know his soul yearns for death, because it was necessary. That I would use him, blatantly, to garner this treaty with the Cardassians.
She looks at me as if I were a Pah-Wraith villain from the old books, torturous and evil, possessed of whatever the literal opposite of true faith was.
She is young and stupid.
She thinks I know nothing of sacrifice. Yes, she took up arms, and yes, she risked her life. She thinks she is the only one who has lost.
I have lost. I have suffered. But I learned, like we all must learn, that the Prophets do not help us for free. That the Cardassians were sent to us, not to subdue us, but to make us stronger.
It is strange, the hypocrisy of these pups. Bajor was a peaceful planet, before the Cardassians came, before we were forced to take up arms. Our people learned, through hard experience, to fight and to hate. They think because they fired guns that they are the only ones who fought. The only ones who learned.
I learned, too, to fight and to hate. I learned the ways of diplomacy, the ways of secrecy, the political maneuverings that kept the religion alive when all of Cardassia would have seen our faith in extinction.
Those who maintained, the vedeks, the ranjens, even the venerable Opaka herself, learned that we could not maintain without sacrifice. I knew this, as I used the gems from my order's tabernacle to bribe the Cardassians, to convince them to spare even a modicum of kindness for their Bajoran slaves. It was my bribes that saved an entire transport of Bajorans sentenced to death.
Mine.
While she fought with guns and bombs, I fought with honeyed smiles and pilfered jewels. While she bathed herself in blood, washed her spirit clean with the death of Cardassians and collaborators alike, I smiled and survived and preached even when I knew it would get me imprisoned.
And now that the Cardassians reach out to us for peace, their voices diplomatic and dangerous, it is I who will be the protector of Bajor. This treaty will be signed. This dance will be played out, in the only way such dances can go.
Sacrifices must be made for survival. Purity of intent is enough for me. I shall clean my hands when I am dead.
Bareil will live, and he will serve his purpose.
Bajor will know peace, no matter what the cost.
Once a body has been freed of its dependence upon linear time, clarity can begin to enfold the pah. Notions of good and bad, right and wrong, fair and unfair become just so many shades of the same color. It is a difficult thing to let go of, this belief that one was truly good, truly noble in life. It is hard for the ego, still clinging to the corporeal body which no longer lives, to accept the fact that, indeed, the role he or she played in the fabric of time was that of the villain. It is harder still to love the villain in one's own pah, to accept and embrace and honor the "evil" done during our lives. For there is no light without dark, and there is no good without evil.
This is the fabric of life, the fabric of all time and space.
Good. Evil.
Right. Wrong.
Love. Hate.
Until that is comprehended, corporeal life forms will always remain puzzled, afraid, lost. Until one has embraced their own evil, they will only know suffering.
IV. The Revelation of Things Hitherto Unknown
My bed is warm. At some point in my life, a warm, clean bed would not have been so casually accepted and forgotten. It would have been the object of much reveling, much joyful gratitude.
Right now, in this moment, the only truth in my life is this warm bed.
The Prophets, my Prophets, have abandoned me.
The Orb of Truth remains silent.
My lover is my greatest enemy.
My world is on the brink of moral destruction.
Once, I might have given in, lowered my eyes and gone to Opaka for solace. I might have cried alone in temple, rocking on my feet back and forth, praying to the Prophets not to abandon me.
Once, I might have hidden within myself, hardened my mind and heart to this burden of shame and rejection, refused to see the reality of what has been revealed to me by the silence of the Prophets.
It is not now, nor has it ever been, once. It is now.
I am alive, in this moment of utter despair, and I will continue.
I feel the breath come into my lungs, and thought it is hateful to me, I push it out again as I have without thinking since the moment I came into this sad, benighted world.
I am alive, and I will continue to be alive.
The Prophets have abandoned me. Or have I abandoned them? Does it matter now? I am alone, with a faith that no longer serves me, with a foundation of truth that shudders under the weight of neglect. I am alone, with a demon for a lover and an outworlder for an Emissary.
Not only alone, not only abandoned, but mocked.
This Emissary of theirs, this smug, arrogant human Emissary.
What has he suffered, to be chosen by them? What has he given, to be so blessed, when I, who gave my life for them, am ignored?
A Kai without the blessing of the Prophets.
A Bajoran with the faith of her ancestors.
I am lost, and I am forgotten. But I am not beaten.
If the Prophets will not be true to the one who serves them, then I will find another faith. I will find the faith, the true faith of the Bajoran people, with the true Prophets, the Pah-Wraith.
I will give myself to them and serve them as their Emissary.
And my faith will be rewarded. Finally.
My love will be returned.
The strangest thing about death is the understanding that it is, when all is said and done, very similar to life. The Prophets, the Pah-Wraiths, the humans and Bajorans, Cardassians and The Dominion, all of these are the same now to me.
Kira Nerys, Dukat, Anjohl… What does it matter? We are all travelers on the same road. We are all fibers in the thread of the mosaic that makes up the fullness of time and space.
We are particles of life, good and bad, light and dark.
And that is how it should be.
END