3. Fear the Sea
The Straight Road is not a place, not anymore. It is a state that comes about by the combination of two wills – that of a suitably elevated being desiring to make the journey, and those governing the hallowed land on the other side. Think of it as a two-way communication protocol, like USB.
The date was... the year of our Lord 2020th, and even though a few seasons had passed since my final realization, by then I decided that I should have lingered no more. For a few decades by that time, I was growing uneasy, for a bunch of reasons. With the modern world turning increasingly interconnected and driven by surveillance, social media and big data, it was becoming ever harder to maintain the façade, and leaving no traces in humanity's vast libraries of intelligence, nigh impossible. Already I had to move and start a new persona every few years now, trying to keep a low profile so as to give nobody inquisitive enough - and with imagination vivid enough to accept the existence of sentient beings other than the bog standard Homo Sapiens on the same planet - any ideas. But I knew that it was futile to try hiding from the myriad security cameras strewn all over the cities - and from the clandestine agencies watching through these electric eyes. However, moving to some faraway rural area was not really an option either - for a few reasons, the chief of which was the fact that anyone comes under a magnitude more scrutiny in small, closed communities. Finally, there was literally no place well enough habitable and at the same time unpopulated to start a hermit's life, and these days even such recluses - once their existence ceases to be a secret - start attracting increased attention instead, especially by the media. I could not afford to have my visage plastered across the photo spreads of major newspapers any more than I could allow myself to tell about my origins on Facebook for all to see.
And then, the rising pandemic was what sealed the deal for me. Before everything would be ground to a standstill and locked down - for Eru only knew how long - I started my preparations. I had to do quite a bit of these, for a variety of reasons.
Though the Valar were pretty strict about whom you might bring with yourself on your journey, they never specified exactly what one could and could not take. I guess I could have loaded the yacht to brim with weapons, and even hauled a nuclear missile aboard if I had had one – alright, that last idea was pushing it. I wouldn't have minded to have one back in the days of the First Age, though. Even as I always deplored the propensity of Men to create the ever more devastating tools of destruction and slaughter, what I wouldn't have given for one of these things to drop inside Angband in those old days to obliterate Morgoth... and the cursed Silmarils all at once. How much trouble and misery would have been averted.
Ah, the yacht, of course... it was my own, and quite dear to me in a few senses. I was always feeling that connection to the sea, ever since I threw the accursed Silmaril into the depth – even though these waters were not the same – so over the ages, I've never strayed far from the shores, and the maritime affairs, for long. By now, it's all become a bit of a blur – travelling with those who would rediscover the world, wasting away on long steamboat journeys... and, of course, sailing on my own for the sport and relaxation that pastime brought me like (almost) nothing else in life. As they said (or sung), the sail and soul were woven fast.
Speaking of that "almost"... among the few sturdy crates I hauled aboard the ship as I was preparing to depart was one the contents of which were the most precious to me. I made painstaking efforts to be sure that even if the voyage went awry and a storm was to beset me, the priceless cargo would not get wet or damaged by impact. Even if bad would turn to worse, that crate was the one I would not have the heart to jettison, for its contents were the thing that made me what I am – or at least what I perceived myself as – to the degree behind only that of my own brain.
I have tried and abandoned a hundred different trades during my life. Soldier, sailor, tinker, spy... But no matter what tool I was using at the moment to earn my daily bread, it was the song that kept me alive inside.
And even though I was on the fence about the achievements of the modern Earth as a whole, it was undeniable that the technical advancements have made the creation, the processing and the dissemination of music that much more straightforward and easy for whoever felt the inclination (even that driven by the desire to reap monetary benefits, rather than to create, per se). Over the years, my most prized possessions were the sheaves of sheet music that I cherished far above gold and gemstones - and still, tumultuous as my life had been for centuries on end, had to endure the loss of some of the precious creations. Mind you, each time I tried to rewrite them from memory once the danger had passed, but the degree of success was inevitably variable. Now, though? I had several copies of everything connected to my creativity - though carefully stripped of anything that might in any way point to my identity - safely backed up: some on the memory cards the size of a thumbnail and a few on remote, practically anonymous servers in a couple of not entirely obvious countries across the globe from each other.
Ah, but I would not be needing those quite soon.
The crate contained a painstakingly selected assortment of items I might need to continue my studies and exercises in music from the point I would leave them at the moment I set sail to Aman. Over the last fifty or so years, I have grown quite fond of the sound - and the versatility - of the modern electric guitar and synthesizer, so each of these was to travel with me over the otherworldly sea. Actually there were two electric guitars of decent vintage, both used extensively by me - or, to be precise, my most established personae of session players and composers that (to the utmost surprise of their counterparties in the music business) insisted to be discreet about their identities and to have their contributions to the records - some of which were pretty well known, even if nobody could connect them to me - to be signed with a variety of pseudonyms. There was also a bass guitar, compact amps to go with the instruments, a mixer rack, two decent sound recording devices, as well as a few books and the surviving paper copies of my sheet music. I also took what remained of my "classical" instruments and a new-ish acoustic guitar - as a measure of precaution for the off chance that my plan might fail miserably and leave me powerless in the modern sense of the word.
See, I was not sure Aman had any source of electricity that I could use to power my devices. While I have become decently adept at fixing mechanical tools and electric appliances, I could not have hoped to cobble together a power generator, and even if I had taken one with me, I would have run out of fuel - with very, very slim chances of producing more - rather quickly. Counting on finding a steady source of ethanol pure enough to feed the ravenous machine would have been a gamble at best, and nuclear fission was out of question, no matter how much I wished otherwise. That left the only realistic source of electric energy that would be available both in Middle-Earth and Valinor.
The Sun.
Now, I was not sure the same Sun was shining upon both Middle-Earth - or rather simply Earth now - and the hallowed land neatly splintered away from the old world as it had been ages ago. For the longest time, I really didn't care, to be frank, and cosmological disputes were not my thing anyway. All that mattered was the fact that Aman had sunlight, and I had the means of funneling some of its power, graciously shed upon all, for my own... devices. And stashed away in this crate and a couple others were a few batches of accumulators and solar panels. Not enough to power a whole household, for sure, but more than enough to provide electricity to the instruments. Now, I could afford to pat myself on the back - very slightly - for the decision to invest in a company producing these panels. A prescient move if there was ever one on my part.
I was just hoping there was no deep-rooted mistake of any variety in my calculations, one that might just upend all of these plans and make them ridiculous, as I was slipping off the cable at the marina of Garachico, a lovely old town on the northern side of Tenerife island, nestled between the dormant volcano and the ever unquiet ocean.
Oh, and how could I forget. I was, most likely, going to be tried once I moored at whichever port existed in Valinor - if I ever arrived there at all, that is. That was never far from my thought ever since I got that mental message - but a dreadful end was better than dread without end; by then, it had been made clear as day to me.
Note: the chapter name is from a song by The Gathering (from Mandylion album, 1995)
