Like war, it was inevitable. Like a virus, it was silent and omnipresent. Like hate, it burned and crippled every mind it touched. And like soured love, it gave little warning. It began in the pristine innocence of doubt. Gathering fear as a wheel gathers mud, it became anxiety, then angst, then silent shrieking horror. It resided not in one person, but in the whole of their kind. It was a darkness that came disguised as light, because there was none left to dispel it.

It was not that everything stopped. There was only the creeping realization that nothing was really moving. Convenience had bred irresponsibility, had gained hold with promises of easy happiness. Like an infection, it crept upward to places of power and influence. It became the grim incantation of senate and boardroom. Give up. You are weak. It’s all up to God. You’re just along for the ride, and you may as well grab what you can.

Whenever disaster struck, the blinders shook loose for only a moment. Some recognized the need for progress and change. Sometimes there were riots. But years later, when the pain faded, they forgot everything and returned to their amusements, their processed food, their enormous vehicles. And when calamity again visited the world, they were dulled to it. None of it mattered.

Conquering fear takes strength. Convinced by their own machinations that they had none, they chose instead not to care. One cannot have fear if one values nothing. They gave in, doused their fires and went on sabbatical in their own bodies. Distance was chic. Banality sexy. And there was no more pain.

Passion was a child’s folly, wildness a disorder, to be shaved away on culture’s precise, unimaginative lathe. When strong ones were born, they were broken like wild horses. Harnessed to a carriage with no axles, dragging the whole world on gravel and sand.

Some held fast to themselves, but theirs was not open rebellion. They lived apart, working quietly to undo the damage in secret. They raised their children on ambition and taught them to court curiosity, the fairest of the muses.

The children grew, filled with fire and motion, looking ahead to a light that blinded all ignorance and cast long shadows on the past. They built. They wrote. They fought. They spoke. They alone broke the silence and sang the ageless song of progress. Loved, hated or ignored, they lived apart, each lighting one’s own darkness. But their elders knew that one day the lights would meet. Lonely pools of brightness passed in the abyss, shivered, drew toward one another, each a moth to the others’ flames.

The blast was deafening.