Chapter Twenty - The Universal Motivation

The fact that it was in the process of his first meeting with Hopper that Balthazar had lost his life did not escape him, yet strangely there was very little dread in repeating the excursion. It might have something to do with the fact that he could still not imagine losing anything else. He continued to travel with Colinaude, because he had little other choice, and on foot, and as he did so he noted that gas prices were now frozen just below the two dollar mark, as if to say it was now good enough, the oil companies had bent enough and should be expected to go any further. Was there really a need? Even if there were, it was no longer Balthazar’s concern, for too many reasons. Yet he found that he did not regret them as much as he thought he should.

“I don’t want to unsettle him,” he said.

“He doesn’t unsettle easily these days,” Cotton said. “Despite what made him what he is now, Hopper is as serene a man as you will ever find. Some would call it contradiction. I call it peace. He’s found peace, in his longing, he’s found a purpose.”

“Still, you can’t help wonder if it’s the best thing for him,” Balthazar said. “You want to talk to him about it. You want to know what he really thinks. It’s very easy to project your own conclusions. But what if the reality is not what it seems? What if we’ve built up a myth around him? But what if we destroy it, if we try to confirm it?”

“You risk everything when you do anything,” Cotton said. “That’s the nature of experience. Every new moment, every new thought brings you further from the moment, the thought that led you to where you already are. For some people, they can manage a remarkable amount of continuity, because their previous moments, their previous thoughts, have not been altered very radically in the process of time and experience. This is neither a good nor a bad thing, it’s simply a manner of experience. Others change all the time. But no one is completely static.

“Do you want to know what kind of boy Denny Hay was? To begin with, he grew up without a family. When I first encountered him, he had just been abandoned by his parents, left behind on the subway, a boy of eight, only just beginning to understand his world. The authorities tried to find the Hays, but they had disappeared, probably adopting new names for their new life, which they got away with, and got away from their burden. Denny was gifted artistically, but I doubt they ever knew, or cared. He didn’t care, eventually, either. He had a trust about him, from the moment I met him, even when he thought he was being led into danger; if he trusted the person that led him he would go right along, carrying his fears with him. He imparted trust too easily.

“Even when he began to see his world crumble around him, he did not lose this quality, even when he was committed. It was only when he emerged again, and searched for his parents himself, that he began to lose it, and take up his ride on the subway, his vigil for a life that he would never know again. I encountered Hopper one day, the trust was still in his eyes. I thought it also looked like recognition, but it wasn’t; that had always been there, too. He was born with the uncanny gift to recognize his fellow man. This gift eventually became his way to be useful again. He became a conveyer of information, one like so many others in Traverse but one set apart just the same. He doesn’t refuse anyone, but they have to find him first. It is almost a test of purity, because he still believes in that, too. In fact, it may be the only things he believes in. Those that find him must, invariably, possess it. You can imagine how unsettling it is for those who realize this. It forces them to believe in purity themselves. He doesn’t trust anyone anymore. He trusts purity. It’s up to us to believe in it.

“Some of us don’t have that in us. Some of us know we don’t.”

“That’s a terrible thing to say,” Balthazar said.

“There are terrible truths, Balthazar,” Cotton said. “Denial of a thing only deepens its control.”

“Belief in a lie does the same thing,” Balthazar said, “makes it stronger, more damaging. If Hopper believes in purity, I am inclined to believe in it, too.”

“Then you are as big a fool as he is,” Cotton said.

“I don’t understand you,” Balthazar said. “There’s such a huge divide between the way you talk and the apparent way you think. I don’t know whether you respect this friend of yours or not.”

“Let me settle it for you, then,” Cotton said. “I don’t. He’s found his peace in the wrong thing. He’s found it in a delusion.”

“So have you,” Balthazar said. “The only difference is, he’s not trying to push his delusion onto others.”

“Yet he still admit to falling under his spell,” Cotton said. “Tell me he doesn’t push it onto others. Tell me he has no influence.”

“You’re crazy,” Balthazar said.

“He’s one of those leaders of example,” Cotton said. “They can be forces for good, and otherwise.”

“I don’t think he sees it that way,” Balthazar said.

“It doesn’t matter!” Cotton said. “It doesn’t matter what his intention is. The reality of a thing is not always the same as the intention of it. Don’t you understand? Everything everyone does has consequences, every thought, every action, and it does not confine itself to any single individual. What we call great men are only those whose influence is immediately obvious, and we should be ashamed that those are the only ones we honor, even the so-called academics and scholars, who continue to consider the obvious even at the expense of what they claim to do, what they claim to represent, what they claim they themselves are. Well, we had had very few great thinkers. Too many have simply continued on where others have left off, rather than truly explore themselves, or what mankind has had to offer. To be thought of as a great thinker, one of your list of accomplishments is to have been well-read. That only makes you a healthy reader. Only so much can be achieved through mere synthesis of existing material.

“There is so much more in our potential, so much more than the connections that place names in history. For every name you could think of, there are ten more that no one has ever heard. So don’t tell me that Hopper has no influence, just because he does not broadcast it. We fail as a whole because we do not think as a whole. We think we have to rely on others.”

“You’re making Tekamthi’s case for him, you realize,” Balthazar said.

“I’m making my own case,” Cotton said. “No one understands what responsibility is, what it truly means. That is our greatest fault.”

“And yet you can’t do anything about it,” Balthazar said. “Can you?”

“No,” Cotton said. “I suppose you can’t. I wonder if there’s any use to knowing what humanity’s real problem is.”

“That’s what makes the notion of free will so wicked, I guess,” Balthazar said. “It’s the biggest catch-22 of them all. And because of it, you can’t fault Hopper for the life he’s chosen.”

“You can,” Cotton said. “Free will is the reason there’s civilization, to create order out of chaos. You force others to realize their responsibility. We are our own brother’s keepers. Don’t you understand? It is our own responsibility, responsibility for each other.”

“Whether they like it or not,” Balthazar said.

“And whether it tears us apart or not,” Cotton said.

“That’s your real problem, isn’t it?” Balthazar said. “You tried to assume too much responsibility, and found out too late how much it really was. And you’ve only been talking yourself out of since.”

“I have my own free will,” Cotton said. “I can walk away. I did walk away.”

“That’s the thing,” Balthazar said. “You didn’t. You only told yourself that you did. You tell yourself too many things.”

“I don’t know what else to do,” Cotton said.

“Maybe you don’t have to,” Balthazar said. “Maybe you just to have learn how to trust in humanity. You’ve laid out the case for that already. You’ve told me how to overcome my own fault. Why won’t you allow yourself to overcome yours?”

“Guilt,” Cotton said. “It’s the universal motivation.”

“Maybe so,” Balthazar said. Maybe we put too much stock in it. Maybe we ought to accept things for what they are, and stop pretending they’re not.”

“Sometimes it’s useful,” Cotton said. Neither seemed to have much more to say at the moment. They walked on all the same, as if it was the walking itself that motivated them, and not a particular destination, or purpose. They were exiles, in a way, cast out from their native land never having truly left it in spirit. They just had to find a way to reenter, and that was the real reason for their journey, a search for a new purpose. They had one already, but it was not what either really wanted. It was a way to pass the time. In a way, both had been on that search all their lives, and their lives had been spent articulating the search, so that in time they better understood it, better understood where they were headed, until when the time arrived they knew where they would end up. That was the mark of life, not to know what you were doing, but what would be the end result. That was when you died. The knowledge of this was the cause for much fear. It was the cause of murder, of unnatural death, of man staking his own claim on the fundamental conclusion to life, just not a life lived, for a life that was lived never truly ended. It merely added to the tapestry of life itself. And every life was lived. There was no way around it, no manner of control that could change it.

For the man who had decided to ignore time, every other illusion had fallen away. It no longer mattered what the realities of his past life had been, what others had believed they were accomplishing. Denny had accepted that his ride had come, and so he took it. His search for his parents was not a literal one, but rather his own sense of closure. He had found peace and moved on, because he lived in that peace, and through it found a lasting impact on humanity, one few others would have ever considered. When Balthazar came back to him, he did nothing but try and help him realize the same thing, but Balthazar was not ready. The thought of a man entered him, and he finally gave in to the peace entirely. He died in Balthazar’s presence, knowing this act would put this man on his own path, and was content with that. It was all he’d ever wanted, and had finally come to see that it had been granted.

***

In his new form, the man who now called himself Dust finally thought he was accomplishing things. Having lost his previous form, he found he’d lost old pretensions as well, but also realized he had use for those yet. He knew they would still be needed, if he could find a way to bring them back. It was in this thought that he found he had his greatest breakthrough to date.

Soon he would share some of them with others, when he was ready. Still, there was more to accomplish before then.