The house seemed the same as it always had to Steve. There was the television that didn’t work and the sofa that did, the stockpile of candles and the thick black cable that ran out to the generators, the rain boots by the door beneath the gas masks. But something felt off. Perhaps it was that the Hermit was inside it, which was an unprecedented turn of events, or that there was now a headless corpse somewhere along his morning commute- not in itself unprecedented but certainly rare and the proximity to his jumping off point drove it into higher levels of discommonality. He looked around him, seeing not much to do otherwise, and lit a candle. The Hermit tilted his head and looked with confusion and the eruptive little flame and then at Steve, who shrugged and sat in his favorite armchair. The schnauzer heaped itself in front like a normal-sized boulder and Steve, in time-honored fashion, put his feet upon the great beast’s back. The schnauzer promptly went to sleep and for a few moments the only sound between the three of them was its gentle snoring.
I’m tired, Steve thought. Bone weary, really. What a day. It hadn’t promised to be this when it started, and yet here they were. He sighed, quietly as The Hermit was in the room and there was no telling what his reaction might be, and looked down at the stack of ancient newspapers he’d been rotating through. No sense letting all that print go to waste, just because the events in them were untimely and irrelevant. That had mostly been the case toward the end anyway, and he’d always enjoyed the act of reading them. But one long look had to do, because as Sheila was still outside doing something Steve was the unasked for host of their houseguest and felt he had a role to play under that umbrella. He cleared his throat.
“You’re going to die here,” The Hermit said, cutting across the silence Steve had been about to break. “If you don’t leave.” He reached up and scratched his beard, then stretched. “They think you’re dangerous now, and they won’t stop. Probably wouldn’t have stopped anyway but the chance is gone now.” Steve gaped a bit, thinking perhaps there was more coming, but the Hermit just sat and stared with dark, dead eyes at the wall in front of him.
“Maybe they’ll-“
“Do you know about the Siege of Waterstone?” Steve, decidedly unaware, shook his head, and the Hermit nodded without shifting his glance. It was weird, like watching the ice shift back in a glass as you poured out the liquid. “Not a lot of people did. The Government kept it pretty quiet at the time, and, well.” He raised his hands here and Steve felt a creeping dubiosity begin to settle over him.
“Which, ah, Government?” For the first time, The Hermit looked over at Steve. He blinked once, snorted, and continued.
“There were these people, you know. Living their lives, same as you and me.” Steve here interjected in his own mind that that was probably far too broad an assertion. “And one day, the police got a tip that the group had some drugs on their property.” He held up a hand. “Their property, mind you, and not any kind of tip that they were selling it. Just that they had it, see.” Steve nodded. The content was coherent for the time being, even if it probably previewed something that wasn’t quite and anyway of questionable reality. The Hermit continued. “So the Government came to see. And, on this occasion, the Government didn’t do much. They came and they poked around but they found what they had been told they would find and apart from some strange finds with the alignment of the cribs in the nursery there was nothing worth caring much about. So the Government, in a good mood, decided to leave.”
The point of the story was rapidly escaping Steve, which he was not proud to admit but his shoulder did quite hurt a lot and Sheila had been outside for quite a long time and the story was quite boring and he just wanted to lock his doors and go to sleep, so he made to stand but the Hermit put a hand up. Steve felt, somehow, compelled to stop and relaxed back into the depths of his chair. The Hermit nodded.
“Now, the Government,” Steve felt a strong impulse to once again ask which Government, but decided in the end it would be counterproductive, “was leaving. The people had, for the moment and within the context of the interaction, won. No fines were levied and only the barest looks of concern were spread around. Certainly I imagine reports would have been filed and doubtless some minor trouble would have come to the group when it was revealed that the leader was having children with thirteen year olds and the Government had to scramble and make it seem like this mastermind had hidden it so well they hadn’t considered the possibility while standing in his house. But in the moment, the people had won. And everything was fine. And then,” the Hermit paused here and leaned toward Steve. If the Hermit’s entire being wasn’t conspiratorial by default this action might have been described as such and Steve, as with all captive audiences everywhere, leaned in with reflexive energy. “A young man, who had been out hunting- for food, understand, not pure joy as with so many of the terrible people but to sustain himself and his family- returned from the woods surrounding the house. He had not know the Government was there. He had been camping, and had not even known they were coming. But the moment he saw them, he raised the machine gun with which he had been hunting the creatures of the forest, and opened fire.”
Steve, surprised despite himself at the obvious turn, leaned back and stared at The Hermit, whose face was somber and earnest in the soft light. It might have been any night in history after the advent of electricity, and only the content and real-world subtext made anything any different. A weird neighbor was telling a weird story that had somehow gripped him. He went to shake it off with a physical shift, realized if he did that The Hermit would see it, and instead settled for an unsatisfactory mental shake before replying.
“Ok. So then what?”
“So then the Government firebombed the house with nanodrones and erased the people from existence.”
“Um…” Steve replied, articulation not his strong suit when wrong-footed so aggressively. “So is this… I mean… how do you know? The…uh…” Steve searched his memory for the term. “Alternative media?” The Hermit reacted violently and Steve was positive the man nearly spit on the floor before realizing he was in a house that wasn’t his.
“Lapdogs. I know because the Network knows.” The Hermit’s voice rose and Steve became concerned that something- anything but certainly unpredictable things- might happen, and he was not prepared. “It’s the only free people! No agenda, no lies! Facts! Facts! Facts!” The Hermit, risen now and standing in the center of basically a comfortable suburban home, clearly realized he had made some sort of exit, and color flushed to his face. Steve, watching, saw the change and made an effort to relax his currently sky-high eyebrows.
“Ok.”
“Ok.” The Hermit sat.
“So… the story-“
“Historical account.”
“Right, historical account… the point is what… government is bad? Don’t… keep drugs? Or just make sure the whole group
Knows there’s something happening so the guy in the words doesn’t murder anyone?” The Hermit hung his head. “What? I mean. There was… there was a lot in that. Also my shoulder hurts, so…” the Hermit scoffed a second time and lifted his eyes, burning his intensity into and through Steve, who momentarily became concerned about the integrity of the wall behind him.
“The point,” the Hermit said, leaning forward, entire being seeming to strain against something that Steve was beginning to be concerned might be represented in himself, “is when you’re up against a bunch of people that are stronger than you and aren’t taking you seriously yet, showing them you’re dangerous is the fastest way to get yourself killed from afar.” The Hermit held Steve’s gaze for a beat, nodded once, and then shrunk back into the couch and closed his eyes.
We believe that in a topsy turvy world it’s worth considering that the people formerly clinging with all their might to the bottom rung of the sanity ladder and arguing against gravity might find themselves in an advantageous position.
