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We didn’t call it Outer Heaven for nothing, you see. There is no heaven without religion, without worship, without a prophet. It was not by choice that I was deemed the messenger of God’s will, of her words so hauntingly painful to remember. It was never my choice.
It is Heaven. Our religion is militarism, our worship is war, their prophet - well, the burden fell on my shoulders to be that saviour, perfect in every way, trained in every form of combat they knew and more. I could not turn down the duty handed to me in the form of a modified gun that hangs upon my wall to this day, almost fifty years later.
Rumours and myths spread real easy. I'm sure you've heard many bold tales from your bunk mates, hushed fear from your supervisors. Biblical stories of a fight in a field of white flowers and of MIGs that stripped the area of its plantation. A follower that overturned his traitorous mentor, who will save all the soldiers from a treacherous fate - uselessness. Who will lead them to Heaven with a silver tongue and a battle-scarred face and the smell of tobacco wafting about him.
I wouldn’t say I ever had a silver tongue. Wasn’t like I did the talking, or the convincing, tough interrogations that target every bit of your past were never my thing. Ocelot handled most of that, because he knows I lack the patience of unravelling a mind’s loyalties and rebuilding them anew. How to tame a mind into submission, I wouldn’t know, but I know how to close a man’s airways in a hundred different ways. My hands were never meant to be gentle enough to handle syringes and truth serum. It’s a good thing I found hands soft enough to poke and prod at a brain so carefully, but firm enough to completely reconstruct it.
Gratitude is a core practice of our religion, with thanks reverberating from blind followers that marvel at the very sight of their messiah, blessed with his presence. My presence. I say I don’t understand it, but I remember how she brought every room to a standstill, every man standing with bated breath in her company. Even the feared colonel himself took two steps backwards when faced with her wrath, all two hundred and one centimetres of him, a man endowed with the wrath of Zeus itself.
I let my gratitude show not by words, but through orders to the R&D department to invent new toys for him to train with. Revolvers he can twirl more comfortably on his ever-gloved fingers. Cylinders that make a satisfying click when they lock in. Hell, experimentation with the bullets, I tell them to have a field day butchering the glory of the Colt, knowing it’ll bring out the curiosity he could never fully squash since his youth. Curiosity killed the cat, and all. It’s my favourite joke, his... not so much.
I let my gratitude show through a comfortable mattress and long nights that shouldn’t really be attributed to us, seniors that we are. I told him that retirement would suit us well, maybe a decade or two of comfort would be nice to have towards the end, but he laughed and said we were still full of life. Still energetic enough to have a night of enthusiastic sex like it was still ‘84 and I wasn’t fully silver and he didn’t have bones that creaked like the bed under us. It wasn’t much, but it kept him satiated, happy in a way he rarely is, and who was I to deny a glorious disciple of mine his rewards?
Hell, I don't know why I'm writing this. They told me I had sons, and my first thought was if they would look like me. If there was a way I could ever come face to face with them and they'd know, in some cosmic way, that they were my flesh, my bones, my genes.
I followed each of you very carefully. Heard that your brother was a rascal that terrorised my most loyal man, incited revolutions against him. Granted, those revolutions were carried out by a group of kids barely able to reach his waist, but they knew how to pull a trigger. That was dangerous. Countless times I wondered whether he'd survive my life, in some selfish way I had hoped I was the only man strong enough to bear the weight of my responsibilities, of my title. But he pulled through, the tough bastard. Ocelot made sure of it.
Your younger brother looks older than even me. Born with the silver that only came for me at sixty something, with a full beard and sophisticated manners. Can't say I admire the way they took everything about my nature and inverted it, gagged when the Russian informed me that he was taught etiquette. Taught how to tie a tie, not by his father but by the government.
Let me tell you, David, I don't know how to be honest. Haven't been honest since the day your good ol’ Master stabbed me in the back and took every bit of faith I had away. Even writing this, my thoughts, my regrets, I gripped the pen so hard it broke a couple times, and I had to get a box of them from R&D for easy replacement. Don't mind the splotches of ink, they add a little character to my memories.
Honesty isn't one of our values. We all lie. I lie to my followers, to the man I call my love. You, I know, have lied too. Enlisting at sixteen wasn't your smartest idea, but I can't say your old man didn't do the same, trying to get away from a shit life into a worse one. You'll recoil at the words, claim we're nothing alike, and maybe we aren't. Maybe you won't come around and be the successor I hope you would be, when they told me I would have to bury George myself and not the other way around, that Eli was too unstable to lead a nation of his own.
I am trying to be honest. I regret it, David. I regret enlisting. I regret training every day of my youth for the approval of my superiors. I regret finishing the mission. I regret proving my loyalty. If I could go back, I would take your mother out to sushi somewhere in Japan and ditch the international collaboration to ruin my life. I would ditch the title Big Boss with a heartbeat if it meant I would get to see my sons grow like they were meant to, not in a lab, a bunch of cells with my genetic sequence imprinted. But as my sons, the ones I'd advise against the military and encourage them to pursue a job in engineering or whatever parents do these days.
But I know I wouldn't do well, like that. All I know is war. All I've known is combat, getting into fights as early as eight years old and emerging victorious. I like to imagine I'd teach you boys how to care, how to be honest, but the truth is I'd probably teach you CQC before ‘dada’. Your mother would disapprove, but I'd argue it's essential to your upbringing. It is futile to pretend that I would be the charming father who checks on your grades and teaches you how to ride a bike. It is futile to imagine a life other than mine.
I don't know if you'll read this. If you'll ever even have it. I'll probably burn it before anybody even catches a glimpse of it. Heaven knows if any of the recruits get their hands on this stray piece of paper the entire base would lose their minds and their faith in a matter of minutes, or God forbid, Adam finds this. Knows I was never happy with my life. Knows I could never be. Knows that I chose to repeat history by tempting Eve and not him.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe God’s will was lost in translation, from the vague secrecy of her words into the blunt bravery of mine. Where she wanted a world without borders I offered her an army without borders. Where she wanted worth, I offered her a rifle. Where she wanted peace, I offered her war.
There was never a chance for me to be a proper prophet. There's not a chance for you to be one, either. You inherited my name. You and I were doomed by Genesis to be the villains of it all. I was framed as a hero. I hope you won't meet that fate.
When you meet your mother, hold her for me. Give her my gratitude. Show her your worth. Lie to her that I'm happy. I'm almost certain she won't even hesitate before offering you her unconditional love. She's always had a motherly quality to her that she could never shake off, and now she gets to use it rightfully.
David,
I have but one request from you, if you even read this far. I've thought about this for a very long time - the one piece of advice I'd give my estranged sons. I speak to you as a father, not a superior. Never a soldier.
Take the love of your life out for sushi. Forget war, forget responsibility, forget it. Try the Otton frog for me. It'll be bitter, but do it for your old man, won't you?