I awoke on an overgrown beach with a hand over my mouth and smoke burning the lining of my nose. It was hard to breathe and it is to my shame that I admit that nothing else mattered at the time. A large man was sitting on my chest to keep me from moving about and making noise. As my strength failed, he leaned in close to my left ear to speak without being overheard. He could have said anything and I would not have denied his request.
"It works this way. If you step out of line one time, and I never met you. You bring the scales down on yourself and I will deny ever having known you. In return, when this is over, I want a ride out of this place. When they come to get you back, I get to go too. Are we agreed or are you dead in the sand?"
He remained in the shadows where I could not have seen him in the best of conditions. Fighting him off was simply not an option. With what remained of my strength, I shook my head in agreement. There was no time for me to catch my breath before we started to move further into the woods. The fire was attracting attention that my captor did not want.
The only thing that I could remember about what had happened was that I was safer in the hands of my captor than I would be in the hands of the other people who would soon be looking for me. It was not a good place for me to be. My craft had been forced into the sand where the wreckage was still burning. I had not come for a fight and was not ready when I found one. God was my only friend and resource wherever I was.
Still groggy, I wasted breath asking my captor who he was.
He did not turn back to face me. His pace was hard to keep up with, even as he spoke in hushed tones. "What business is that of yours?"
"I have no idea where I am and I am still not sure even who I am. Please forgive my curiosity."
"When we get out of here, you have got to mind your every thought and count your words. People are going to think that you are with the Balance or they may report you to the Scales."
"I take it that is a bad thing?"
"What is it with you and questions? Have you lived too long or something?"
We stopped at the edge of the forest, looking out into a clearing. My captor was looking into the clearing and I bumped into him from behind. When I could finally see into the clearing, I saw endless rows of uniformly built shacks. Behind them was a black wall so large that it could be seen from miles away. If it had been my gift to estimate such things accurately, I would have placed the wall no less than five miles away from the encampment.
There was still a library of questions filed away in my mind, but I knew my captor had a reason for his fear. The darker side of my dimmed memory shared his fear and it was as reluctant to discuss the matter as my captor was. We waited for several other men to come out of the shacks before we entered the clearing. My crash had caused an adequate commotion to hide in when we entered the camp. It would not be long before several divisions of us were called out to battle the mounting inferno.
My choice was simple and I did not like either option. Getting involved in the fire brigade would give me a chance to look over the wreckage and get an idea of what was going on. Avoiding the additional work would allow me to get the rest that my body was demanding to get from me. Whatever I had been conscripted into, I was sure that working all night would not grant me less work when the sun rose in the morning. The worst of it was the dim realization that I had to avoid detection in anything that I did.
I decided that it was best not to make a decision. The other men in the encampment were not going to get a choice in their duties. It would be easier for me to avoid detection in the camp if I was as much like the other men to not stick out in the crowd. So, I followed my captor back into his hut where we waited in case the call came. That is where I fell asleep and rested that night.
The fire was out by morning. When the morning klaxon called us to line up, dozens of other men were dragging themselves back into the encampment for the morning meal. There was still a strong smell of smoke in the morning air and on the clothing of the weary men being marched to the long tables where we were fed. I followed my guide into the lines thinking it wisest not to get too close to anybody. Whatever the scales were, I did not want them to notice me.
My clothing was out of place and nobody seemed to care. I stood in the line, as silently as the others, and was issued a plate full of the same gruel that everybody in the camp seemed to be issued. It was thin, bitter and barely adequate; however, I was thankful to get even that. Whatever the camp that I had come to live in was, it seemed as smoky and defeated as the fire that had died out in the night. There are no other words that can describe the cold, grey feeling of the mass of men amongst whom I found myself at the dawn of my first day in captivity.
Was I already a resident of the prison camp that I would find myself in if I had been discovered on the strange shores that had become a grave to my transport? It was beyond my dim mind to conceive of a population that would willingly live in a place where hope itself was so unwelcome. There was not a single word of intelligent conversation at the tables that morning. I heard a few grunts and groans as tired muscles cramped under the newly reborn sun. The whole mass of men seemed beyond caring enough to overlook the presence of a stranger amongst them.
There was something else in the morning air. Every eye seemed to scan the tables with deliberate calculation. It would have made sense amongst so many starving men that there would be such greed in their eyes that it could be felt in the darkest corners of the camp. However; this was something different that I could not conceive of. The feel of it was more like nobody was welcome at the tables.
It was the most uncomfortable that I had ever felt. I had dim memories of having eaten in mess halls for most of my life and I had never felt so consumed by the gaze of the people around me. This was not a company of brothers who lived, worked and died together for a belief that was common to all of us. Hunger did not drive this covetousness. Overfed, I feel that those men would still have been upset as though my portion of the morning meal was a personal crime against each and every other man present.
My rescuers would find me mad if they left me long amongst such thankless people. The dark wood of the long wooden tables was cold and slimy as the food that we had been issued. Our benches left long dark marks anywhere that they touched our clothing. Even the plates that we were given the use of were an unappetizing grey color. Morning itself seemed unwilling to welcome us into the new day.
For work, we were driven through muddy paths into a vast field. I lost sight of my captor in the uncomfortable morning and felt more lost than I had been lying on the overgrown beach in the dark night. The only thing that it was good for was my prayer life because I had said a dozen silent prayers in the hour or two from the shack into the fields. Otherwise my spirit would have been crushed and the risk of death in surrender would have ceased to matter to me. Only faith gave my feet the strength to move.
We were quickly unloaded into the muddy field. A second group of men marched us out into the fields and positioned us in marked squares. My spirit was then renewed when I turned to see my captor in the square beside me. My prayer of thanks slipped out into the air around me where my captor was the only person who seemed to overhear me. He handed me a tool to work the field in my square.
"Do not speak overly loud. The Scales do not find it necessary to watch us as closely in the fields until the time of harvest comes."
"Do you think that anybody has noticed me here?"
'Why? Did it appear that anybody noticed you?"
We turned to speak back to back once I figured out the use of the tool in my hands. It was like a small hoe that we used to soften the soil for planting. I had better things to learn about then the reason why a people which had trucks for transport lacked tractors for plowing its fields. The only thing that I had to know was how to survive in order to get back home again. My captor would take care of being close enough to me that I would not leave him behind when I was eventually rescued.
"Not that I noticed. It just seems so strange that I can walk about in the open and nobody seems to notice me."
"You will be fine as long as you do not get anything more than anybody else. The others will watch you so close that the Scales have no reason to keep an eye on you. Just do not appear to get anything more than anybody else."
Although hard on the back, the work was not hard when I got used to it. Focusing on the task at hand took my weary mind off of the oppressive society I had awakened into. I could not recall where I had come from or who would be coming to get me. The darkness of the moment was the total measure of my reality and I found escape from it in the work that I was doing. Eventually, I found warmth in the sun on my tired back.
"What did you do to get sent here?"
"Work assignments come down from the Balance and are rotated so that everybody contributes an equal share of blood and sweat to the fields."
"You mean that your whole society lives like this? We do not even treat our criminals like this."
'What is a criminal?"
"A criminal is somebody who does something against the law. They are bad people."
"Anybody who gets more than his share is worked in the fields until he becomes a part of the fields. The balance will not permit greed amongst the workers."
"And everybody lives like this?"
"There are people in the city who cannot work. The Balance uses our taxes to take care of them. We pay taxes to the Balance and she gives us what we need to survive. All workers get an equal share."
"Is there anything else important that I should know about your world?"
He must have turned around behind me. The tone of his voice got deeper when he spoke again. "Hey. Pace yourself. You work too fast and the others will think that you are trying to show them up. Remember the eyes that are on you."
At first, I was cautious in scanning the men in the squares around me. Their own actions, the way that they scanned the work of everybody else on the field, told me that I was free to judge the amount of work done by each man on the field. They judged from their prejudiced eyes who was laboring with greed in his heart. I looked to judge what was required of me. Work became painfully slow after that.
One of us was not doing his fair share and a woman from the sidelines entered the field to break a small stick over his back. He went down into the muddy soil and remained there until he was told to return to work. I felt sick, pained in both mind and body, by the number of his compatriots who smiled at his misfortune. Their smiles were large enough for me to see their teeth several rows away on the field. It was hard to keep the pace with such poison in my mind.
A handful of other men were whipped before we were taken away for lunch. I tried very hard not to look, yet the sound of the beating was enough for me to know what was happening. My nature drove me to compassion which was foreign to the world that I had been cursed to occupy. It would have been easier for me to trade places with each man who fell on the field that day than it was to hold my peace and go along to get along. Survival of the body is not worth the death of the soul.
They did not seem to hear my prayers of guilt and compassion. The shame of those memories will not die and can not be washed from my hands. I will die and be buried in that guilt. Would I have been wrong to corrupt their culture with my foreign faith in hopes that the seeds of charity would take root and grow in the blood-soaked soil? Who can tell me if it is better to be martyred speaking words that would never reach the hardened minds of covetous men than to hold my peace and secure my safety?
What little we were given for lunch was too much for my stomach to handle. I drank the dirty water slowly in hopes that I would be able to keep my knotted organs on the inside of my body. Faith alone gave me comfort and I would have given up my spirit into death if I had not had it. Guilt took away my appetite and I do not even care who took away the remainder of my midday meal. Somebody had to reach these people with the message that there is a better way.
It may be easy, setting in the safety of a living room or a drawing room and reading this, to call out all the things that I should have done when I was standing in the muddy soil. You would find it much harder standing in my dirty boots with your own heart split wide open from the sights of the day and knowing that speaking out would mean nothing more than a long death. Even that would have been worth it if I could have saved even one soul in that cursed place. Nothing known to my feeble mind would have shaken the faith of these miserable men and they were beyond help as long as they were unwilling to take it from my hands. My hands are bloodstained even as I know that no man in that place could have been saved if I had given my life for the task.
My heart was numb when we returned to the fields to finish up our assigned squares. Perhaps thinking the work easier, somebody took over my square before I returned to it. I took the chance and selected anther square beside the only man on the field who had ever showed me kindness. It was not entirely charity that caused me to take the least complete square in the area. The work, in my thinking, might give me another measure of peace.
The man who had taken me into this strange world had come to have questions of his own. He could not face me when we spoke so I could not even make an attempt at reading him. His voice was kind of common so I was taking a chance that it was the same man when I answered him. My life just did not seem worth enough to save myself at the loss of a chance to save anybody else on the field. One curious man, having lost the faith of his fellow men was the kind of hope that I had spent the morning praying for.
"What is your world like?"
My head hurt when I tried to remember anything about who I had been or where I had come from. "I do not recall most of it. Is there something specific that I can try to remember for you?"
"Do you go to bed hungry at night?"
"No. We produce enough food to feed everybody and have extra. Everybody who does an honest day's work can get enough food for himself and the people that he cares most about."
"I cannot imagine what that must be like. The Balance takes our taxes and gives us only what we need."
"Long ago, God came down to walk among us and he taught us to think of others before ourselves. He gave us laws to govern ourselves and gave us security in the blessings of life and property. By his blood we were given freedom from the sickness of sin in our hearts and minds."
"Does this God person live in your city?"
It was hard not to smile at his question, innocent as it was. I was blessed that he did not see my smile. His culture was hard and I was not sure that a smile was a good sign from what I had already seen. Maybe there was one person whom I could save even in the endless darkness where I awaited rescue. My exile might actually have some value.
"God is the creator of ell things. He set the stars in their places and gave the universe its laws. His home is beyond the stars. When he calls them home, his faithful dwell with him."
"When you take me home, will I get to live in your city?"
"You can buy a home anywhere that you want."
"What does it mean to buy a home?"
You do not realize the complexity of your everyday life until you have to explain it to somebody from another world. The question took me by surprise and I had to think about how to answer it in a society where money did not seem to exist. "The more you work, the more you get in return. We have a way of letting you choose what you want in return for your work. In exchange for some of the time that you work each day, you can get a house."
"Doesn't your Balance, or the God person, give everybody a house?"
"No. We decide where we want to live."
'It sounds like some of your people have more than others. How can you live like that?"
Maybe I could have answered the question but I really did not want to. My heart was broken. I had come to hope that one person in the camp could be saved. That one man did not even seem to care what I had to offer. His faith was too strong to consider the ideas that were the foundation of everything that I knew and loved.
We stopped speaking at that point. Silence did not seem uncommon in my captor's world so he did not openly take offence to my refusal to answer his simple question. I considered what I could say to him until the sun began to dip below the tree line and then I abandoned the idea. My work was done a few minutes early and I just went over the last two or three square yards until the guards rounded us up for the ride back to the camp. There was one more thing to say that day.
My captor came up close behind me in line so that he could speak to me without being overheard. "I will not be able to talk to you tomorrow."
"I am sorry to hear that."
He did not need me to ask him why. "The Scales are watching us for signs of attachment. Attachment leads to favoritism and favoritism leads to inequality."
It is possible that he did not hear my reply. I said, "I understand."
He said nothing more through the ride back to the camp and the evening meal. We did not even stand together in the line for gruel and dirty water. I took the first open seat on the slimy bench and tried to stomach the food that I had been given. My eyes fixed on the dark wooden table so that I did not have to look into all the dirty, colorless faces around me. It was bad enough that I had to feel the unwelcoming stare of the beat down souls around me.
We washed in cold water and I was too numb to complain. My clothes were still wet when I got them back and they seemed to smell worse after they had been washed. I did not want to know what they had been washed in. Keeping to myself as I dressed, I noticed that the skin of my arms was becoming as grey as that of the other men in the camp. They did not see me weeping.
My senses were growing dim with the last light of the sun and I was able to find sleep on the straw floor of my captor's shack. It was a rough night. I awoke once to see my captor puzzle over my having chosen the floor over the second bunk in the shack. Then I rolled over and returned to the jaws of sleep. Anything that I did was sure to puzzle these strange people in their native land.
A bright light warmed my sleeping flesh. There I stood on the surface of a cloud to speak with an angel dressed in flowing white cloth. His clothing flowed like a river from his shoulders down into the cloud upon which the two of us stood. My eyes could not rise to see his face and I dared not look down. He consumed my fear and took away my loneliness just by standing with me for a moment of time.
His wings shielded me from the bright light that would otherwise have blinded me. He spoke with a voice like a flock of birds rising into the air in the early hours of the day. It was so much like listening to a song that I missed the words the first time he spoke. The tones danced on my flesh and gave color back to my battered limbs. If he had allowed it, then I would have bowed before him.
"When, two days hence, the sun rises, you shall be returned to the place where you belong. Take comfort and be not afraid. He to whom you have sworn fidelity as Lord is not willing that you should be lost to this dark place."
He had a strange way of sending me back into the lower world. It was like I was falling; however, I did not feel like I was moving at all. Everything around me seemed to be moving upwards instead of me moving downward. I stood still and all of creation moved around me until I collapsed back into my well worn body. The morning greeted me with a warmth that only I was allowed to feel.
I saw colors in the world around me where I had only seen darkness the day before. The gruel was still a sour tasting grey paste served with dirty water, but the tables were no longer long slabs of slimy black wood. They took on a warm reddish hue with green and yellow veins running along the top surface. In any case, it was more comfortable to look at than the shrunken faces of the men around me. A moments thought that I might have been poisoned on the previous day did skim the top of my head before moving on to darker pastures.
We were rotated into a new job assignment. My second day in the camp was spent working on the shacks that were home to us. They were very poorly constructed structures made entirely of mud, clay and stacks of boards tied together with vines. It did seem that nobody in the camp had actual skill in any trade. Until the noon meal, I did my best to match the work of the unskilled labor around me even though I did know better than some of the men that I worked with.
Nearly to the noon meal, something happened that would have demolished my faith if I had not been visited by an angel on the previous night. The beatings continued and some of them seemed to be for fun. I took two hits and found it hard not to get up and fight back; however, that was not the thing that threatened to steal the warmth of my blood. A few blows to the back did not rate as much as a diary entry. Another man in my group went down without being beaten.
I rushed to his side without thinking of my own safety. His body was hot to the touch and he was not sweating. He needed water. Let me be clear that medicine is not a skill that I have in my possession less I give the impression that I know precisely what I am talking about. All that really matters is that I was sure at the time.
"Somebody get him some water."
"He cannot have water unless everybody gets water. The Balance says do the work and you get water with the meal."
"He's dying. He needs water now."
The bright light that I saw then did not contain the vision of an angel. I do not recall the rest of the day although I am comfortable in stating as a fact that I did not eat for the rest of the day. My captor must have arranged for me to have water because I lived to see the next morning. According to the angel, I only had to see the end of one more day in the camp before I got to go home. Somehow, I had to tell my captor about that before the sun set.
My final day within the dark world of my imprisonment began when I awoke in my captor's shack. I have no memory, as I have stated earlier, of how I got to the place where I greeted the new day. The color of the world was already fading in my eyes and hope of my imminent escape was not enough to sustain my life for more than a single additional day. There was no doubt in my mind that I was compelled to actions which would soon mean the end of my life if I was not restrained. Living long enough to be rescued was an actual problem for me.
Our morning began with a silence that lasted the total length of the morning meal. The color of the table was running to the edge and dripping down into the depleted ground with the morning dew. Everything that stimulated the senses, giving vigor to the soul, was being drawn out of the camp. Before we got up into the truck to be carried off to the day's labor, we were all men of stone animated by the sting of a whip and driven by a greed that wanted more to prevent the possession of others than it desired to possess for itself. It was a dark curse that would consume the whole of me if I did not do the stupid, dangerous things that the spirit within me demanded of my conscience.
We were driven to the very beach where my transport had met its doom. What remained of my craft had been buried in the sand by a world that could not grasp the possibility of brighter horizons. The brush at the end of the beach was as beaten as the men who were given to labor on the beach. It was withered and had not even begun to grow back into the lush growth that it had once been. Perhaps the cold hearts of vile men were wanton enough to steal the resolve even of the bedrock of the island on which we stood.
My captor found it necessary to come close to me where we could speak a few words in confidence. Having become a danger to myself, I had also become a danger to my captor's hope of escape. I did expect this to come up enough to be at a loss for words when my captor avoided the subject. It was as though my captor had a greater faith than mine or he did not honestly wish to obtain the price that he had demanded in return for the services that he had rendered to me. His thinking was beyond my knowing.
"We have been seeing more Scales around since your arrival."
"I have not exactly kept a low cover."
"They did not find a body in the wreckage and they are still looking for you in the woods. It may be hard to catch your ride home with them around."
"Yesterday, I got a message that my ride home will be here at sunrise tomorrow. We are going to have to slip away tonight."
"Be very watchful with the nets today. The Scales watch us whenever we are around anything that can be stolen."
"What am I watching for?"
He began to walk away as the nets were unfolded onto the beach before us. "Do not act like you are hiding anything and you will be fine. Watch the men around you for pointers and you will fit right in."
We were lined up along the nets at a spacing of about 3 yards. It was not impossible for us to hold a reasonably private conversation considering that nobody seemed interested in trying to overhear anything that we said. There just wasn't anything to say. The water was cold and the mud beneath the sea was slippery, taking concentration to navigate. Talking would only have been a distraction.
In the uncomfortable silence, I considered that I must have been drawing attention to myself with all the talking that I had done in the past three days. Most of the men had been so quiet that I was not even sure that the others could even speak. It was a land of poisoned hearts where a thousand eyes watched every step that you took in life but nobody actually cared about anything. Lust after everything in anybody else's hands and never take for yourself what everybody else does not also have. I lost faith that there really were any Scales watching over us.
Of course I did not put that theory to the test. The men around me believed in the omnipresence of the Scales and would act on that faith if I gave them cause for concern. I could also have been wrong and it was not worth the risk just to find out what nobody needed to know. All that I had to do was hold out for one more day. What labor was required from me was not going to kill me in three days.
We circled th nets around and walked them up onto the shore where the fish were collected into baskets. Keeping with the warning that I had been given, I made it a point not to touch the fish when we got them to the shore. I remained with the men who held the nets up while the men at the front of the net collected the catch. Most of what we managed to catch was a type of eel that would easily have escaped if the nets were not kept in place long enough. Several men collecting the eels raised enough suspicion to get beaten with long cords and I was very careful to keep my hands where they could both be seen.
By lunch, both of my hands were stiff from the cold water. My legs were thankful for the chance to dry out while we sat at the long tables. I used my discomfort to keep my mind from interrogating the gruel that I had been eating every day of my captivity. Each day's labor showed me just how much I did not want to know what I had been given to eat. I was still not hungry enough to get anything questionable past my eyes and into my stomach.
Water was another question entirely. We were given a cup of dirty water every two hours throughout the day's labor. I had known such thirst that I was risking my life by sharing the cup with everybody around me. If anything of life in the camp was going to kill me, then it was the water. Thirst had overcome my concern for safety in what I put in my mouth.
Back on the beach, I did not look for my captor and he made no contact with me. My mind did calculate the odds that he had sold me out to whomever ruled over the colony for a chance to move into the city. There was nothing that I could do about it so I let the idea melt into the noise of random thoughts running around my bored mind. The angel had promised me salvation and trust was the only thing that I could afford. I knew that fear of discovery would be far worse than discovery even with what capture could mean for me.
My last day in captivity eventually came to an end. I welcomed the chance to warm up after working in the cold mud all day long. The cold shower and wet clothing did nothing to help. It was unfortunate that the island was not cold enough for us to have fires for warmth at the close of the day. All that I had was the straw floor of a drafty shack.
I trusted the angel enough to get a few hours of sleep when my body could overcome the cold. Then we slipped out of the shack and into the same woods that I had come through after the crash. My captor knew the path through the woods; however, the angel had not told me anything of where I was meeting with my rescuers. We reached the beach over an hour before sunrise and waited for the light of day just beyond the tree line. It gave me far too much time to think about the fact that my captor was going to kill me if I had been misled.
The fact that I had seen an angel does not mean that I had actually seen the angel. My people, from what I could recall, did not have some special hotline where we could call up angels to send messages. Exactly how the rescue party was supposed to find me on the island, after three days, was never discussed. I had not been told how I was supposed to get to the right place to be rescued. Maybe these were part of the memories that I had lost in the crash.
"You chose to leave very easily," I wondered aloud. "Do you have a family or something?"
'I do not know. Associations breed favoritism and favoritism breeds inequality."
"What I am trying to get at is what you are giving up. Are there any people that you would take with you if you could?"
"No," he replied. "I am beyond such things as attachments and greed."
"Then why have you elected to leave this place behind?"
It was a question for which my captor had no answer save silence. We stood in the shade of the forest only a few paces from the open sand of the beach until the sun began to peek over the horizon. There were no more words spoken as we waited and watched. The watch stretched on longer in the silence as the sea seemed endless past the shore on which we stood. The questions within me, ignorance made manifest, drove me near to mad as I hid mere feet from the salvation that I sought.
As the sun rose above the vast, dark sea in which we had been catching eels on the previous day, hiding ceased to have any value to me and I stepped out into the sand. A bright light blinded me in an instant. It was a bright and warm light that passed directly through the deepest recesses of my body. A moment's exposure to the light and I ceased to exist as a material being for a moment. The angel's words had come to pass.
I awoke in a white bed, surrounded in a maelstrom of white. The walls were white and the ceiling was white. All the room was brightly lit by a white light that seemed to be everywhere at once. Even the clothing that had been wrapped around my weary body was purely white. There was no question that I was no longer on the lost island where I had crashed to the ground.
Another man was in the room, dressed in white so that I did not see him without trying. The warmth of the bed was welcoming and I was tempted to give myself over to rest. My conscience would not permit me to walk away from my duty. When my voice returned, I drew a strong breath to ask the man if I had lived up to my contract on the island. Failure would have been dishonorable; however, I could have done nothing about it..
"Did you get the other man with me?"
He came close to me, looking over my battered form in the bed. "It is good to see that you are awake."
My breath was still weak and I did not really want to waste the air that my lungs could draw in repeating my valueless inquiry. "I had a contract with the man who found me when I crashed. Did you get him too?"
"That is part of what I came to discuss with you. We are still close enough to send him back to his home."
"Why would you do that?"
"Do not ask stupid questions. Rise and walk with me."
He took me from the bed and we walked silently down the hallway. It was true that I knew what the man had been talking about in our being close enough to return the stranger to the island where he would be at home. I just did not want to think about such things. My time on the island had scarred me in mind and body without any good coming of it. This man whom had been taken aboard the transport with me was the only soul on the island that I may have saved.
Our destination was a large window looking into the room where my former captor was lying in his bed. He was not used to the comforts of the developed worlds and slept a fitful sleep in the warm bed between the clean sheets. I was not interested in upsetting him in the way that I knew that I would soon have to go in to him. We would not long be close enough to the island to send him home. The choice of his life had to be his choice.
My guide was no more interested in upsetting our guest than I was. We stood at the window for long enough for me to gather my thoughts. I wanted to change the subject and escape the duty that remained with me. There was no danger that we would run out of souls to save if we walked though life with our eyes open to the reality around us. If one man knew enough to want to escape the bitterness of life on the island, then how many others could be saved if we tried?
"We really should send missionaries to the island. Life there is without light and we would be remiss in our the duty of our salvation if we failed to act."
With a smile, my guide spoke in hushed tones. "We cannot save people from themselves. You know this to be true."
"Are the men of the island less our brothers than the other people that we have come across in our travels?"
"These people are yet secure in their current faith. Until their current faith is shaken, we would only feed the beast on the blood of our brothers. We will send missionaries when the Holy Spirit has prepared their hearts and minds."
"How do we know that this is not already happening? This one man wanted out and I know that there are more. There must be more."
"You are a good man who has seen suffering and the spirit within you wants to go and alleviate it. Only this man's body lies in that bed. Where does his mind lie?"
Was I wrong to leave the island and return to my own people? The easiest way to know that God has chosen you for a mission is that you will ask God why he has not assigned somebody to the task. I did not want to go back or even remember where I had been. It was not in my heart to ask the commander of the ship that I was on to return me to the cursed island so that I could lead the lost sheep to the shepherd. History will not be my judge.
"Have I endured these three days of boundless darkness for nothing?"
"God has his reasons. How this works out will only make sense when you stand at the end and look back on it."
I could not take comfort in his words although I knew the truth of what he said. One man had been saved from the island that had burned away a part of my soul with its cruelty. It was my mission to see if he could claim what he had asked for or if even he had to return to the despair of his former life. There is little that I would not have given to avoid the decision that had fallen onto my shoulders. My contemplation ended when the door slid open before me and I stepped inside.
My former captor was not mush of the man that I had taken him for when we had first met. He was several inches shorter that I am and the life of malnutrition had taken its toll on his wiry frame. I could easily have taken the man who was trying to find sleep in the bed in front of me. It was not in body that he had gained dominion over me when we were on the island. His strength had been a manifestation of my weakness.
"It works this way," I began. "We can only take your body. You must leave your mind behind when we go home."
"Do you ever make sense when you talk to people?"
"We are still in range to send you back home if that is what you really want. If we take you with us, then you have to become what we are."
"And, what are you?"
"My people are concerned that you will continue to think the way that the people of your island think. If you do that, then you pose a threat to our culture. What I mean is that you have to learn to think the way that we think. You must go back if you are not willing to give up the way that you have been thinking and become a new man."
"Is your way so weak that my thinking is dangerous to you?"
"At one time, we used to invite refugees into our homeland. They brought their children with them and their children carried the disease of the places from which their parents had fled. The result was that they made war in our homeland, trying to turn our world into the world that they had fled in their youth. Everything that we have and everything that we are has to be made and maintained. None of this will continue to exist for you or for us unless you learn how we make and keep this all going."
"If your world is so weak, then why should it be allowed to exist?"
"You asked for a ride away from the island and I have lived up to my end of the bargain. However; as long as you think like you did on the island, you will live just like you did when you were on the island. If that is your decision, then tell us now and we will send you home in peace."
I did not really want to send him back and that may have poisoned my judgment. We did not return him to his former home, yet, we did not exactly take him home to our world. He lived the full count of his days living and working in a city on the edge of our civilization. Eventually, he forgot where he had come from. I still envy his forgetfulness even as I try to be a beter man.