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Thousand Years of Dreams Day 08: They Live in Shells

Posted on by Arleigh

For Day 8 we have Kaim’s dream-memory of hope in the face of an ever encroaching hopelessness. In this dream he remembers his time in the total darkness of a prison cell where no light ever comes shining through. How such a fate means a slower death but only after one’s spirit and mind breaks completely.

“The Live in Shells” reminded me a lot of Frank Darabont’s The Shawshank Redemption. It spoke of the need for someone to hold onto hope to keep oneself sane in the dehumanizing and mindbreaking confines of a prison. While this dream didn’t explore the more intimate side of human emotions and behavior it does explore the concept of the dual-nature of ideas. For this dream the example would be darkness itself. We see how darkness can become a way to destroy another’s mind and spirit. On the other hand, darkness could also become the ultimate escape from the horrors of the world around us. Darkness becoming the symbol for that final sleep.

This wasn’t one of the better dream-memory of the 33 that will be explored, but it does bring forth some interesting ideas and concepts.

They Live in Shells

“Stop this! Please, I beg of you! Let me go!”

A young man’s screams echo through the emptiness.

No voice answers him.

Crouching in the darkness, Kaim counts the footsteps. Three men have come in. The disorderly footsteps probably belong to the young man. The other two are perfectly regular.

“Please, I’m begging you. If it’s money you want, I’ll get you all you could ask for on the outside. I promise. I won’t forget to show my thanks to you. Please!”

The only reply of the two men who have brought the young one here is the clunk of an iron lock opening.

“No! No! Please, I’m begging you. I’ll do anything you want. Anything!”

A dull thud is the sound of flesh tearing, bone wrenching. Someone collapses on the floor. A strangled scream. The clunk of an iron lock closing.

Kaim knows the young man has been thrown into the shell diagonally opposite his own. When you are locked into one of these windowless shells, your hearing becomes acutely sensitive.

“Don’t do this! Let me out of here! Please! Let me out of here!”

From the sound of the voice, Kaim can imagine a young man’s face with boyish traces: a small-time hoodlum hardly a step above a teenage gang member. When he was still on the streets, no doubt, he used to swagger down the sidewalk, his cunning but cowardly eyes darting every which way.

The two men who brought him here maintain their silence to the end, their footsteps moving off together. The heavy door opens and closes again.

Left alone in the darkness, the young man howls his entreaties for a time, but when her realizes they will do no good, he shouts himself hoarse, spitting out one curse after another until he begins to sob.

“Quiet down there,” an old man calls out from one of the inner shells, “It won’t do you any good to make a fuss, Time to give up, sonny.”

This is the voice of the oldest man living in the dozen or so shells lined up in the darkness.

He was already here when Kaim was sent to this place. It is always his role to quiet and comfort the obstreperous newcomers.

“If you’ve got time to bawl like that, keep your eyes closed!”

“Huh?”

“Just make sure you keep sucking on your memories of the outside-like a piece of candy!”

Sounds of suppressed laugher come from the surrounding shells.

Kaim joins in with a smile and a sigh

All the shells in the dark are supposedly full, but few of their inhabitants are laughing.

Most of them have lost the strength to laugh.

“Hey, sonny.” the old man continues in his role as adviser to the newcomer, “No point making a fuss. Just calm down and accept your fate. Otherwise…” and here a note of intensity enters the old man’s voice, “they’ll just drag you out of here feet first.”

This is exactly what happened yesterday to the former inhabitant of the young man’s shell.

He had been screaming on and off for a day. Then came a day of banging his head against the shell wall. Then nothing… until he was dragged out in silence.

“So get a hold of yourself, sonny. Don’t let the darkness swallow you up. Close your eyes and imagine nice scenery from the outside, the bigger the better: the ocean, or the sky, or some huge field of grass. Remember! Imagine! that’s the only way to survive this place.”

This was the advice he always gave to the newcomers.

But the young man screamed tearfully.

“Who the hell do you think you’re kidding? Survive this place? And then what? I know what this place is. ‘No exit’ prison! They throw the lifers in here, give them just enough food to keep them alive, and in the end they kick the bucket anyway—Am I right? There’s nothing left to hope for.”

His shouts turn to sobs again.

This is the reaction of most of the newcomers.

Nor are they mistaken. This is a prison. Each of the “shells” is a solitary cell with bars, and the sun shines on a prisoner only on the day of his funeral…

“Everybody dies, sonny, that’s for sure. You just cant let your mind go before your body does. Hope doesn’t have to fade unless you throw it out yourself,” the old man goes on softly.

Then he adds with feeling, “This system we live under can’t last much longer, either.”

The old man is a political prisoner. As leader of the anti-government faction, he long resisted the dictatorship until he finally lost the struggle and was imprisoned.

The young man has no ears for the old man’s words, however, he continues thrashing on the floor and crying.

This fellow won’t be in his shell much longer than his predecessor. In a few days, or in less than a month at best, he will go to pieces.

The darkness is that powerful. Depriving a prisoner of light is far crueler than taking his life in an instant.

“My my,” the old man reflects, “This fellow’s not going to do us much good in a prison break.”

The old revolutionary laughs, it might be a genuine laugh of a bold front, but in any case almost no one laughs in response.

Tomorrow morning- or rather, since there is no clear-cut “morning” in the darkness- after they go to sleep, wake up and have their next meal, another cold corpse will be dragged out wordlessly from another shell.

“Hey, listen. How many of us are here now?” the old revolutionary asks. “Answer if you can hear me!”

“I can hear you,” Kaim says.

His is the only voice.

“Man, this is bad, we were full up a little while ago.”

The old man gives a dry chuckle.

Kaim asks, I wonder if something’s happened out there.”

“Maybe so,” answers the old revolutionary.

“If you ask me, this would be about the right time for a coup d’etat or a revolution.”

“My ‘boys’ aren’t going to keep quiet much longer…”

“Uh, what was your name again? Kaim? Have you noticed what’s happening? How there used to be a lot more guys getting thrown in here until a little while ago, and most of them real nobodies, not worth sentencing to life?”

“Uh-huh, sure…”

The young man was one of them- nothing but a small-time crook. It just so happened that the storehouse he broke into belonged to a rich man with ties to a powerful politician. this was the only reason they put him in a shell.

“The shells always used to be full. They would throw a bunch of men in here and they would die, then the new men would come, and they would die…”

The young man was one of those, the terror of being enveloped in darkness was too much for him, and he went to pieces. He was apparently having hallucinations at the end: “I’m coming Mama, I’m coming. Wait for me, please, Mama…” he repeated over and over like a child. “Where are you, Mama? Here? Are you here?” and he gouged his own eyes out with his bare hands.

“I figured things were getting scary out there—the cops losing control—so the government was really starting to crack down- which is why these shells were always full.”

This is what brought the young man here. Blood streaming from his eye sockets, he died muttering in snatches, “What did I do? Everybody knows damn well… there are plenty of men way worse than me…”

“But now the place is empty. Do you know what that means, Kaim?”

“Sure. There’s so much crime out there now that the government can’t suppress it.”

“You got it; the whole royal family might be strung up by now for all we know. Its a revolution. It will happen any day now! That means you and I will get out of here. My boys will come and get us. Just hang in there a little while longer.”

Kaim nods in silence. The old revolutionary goes on, “Your strong, Kaim. Not many guys could stay as calm as you, thrown into a shell and enveloped in darkness like this.”

Not even Kaim can explain it. It is true that he was strangely calm when they put him in the shell. The darkness was something he seemed to recognize as a distant memory. In the distant past, he, too, may have tasted the anguish of the other shell inhabitants so tortured by the fear of being sealed in darkness.

“How are you so tough mentally, Kaim? Does it mean you, too, are a revolutionary?”

“No, not me…”

His crime is hardly worth talking about. He resisted somewhat under questioning when they brought him in as a suspect, and for that he was branded a rebel and thrown into a shell. The old man is probably right, though. The country’s dictatorship is almost certainly in its last days.

“It won’t be long now. We’ll be back in the real world before we know it. I have hope right in here, and it will stay here until I abandon it myself,” the old revolutionary mutters as if trying to convince himself.

The prison falls soon afterward. Armed young men come charging into the darkness and open the shells’ barred doors.

Embraced by his “boys”, the old revolutionary goes out.

“Wait,” Kaim cries, trying to hold him back.

But he is too late. Anxious to see the new world following the destruction of the old system, the old revolutionary steps outside and opens his eyes.

It is evening.

Though the sun is nearly down, its light is still strong enough to burn eyes accustomed to total darkness.

The old revolutionary presses his hands to his eyes. And with a groan, crumples to his knees.

Kaim has saved himself by shielding his eyes with his arm.

Not even he knows what caused him to do this. Could distant memories have taught him that the truly frightening thing about punishment by darkness is what happens after the release from prison?

When could I have been imprisoned, and where? More important, how long have I been on this endless journey?

With bleeding eyes, surrounded on the ground by his boys, the old revolutionary searches for Kaim.

“I came all this way, Kaim, only to make one terrible mistake at the bitter end. My eyes are probably useless now.”

This is precisely why he asks Kaim for one last favor.

“Tell me Kaim, what is the outside world like? Has the revolution succeeded? Are the people happy? Are they smiling joyfully?”

Kaim opens his eyes slowly, and just barely, beneath the shade of his hand.

As far as he can see, the ground is covered in bodies. The corpses of royal troops and revolutionary troops are heaped on one another, and countless civilians are dead. A mother lies dead with her small child in her arms, the bloody corpse of the child’s father next to them, arms outstretched in a vain attempt to shield them.

“Tell me what you see, Kaim.”

Kaim fights back a sigh and says, “You must work from now on to build a happy society.”

The old revolutionary senses the truth.

“I won’t abandon hope, Kaim, no matter what.”

As if to say, “I know that,” Kaim nods and begins to walk away.

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know…someplace.”

“Why don’t you stay here and build a new world with us? You of all people can do that, I know.”

“Thank you, sir, but I’ll be moving on just the same.”

The old revolutionary does not try anymore to hold Kaim back. Instead, as a parting gift, he repeats for Kaim the words he spoke so often in his shell.

“There will always be hope, wherever you are, until you yourself abandon it. Never forget that!”

Kaim walks on.

His eyes chance to light on the body of a young boy lying at his feet. The boy breathed his last with eyes wide open in fear.

Kaim kneels and gently closes the boy’s eyelids.

He knows deep down, in a memory too far away for even him to reach, that while darkness can be a great source of terror, it can also bring deep and lasting peace.

End

Source: Lost Odyssey Wiki

Thousand Years of Dreams Day 07: The Upstreamers

Posted on by Arleigh

For Day 7 of our 33-Day marathon of Kaim’s dream-memories we have “The Upstreamers”.

This time we see how Kaim’s remembered memory of a unique group of people gives us an insight on the nature of faith and belief. Not religion in the feed the masses kind, but faith and belief in a way of life that enriches one’s life and experiences even if it may look foolish and confounding to those who don’t believe. These so-called “upstreamers” choose to follow a faith which simplifies their life and gives them a goal to reach. Whether they reach this goal in their journey is beside the point. The journey itself becomes the important thing for these individuals.

I say that for many they’ve lost sight of what they truly believe in and replaced it with ready-made and tailor-made ideas and beliefs but none of the wisdom required. They’ve looked at the sacrifices needed to truly follow what they originally believe in because such beliefs require too high a price they’re not willing to make.

This particular dream-memory doesn’t tug at the heart-strings but does bring up interesting questions and themes on the nature of faith and belief. It shines a light on why people who give their life over to such ideas, make the required sacrifices and follow it through to the end because the short lifespan of humans becomes an impetus to try and reach that goal. A goal that in the end may be unreachable, but which enriches those who partake on the journey with experiences that’s purely the traveler’s and not thrust upon them by those who think they know best.

The Upstreamers

Strong winds have always blown across this vast grassy plain.

Perhaps the area’s topography has something to do with it, but the direction of the wind remains constant, irrespective of the time or season:

From east to west, from the horizon where the sun rises to the horizon where the sun sets. Swept by the unceasing winds, the misshapen trunks and branches of shrubs all incline to the west. Tall grasses do not grow here, and the grasses that do grow all lie flat on the ground, bending westward.

Caravans and herding folk traverse the single road that crosses the plain. They do not “come and go,” they only go, moving from east to west, using the wind at their backs to gain distance. Travelers heading west to east always use the circuitous route that snakes around the southern mountains. It is much farther that way, but much faster than crossing the plain head-on into the wind. The road across the plain is called the Wind Stream. Just as the flow of a great river never changes direction, the footsteps of those who use the road have not changed direction since the distant past, nor are they likely to change far into the future: from east to west.

Human shapes that appear from the horizon where the sun rises disappear over the horizon where the sun sets.

They never pass oncoming travelers—with only the rarest exceptions. The first time she passed Kaim on the Wind Stream, the girls was just an infant.

“So, my grandmother was alive then?”

In response to the girl’s untroubled question, Kaim smiles and answers,

“She was. And I remember what a nice old lady she was, too.”

Looking back down the road, the girl points toward the line of hills fading off into the distance.

“My grandmother crossed seven hills on her journey.” “Is seven a lot?”

“Uh-huh. Grandma lived a long time. Most people end their journeys after five hills. The people they leave behind build a little grave where they ended their journey, and then they keep traveling…”

The girl points down at the ground where she is standing.

“This is as far as I’ve come,” she says with a proud, happy smile.

The religion of the girl and her family professes a pious believe that if they devote their lives to walking eastward, against the flow of the Wind Stream, they will arrive at the easternmost source of the Stream itself. People call believers in that religion, “The Upstreamers.”

The word carries a hint of fear and sadness, but also a trace of contempt and scorn.

The Upstreamers are devoid of worldly desires. They live their lives for no greater purpose than traveling eastward on foot. They are free of doubt. They give birth to children en route, and they continue their journey while raising their children. When they age and their strength gives out, their journey ends. But their family’s journey continues.

From child to grandchild to great-grandchild, their belief is carried on. The journey of this girl’s family was begun by her late grandmother, who began walking from the Wind Stream’s western verge with her son, who was then the age the girl is now.

The Upstreamers do not walk for the entire year, of course. During the season when the winds are especially strong—from the late autumn to early spring—they take up residence in various post towns scattered along the road and earn day wages by performing tasks that the townsfolk themselves refuse to do. Some Upstreamers choose to stay in the towns, while others, conversely, take townspeople with them when they return to the road in the spring.

These are people who have fallen in love during the long winter,

Or boys who dream of travel,

or grown-ups who have tired of town life. Such are the reasons the townsfolk look upon the Upstreamers with complicated gazes.

The little girl’s mother was one of those who joined the journey mid-way, and he girl herself, some years from now, might fall in love with someone in a post town somewhere. She might choose to live in the town, or she could just as well invite her lover to join her on the road.

She has no idea at this point what lies in store for her. The girl’s father calls out to her: “Time to go!”

Their brief rest is over.

She seems sorry to leave and stands up reluctantly. “Too bad,” she says. “I wish I could have talked to you more. But we have to get to the next town by the time the snows start.”

Constantly exposed to upwinds, her cheeks are red and cracked, her lips chapped, but her smile is wonderful a she wishes Kaim a safe journey.

It is the serene smile of one who believes completely in the purpose of her life, without the slightest doubt. “Will I see you again somewhere?” she asks.

“Probably.”

Kaim answers, smiling back at her, but he can never match that smile of hers. He is now in the midst of a journey that will take him beyond the western end of the Wind Stream. He heads to the battlefield as a mercenary, and by the time the western battle is over, a new battle will have begun in the east.

It will be a long, cruel journey, with nothing to believe in. When he meets he girl again along he way, Kaim’s smile will have taken on even more shadows than it has now. Perhaps as a parting gift for him, the girl sings a few short lines for him:

This wind, where does it blow from?

Where does it start its journey here?

Does it come from where life begins?

Or does it begin where life ends?

“Goodbye, then,” the girl says, trudging on, one labored step at a time, hair streaming in the headwind.

 
Ten long years have flowed by when Kaim next meets the girl.

 
It is spring, when the grassland is dotted with lovely white flowers.

She has become the wife of a young man who does tailoring and shoe repair in one of the post towns.

“This is my third spring here,” she says, patting her swollen belly fondly.

In a few days, she will give birth to a child. She will become a mother.

“And your parents…?” Kaim asks.

She shrugs and glances eastward.

“They are continuing their journey. I’m the only one who stayed on here.” Kaim does not ask why she has done this.

Continuing he journey is one way to live, and staying in a town is another.

Neither can be judged to be more correct than the other. The only answer for the girl can be seen in her smiling face. “But never mind about me,” she says looking at him suspiciously.

“You haven’t changed one little bit from the time we met so long ago.”

For the thousand-year-old Kaim, ten years is nothing but a change in season.

“Some lives are like that,” he says, straining to smile.

“Some people in this world can never grow old, no matter how long they live.”

He looks at the girl, now grown into a woman, and wonders again, ‘Living through endless ages of time: is it a blessing, or a curse?’ Kaim’s remark hardly counts as an explanation, but the girl nods with a look of apparent understanding.

“If that’s the case,” she says, “You should be the one who goes to the place where the wind begins. You’d be the perfect Upstreamer.”

She could be right: after all, the lifespan given to humans is far too short for anyone to travel against the Wind Stream as far as the starting point of the wind. Still, Kaim responds with a few slow shakes of his head.

“I’m not qualified to make the journey.”

“No? Anybody can be an Upstreamer. Anybody, that is, who wants to see where the wind starts with his or her own eyes.”

Having said this, however, the girl adds with a touch of sadness, “No one has actually seen it, though, I guess.” The place where the wind begins: that place is nowhere at all. Even if, after a long journey, one were to arrive at the eastern end of the Wind Stream, the wind would be blowing there, too. And not just an east wind. West wind, north wind, south wind: winds without limit, without end.

Human beings, who cannot live forever, daring to take a journey without end. This might be the ultimate tragedy, but it could just as well be the ultimate comedy. Kaim knows one thing, however: one cannot simply dismiss it as an exercise in futility. “How about you?” he asks the girl. “Aren’t you going to continue your journey soon?”

She thinks about this for the space of a breath, and caressing her swollen belly, she cocks her head and says, “I wonder… I might want to go on living the way I am now forever. Or then again, I might feel that desire to reach the starting point of the wind.” All the Upstreamers without exception say that you can never know what might trigger a return to the journey. One day, without warning, you slough off the entire town life and start walking.

It is not always a matter of running into an Upstreamer and being lured back to the road: plenty of people set out on their own all of a sudden.

The teachings of the Upstreamers say that all human beings harbor a desire for endless travel. They probably are not aware of the desire because it is stashed away so far down in the breast that it is deeper than memory.

The instant something brings it to the surface, a person becomes and Upstreamer. “Even if you have the desire,” the girl says to Kaim.

“I wonder…”

“It’s true,” she says. “No question.”

The look in her eyes is as straight-on and free of doubt as it was the last time he met her.

Fixing him with that look, she points to her own chest.

“I haven’t completely lost it myself.”

“But I’m sure you’re happy with your present life?”

“Of course I am.”

“Do you really think the day will come when you will want to set out on the journey even if it means giving up that happiness?”

Instead of answering, she gives him a gentle smile. Many years flow by, but every now and then, something reminds Kaim of the girl’s words—that everyone harbors a desire for endless travel.

For Kaim, living itself is a journey without end.

In the course of his journey, he has witnessed countless deaths, and he has also witnessed countless births. Human life is all too short, too weak, and fleeting.

Yet, the more he dwells upon its evanescence, the more he feels, inexplicably, that words such as “eternal,” and “perpetual” apply more properly to life, finite as it is, than to anything else. Traveling down the Wind Stream for the first time in many years, Kaim spies the funeral of an Upstreamer.

A boy in mourning dress stands by the road holding out wildflowers to passing travelers, and urging them to “offer up a flower to a noble soul who has made the long journey this far.”

Kaim takes a flower and asks the boy, “Is it a member of your family?”

“Uh-huh. My grandma.”

The boy nods, his face the image of one Kaim knew so long ago.
The old woman lying in the coffin must be the girl. Kaim is sure of it.
“Grandma traveled a long, long time. She brought my daddy with her when he was just a little boy. See that hill over there? She started walking from way, way beyond it, and she got all the way here.”

So, the girl must’ve set out on her journey after all.

Turning her back on the town life, leading her child by the hand, she trod her way along the endless journey.

Her wish to aim for the place where the wind begins would be passed on to her child, her grandchild, and on through the succeeding generations.

To head for a land one could never hope to reach, and to do so generation after generation: this is another endless journey. Is it a tragedy?

A comedy?

Perhaps the serene smile on the face of the old woman in the coffin is the answer.

Kaim lays he flower at her feet as an offering.

The family members who have traveled with her join together in a song for the departed:

This wind, where does it blow from?

Where does it start its journey here?

Does it come from where life begins?

Or does it begin where life ends?

The wind blows.

It sweeps the vast grassland.

Kaim takes one long, slow step toward his destination.

“Have a good trip!” calls the boy.

Red and cracked as the girl’s were so long ago, his cheeks soften in a smile as he waves to the departing traveler.

End

Source: Lost Odyssey Wiki

Thousand Years of Dreams Day 06: Little Liar

Posted on by Arleigh

Another day and another dream-memory recovered by our eternal warrior Kaim. This time around he begins to remember the long-lost memory of a little girl he once met during his travels through one of the uncounted towns in his journey. It’s this encounter with this little girl which gives this Day 6 dream-memory of Kaim’s quite an appropriate title of “Little Liar”.

She definitely was a little liar as Kaim begins to remember. But while that moniker sound like a condemnation, the way Kaim remembers it was quite different. Going over this dream-memory reminded me of how even when I was a young one I would sometimes lie to get attention just for the sake of getting said attention. Children seem to retreat to using their imagination as a form of defense mechanism when they want to put a rosy outlook on the miseries of their current, young life.

While the “little liar” in this dream-memory seems to have taken things to the extreme it’s not too hard to feel some sympathies for her and what she has resorted to doing to keep herself from spiraling into total despair. The end of the dream has tinges of both sadness and hope. How one decides to look at the final fate of the “little liar” will depend on whether one was the sort who sympathized with her or who grew weary of the little girl.

Little Liar

Everyone in the marketplace hates the little girl.

Not yet ten years old, and far from having outgrown the sweet innocence of childhood, she earns only open contempt from the grownups who have shops in the market.

The reason is simple.

She lies about everything.

“Hey, mister, I just saw a burglar go into your house!”

“Look, lady, everything just fell off your shelves!”

“Hey, everybody, did you hear what the traveler said? Bandits are planning to attack this market!”

Even the most harmless white lies can be annoying if repeated often enough, and the shopkeepers have found themselves growing angry.

“You better watch out for her, too,” the lady greengrocer warns Kaim.

“Nobody here falls for her lies anymore, so she’s always on the lookout for newcomers or strangers. Somebody like you would be a perfect target for her.”

She could be right.

Kaim is new to the town. He arrived a few days ago and has just started working in the marketplace today.

“What do her parents do?” Kaim asks while unloading a cartful of vegetables.

The woman frowns and shakes her head with a sigh.

“She doesn’t have any.”

“They died?”

“The mother did, at least. Maybe four or five years ago. She was a healthy young woman who never so much as caught a cold in her life, then one day she collapsed, and that was it for her.”

“How about the father?”

She sighs more deeply than before and says, “He left to find a job in the city.”

The parents used to operate a variety store in the market, though the mother almost single-handedly took care of the actual buying and selling of the many goods they carried.

As soon as she died, the shop’s fortunes took a plunge, until it was eventually taken over by someone else. The father went off to the distant capital city in search of a good- paying job that would enable him to cover their debts.

He promised to come back in six months, but he has been gone a whole year now. Letters used to arrive from him on occasion care of his friend the tailor, but those, too, gave out about six months ago.

“I guess you could say it’s sad for such a little girl to be waiting around for her father to come home, but still…”

The girl now sleeps in a corner of the communal storehouse run by the people of the marketplace.

“We all used to talk about taking care of her- to be stand-in parents for her until her father comes back.”

This is no surprise to Kaim. He knows from his own experience that all the people who work in the marketplace—and not just this plump, kindly woman—are good hearted and generous despite their limited means. Otherwise, they never would have hired a stranger like himself.

“But long before that first six months went by, we were all heartily sick of her. She was a sweet, simple girl while her mother was alive, but this experience has left her kind of twisted.

All her sweetness is gone.

Of course we all feel sorry for her, and we take our turns feeding her and dressing her in hand-me-downs, but the way she keeps telling lies to all the grownups, nobody really cares about her anymore.

Why can’t she see that…?”

“She must be lonely, don’t you think?”

With a pained smile, the woman shrugs and says,

“That’s enough gabbing for one day. Work, work!” and she goes back inside the shop.

Kaim is sorting the vegetables he has unloaded in front of the shop when he hears a little voice behind him.

“Hi, mister, you new here?”

It’s the girl.

“Uh-huh…”

“You’re not from the town, are you?”

“No, I’m not…”

“Are you living upstairs while you work here?”

“For a while, at least. That’s what I’m hoping to do.”

“I’ll tell you a secret, okay?”

It’s starting already, “Okay,” Kaim says without pausing in his work.

“There’s a ghost in this marketplace. The people here don’t tell anybody about it because it’s bad for business, but it’s really here. I see it all the time.”

“Really?!” Kaim responds with a feigned surprise.

He decides to play along with her rather than scold her for lying.

In this endlessly long life of his, he has encountered any number of children who have lost their parents or been abandoned by them.

The sadness and loneliness of children who have been cast into the wide world alone exactly what Kaim feels himself as he continues to wander throughout the infinite flow of time.

“What kind of ghost?”

“A woman. And I know who she is.”

“It’s the ghost of a mother who lost her child,” she says.

Her little girl—her only child—died in an epidemic.

Overcome with grief, the mother chose to die, and now her ghost appears in the market every night, searching for her daughter.

“The poor mother! She killed herself so she could be with her daughter, but she can’t find her in the other world, either. So she keeps looking for her and calling out, Where are you? Hurry and come with Mommy to the other world.”

The girl tells her story with deadly seriousness.

“Don’t you think it’s sad?” she asks Kaim. She actually has tears in her eyes—which is precisely why Kaim knows she is lying.

Even if he had not been warned by the woman, he would know this was a lie based on what she told him about the girl’s background.

Kaim carefully arranges bunches of well-ripened grapes in a display crate and asks the girl,

“Why do you think the mother can’t find her daughter?”

“What?”

The girl asks him with a dazed stare.

“Well,” he explains, “the girl is not in the other world, and she’s not wandering around in this world, so where is she?”

Kaim does not mean this to be a cross-examination.

He simply feels that someone who lies out of sorrow can have a far easier time of it by recognizing the lie for what it is. The loneliness of a girl who has lost her mother and been abandoned by her father consists not in telling on little lie but in having to keep on lying.

“Hmm, now that you mention it, that’s a good point,” the girl says, smiling calmly.

“Really—where did the girl go?”

Kaim momentarily considers pointing at the girl as if to say “Right here,” but before he can do so, she continues:

“This is the first time anybody ever asked me that. You’re kind of… Different.”

“I wonder…”

“No, you are. You’re different,” the girl insists

“I think we can be friends.” Her smile deepens.

Kaim smiles back at her, saying nothing.

Just then, they hear the lady greengrocer coming from the back of the shop, and the girl dashes away.

Just before she disappears around the corner into the alleyway, the girl gives Kaim a little wave as if to say “See you soon!” For the first time, the face of the girl with the all-too-grownup speaking style shows a hint of childishness befitting her years.

The girl begins coming to see Kaim at the shop several times a day when the lady grocer is not around.

She tells him one lie after another.

“I baked cookies with my mother last night. I wanted to give you some, but they were so good i ate them all.”

“Bandits kidnapped me when I was a little baby, but my father came to save me and beat up all the bandits, so I didn’t get killed.”

“My house? It’s a big, white one at the foot of the mountain. You’re new here so you probably don’t know it. It’s the biggest house in town.”

“You don’t have a family? You’re all alone? Poor Kaim! I wish I could share some of my happiness with you!”

All her lies are borne of sorrow: sad, lonely lies she could never tell to marketplace people who know her background.

At the end of every chat with Kaim, as she is leaving, the girl holds her finger to her lips and says,

“This is just our little secret. Don’t tell the lady grocer.”

Of course, Kaim says nothing to anyone.

If he happens to find himself in a situation where the market people are speaking ill of the girl, he quietly slips away.

Lies and disparagements are funny things. They don’t take shape because someone tells them but rather because someone listens to and voices agreement with them.

A truly isolated individual can never speak ill of anyone.

The same can be said regarding lies.

Because she has someone to tell her lies to, the girl need not fall into the abyss of true isolation.

To protect her small, sad share of happiness, Kaim plays the role of her listener, raising no objections.

One day when the girl comes to see Kaim, she takes special care not to be noticed by the lady grocer or by the owners of the neighboring shops.

“Tell me, Mister, are you planning to stay here a long, long time?”

“No, I’m not,” Kaim says, continuing to unload vegetables and fruit.

“You’ll be leaving when you save up enough money?”

“Probably.”

“But you don’t have enough yet?”

“I’m getting there,” he says, turning a strained smile on the girl.

This is a white lie of his own. He already has enough money to support himself on the road. Nor has he taken his current live-in job because he needs money so badly.

He is here because he has not found a destination he wants to travel to. A journey without a destination is an endless journey.

Wise men say that you need dreams and goals in life. But dreams to accomplish and goals to realize shine as guideposts in life precisely because life is finite.

So, then, what should be the dreams and goals of one who has been burdened with a life that has no end?

Kaim’s is not a journey to be hurried.

Nor is it one that can be hurried. Perhaps drifting day after day with no destination cannot even be called a journey.

“If I were you,” says the girl, “I would get out of this marketplace as soon as I had saved up enough for two or three days of traveling.”

Kaim responds to her with a silent, pained smile.

What would be the look on the girl’s face if Kaim were to tell her, “I’m staying here for you”?

I am finding the meaning of my life for now in providing you with a listener for your lies. The moment these words come to mind—words he can never actually speak to her—the girl looks around furtively and says in a near-whisper, “If you want to get out of here soon, I know a good way you can do it.”

“A good way…?”

“Sneak into the tailor’s and steal his money. There’s a little pot in the cabinet at the back of the shop. It’s full of money.”

“Are you telling me to steal it?”

“Yes.”

She looks straight at Kaim without the slightest show of doubt in her eyes.

In all seriousness, she goes on to explain, “That tailor deserves to have his place robbed.”

The money in the pot, she says, is tainted.

“I know this girl, a good friend of mine,” she says, “and it’s so sad about her.

Her mother died, and her father went off to work in the capital, and she’s all alone.

Her father was supposed to come and get her after six months, but she hasn’t heard a thing from him.”

Yet another lie borne of sorrow.

Kaim calmly asks, “Is there some connection between your friend and the tailor?”

“Of course,” she says. “A close connection. What’s really happening is the father was sending her money every month the way he was supposed to, to help make her life in the town a little easier. And he kept writing to her. He wanted to tell her he found a good job in the city and she should come to live with him right away. He’s too busy to come for her, so she should come to him. And he sent her money for the trip. But none of the letters or the money ever reached the girl.

And why do you think that is?”

Before Kaim can answer, the girl says, “The mistake he made was to send the letters and money care of the tailor. He’s been keeping all the money for himself.”

Kaim looks away from the girl.

In order to prop up one sad lie, the girl has piled on a still sadder one—a lie that can hurt another person.

This is the saddest thing of all.

“The lock on the tailor’s back door would be really easy to break,” the girl adds, and she gallops away without waiting for Kaim’s reply.

The girl comes running into the grocery store the next morning, shouting for the owner.

She says directly to the woman, not to Kaim,

“Burglars broke into the tailor’s shop last night!”

She says she saw a number of burglars sneaking in late at night after the marketplace emptied out.

“My oh my,” says the woman with a forced smile, “that must have been just terrible.”

She is obviously not taking the girl seriously.

“But it’s true, though! I really saw them!”

“Look, little girl, I’ve had just about all I can take from you. You’re such a little liar, it scares me to death to think about you growing up to be a burglar or a con artist or something. I’m busy trying to open my shop now, do you mind? Try in on somebody else.”

She is hardly through speaking when someone outside shouts,

“Help! Somebody come!” The tailor is standing in the street looking horrified and screaming at the top of his lungs.

“Bur—burglars! They took all my mo-mo-money!”

The little girl slips away as the tailor comes in.

The marketplace is in an uproar.

The girl was not lying: that much is certain.

But, all too accustomed to her lies, people now suggest the possibility of another kid of lie.

“Maybe she did it. What do you think?”

And so it begins…

“I think you may be right.”

“Talk about play-acting!”

“I wouldn’t put it past her.”

“Let’s go find her. We’ll make her tell—even if we have to get a little rough with her.”

No one objects to this suggestion.

Some run off to the storehouse, and the others start searching the marketplace.

“Can’t find her anywhere!”

“The storehouse is empty.”

“She ran away with the money!”

As the searchers return with their reports and speculation,

Kaim finally understands everything.

After all her sad lies, the girl has left behind one final truth.

“She couldn’t have gotten very far!”

“Yeah, we can still catch her!”

“The little thief! Wait till I get my hands on her!”

The men rage, and the women fan the flames:

“Good! Give her what she deserves!”

“We were so nice to her, and now look how she treats us! We can’t let her get away with it!”

A dozen men start to run after her,

but Kaim stands tall in the road, blocking their way.

“Hey, move it!”

The men are out for blood, but Kaim knows if he felt like it, he could knock them all down and they wouldn’t be able to lay a finger on him.

Instead, he relaxes his powerful stance and throws a leather coin pouch on the ground in front of the men.

“The stolen money is in there,” he says.

“What?”

“Sorry, I stole it.”

A confused stir quickly turns into angry shouts.

Kaim raises his hands to show he will not resist.

“Do what you like with me, I’m ready.”

The lady grocer breaks through the wall of men, shouting at him, “How could you do this, Kaim?”

“I wanted the money, that’s all.”

“And you’re not just saying this to protect the girl?”

The woman’s intuition is too sharp.

Forcing a smile, Kaim turns to the tailor and says, “It was in the pot in the cabinet, right?”

The man nods energetically.

“It’s true! He must have done it! I had the money in a pot! He’s the thief!”

“The money wasn’t the only thing in the pot, though, was it?”

“What are you saying?”

“You had some letters in there, too. Letters from the girl’s father.”

“That’s a lie! Don’t be crazy!”

“It’s true, though.”

“No, there couldn’t have been any letters! I threw them all—”

The tailor claps his hands over his mouth.

But it is too late.

The lady grocer glares at him.

“What’s this all about?” she demands.

“Uh… no… I mean…”

“You’d better tell us everything.”

The people’s angry glances turn from Kaim to the tailor.
Some days later, two letters arrive from the girl addressed to “The lady at the grocery store and the nice man upstairs.”

Kaim’s letter says the girl managed to find her father in the capital.

He has no way of knowing if this is true or not.

It is hard to imagine a little girl finding her father in the big city so easily without knowing his address or workplace.

Still, he decides to believe it when the girl’s letter says,
“I am happy now.”
Human beings are the only animals that lie.

Lies to deceive people, lies to benefit oneself, and lies to protect one’s own heart from the threat of crushing loneliness and sorrow.

If there were no lies in this world, much strife and misunderstanding would surely disappear.

On the other hand, perhaps it is because this world is a mixture of truth and lies that people have learned how to “believe.”

When he is through reading his letter, Kaim turns to the woman.

Concentrating on her own letter, she shyly raises her head when she senses Kaim looking at her.

“I give up!” she declares. “Listen to this:

‘I am so grateful to you and the others in the marketplace for all you have done for me. I will never forget you as long as I live.’

A liar to the bitter end, that girl,” she says, smiling through her tears.
End

Thousand Years of Dreams Day 05: A Mother Comes Home

Posted on by Arleigh

We’re now on the 5th Day of a 33-Day Thousand Years of Dreams. The previous four dream entries have saw us witness Kaim’s remembering dreams with themes ranging from youthful curiosity, mortality, personal imprisonment and the amorphous nature of memory. This fifth dream which is called “A Mother Comes Home” brings forth a topic that some may feel some kinship to. A theme of children and how those who should be nurturing them, protecting them and loving them have failed in their responsibilities. How neglect, selfishness and the feeling of being unwanted forces some young children to leave their childhood behind and become an adult far too quickly to protect themselves.

Everyday I see such occurrences happening in public and in the news. I can’t say I’ve experienced it myself, but it still doesn’t diminish the emotional impact seeing it happen to other young children. Just as Kaim feels sadness, pity and regret at seeing the young boy grown beyond his years and leave the innocent, naivete of childhood behind so should we feel the same when we see it happen to children around us.

In the end, while the theme of this dream-memory does have a feel of sadness and melancholy it does end on a hopeful note. No matter how badly we treat our children and those we care for there’s always a chance for forgiveness and redemption. There’s always a chance for broken families to be whole once more. There’s always a chance for children who have grown up too fast to find their way to being just children once again.

A Mother Comes Homes

The boy has lost his smile, though he denies it.

“Don’t be silly, Kaim.
Look! I’m smiling, aren’t I?”

He draws his cheeks back and lets his teeth show white against his brown skin.

“If this isn’t a smile, what is?”

Kaim nods but says nothing. He pats the boy on the shoulder as if to say, “Sure, sure.”

 

“Come on, really look at me. I’m smiling, right?”

“Right. You’re smiling.”

“Anyway, forget about me. Hurry, let’s go.”

 

The boy has a sweet, open nature.

He made instant friends with Kaim while the other townspeople kept their distance from the “strange traveler.”

Not that the boy chose the much older Kaim as a playmate.

He leads Kaim to the tavern, which still hasn’t opened its doors for the day.

“I hate to ask you to do this, but… would you, please?”

 

The boy’s voice seems to have carried inside.

A man in the tavern peals off a drunken howl. He sounds especially bad today. Kaim fights back a sigh and enters the tavern.

The man on the barstool is the boy’s father, drunk again at midday.

The boy is here to take him home. He looks at his father with sad eyes.

Kaim puts his arm around the father’s shoulder and discreetly moves the whiskey bottle away from him.

 

“Let’s call it a day,” he says. The man shoves Kaim’s arm off and slumps down on the bar.

“I hate guys like you,” he says.

“Yes, I know,” says Kaim. “It’s time to go home, though. You’ve had enough.”

“You heard me, Kaim. Drifter! I hate you guys.
I really really hate you guys.”

 

The father is always like this when he is drunk—hurling curses at all “drifters,” picking fights with any man dressed for the road, and finally slumping to the ground to sleep it off. His son is too small to drag him home.

With a sigh, Kaim finds himself again today supporting the drunken father’s weight to keep him from toppling off the barstool.

The boy stares at his father, his eyes a jumble of sadness, anger, and pity.

When his eyes meet Kaim’s he shrugs as if to say “Sorry to keep putting you through this.”

 

But Kaim is used to it. He has seen the father dead-drunk almost every day for the past year, ever since the boy and his father were left to live alone.

“Oh, well …” the boy says with a strained smile as if trying to resign himself to the situation.

“Poor Papa…

…poor me.”

 

Supporting the father’s weight on his shoulder, Kaim gives the boy a smile and says,
“Yes, but you don’t go out and get drunk the way he does.”

“Ahem,” the boy says, puffing his chest out.

“Sometimes kids are tougher than grownups.”

Kaim broadens his smile to signal to him “You’re right.”

“Of course I’m right,” the boy all but says with the smile he gives back.

 

It is the only kind of a smile the ten-year-old has managed to produce in the past year: so bitter it would numb your tongue if you could taste it.

The boy’s mother—the father’s wife—left home a year ago.

She fell in love with a traveling salesman and abandoned the boy and his father.

“Mama was bored,”
the boy says matter-of-factly, looking back on his mother’s infidelity.

“She got tired of doing the same thing every day. That’s when she met him.”

 

At the tender age of ten, the boy has learned that there are certain stories that have to be told with that matter-of-fact tone.

The father was born and raised in this small town and worked in the town office. He was not especially talented, but it was not a job that called for talent or quick wit. All he had to do was follow orders with diligence and submissiveness, and he did exactly that, year after year, without making waves.

“He called our life ‘peaceful,’ but Mama didn’t think so.
She said it was just ‘ordinary’ and no fun.”

 

She was attracted to the life of the crafty traveling salesman.

It was risky and exciting, like walking on top of a prison wall: one misstep and you could end up inside.

“Papa told Mama that the man was deceiving her, that all he wanted was her money, but he couldn’t get through to her. Mama couldn’t even think about us back then.”

With utter detachment, as though holding it at arm’s length, the boy reflects on the tragedy that struck his family.

 

“I’ve heard the saying ‘Love is blind.’ It really is!” he says with a shrug and a sardonic laugh like a full-fledged adult.

Kaim says nothing.

“Children should act their age” is another saying, but probably not one that could be spoken with a great deal of meaning to a boy who had lost his mother’s love.

And even if Kaim presumed to admonish him, the boy would likely pass it off with a strained smile and say,
“Sometimes kids are tougher than grownups.”

 

The boy’s father, however, shows his displeasure when his son uses grownup expressions.

“The little twerp’s lost all his boyishness. He despises me now. He thinks I’m pitiful. Deep down he’s laughing at me for letting my wife be taken by another man, damn him.”

It bothers him especially when he is drunk.

His annoyance far outweighs his fatherly love for his son. Sometimes he even slaps the boy across the face, or tries to. When he is drunk, the boy can easily dodge his slaps, and he ends up sprawled on the floor.

 

Even as he is drowning in a sea of liquor, he can sometimes turn unexpectedly serious and start asking questions.

“Say, Kaim, you’ve been traveling for a long time, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you enjoy it all that much? Going to strange towns; meeting strangers can’t be all that… Is it so wonderful that you’d be willing to abandon the life you’re living now for it?”

He asks the same thing over and over. Kaim’s answer is always the same.

“Sometimes it’s enjoyable, and sometimes it’s not.”

He doesn’t know what else to say.

 

“You know, Kaim, I’ve never set foot outside this town. Same with my father and my grandfather and my great-grandfather, and the one before him. We’ve always been born here and died here. My wife’s family, too. They’ve had roots in this town for generations. So why did she do it? Why did she leave? What did she need so badly that she had to leave me and her own son?”

Kaim merely smiles without answering. The answer to such a question cannot be conveyed in words. Try though he might to explain it, the reason certain people are drawn irresistibly to the road can never be understood by people who don’t have that impulse. The father is simply one of those people who can never understand.

Failing to elicit a reply from Kaim, the father sinks again into the sea of drunkenness.

 

“I’m scared, Kaim,” he says. “My son might do it, too. He might go away and leave me here someday. When I hear him talking like a grownup, I get so scared I can’t stand it.”

 

The boy’s mother eventually comes back.

The traveling salesman cheated her out of every last bit of her savings, and the moment she was no longer any use to him, he left her. Physically and mentally broken, she has only one place to return to—the home she abandoned.

First she writes a letter from the neighboring town, and when her husband reads it again and again through drink-clouded eyes, he laughs derisively.

“Serves her right, the miserable witch.”

He makes a show of tearing the letter to pieces in front of Kaim, without showing it to his son.

 

Kaim tells the boy everything and asks him,

“What do you want to do?
Whatever you decide, I’ll help you make it happen.”

“Whatever I decide?” the boy asks in return with his usual detached smile.

“If you want to leave this town, I’ll let you have enough money to help you get by for a while,” Kaim says. “I can do that much.”

He is utterly serious.

 

The father has no intention of forgiving his wife. He will almost certainly turn her away if she shows up, and probably with a proud, vindictive smile on his face.

Kaim knows, however, that if the mother loses her home and leaves this town once and for all, the father will go back to drinking every day, cursing his wife’s infidelity, bemoaning his own fate, taking out his anger on strangers, and constantly revealing the worst side of himself to his son.

Kaim’s long life on the road has taught him this. Constant travel means meeting many different people, and the boy’s father is undoubtedly one of the weakest men Kaim has ever met.

 

“You could join your mother and go to another town.
Or if you wanted to go somewhere by yourself, I could find you work.”

Either would be better, Kaim believes, than for the boy to continue living alone like this with his father.

The boy, however, seemingly intrigued, looks straight at Kaim, revealing his white teeth.

 

“You’ve been traveling a long time, haven’t you, Kaim?”

“Uh-huh…”

“Always alone?”

“Sometimes alone, sometimes not…”

“Hmmm…”

 

The boy gives a little nod and, with the sad smile of a grownup, says,
“You don’t really get it do you?”

“What’s that?”

“All this traveling, and you still don’t understand the most important thing.”

His sad smile takes on its usual bitter edge.

Kaim finally learns what the boy is talking about three days later.

 

A tired-looking woman in tattered clothes drags herself from the highway into the marketplace.

The townsfolk back away from her, staring, leaving her in the center of a broad, empty circle.

The boy’s mother has come back.

 

The boy breaks his way through the crowd and enters the circle.

The mother sees her son, and her travel-withered cheeks break into a smile.

The boy takes one step, and another step toward his emaciated, smiling mother.

He is hesitant at first, but from the third step he is running,
and he throws his arms around her.

He is crying. He is smiling. For the first time that Kaim has seen,
he wears the unclouded smile of a child.

 

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me…” his mother begs, in tears.

 

She clasps his head to her bosom and says, smiling through her tears,
“You’ve gotten so big!”

Then she adds: “I won’t leave you again. I’ll stay here forever…”

A stir goes through the crowd.

It comes from the direction of the tavern.

 

Now the father breaks through the wall of people and enters the circle.

He is drunk.

Stumbling, he edges toward his wife and son. He glares at his wife.

The boy stands between them, guarding his mother.

“Papa, stop it!” he yells.
“Mama is back. That’s enough, isn’t it? Forgive her, Papa, please!”

His voice is choked with tears.

The father says nothing in reply.

 

Glaring at the two of them, he collapses to his knees, his arms open wide.

He enfolds both his wife and son.

The shattered family is one again.

“Papa, please, don’t hold us so tight! It hurts!”

The boy is crying and smiling.

The mother can only sob.

The father weeps in rage.

 

Witnessing the scene from the back of the crowd, Kaim turns on his heels.

“Are you really leaving?”
the boy asks again and again as he accompanies Kaim to the edge of town.

“Uh-huh. I want to get across the ocean before winter sets in.”

“Papa is already missing you. He says he thought you two could finally become drinking buddies from now on.”

“You can drink with him when you grow up.”

“When I grow up, huh?” the boy cocks his head, a little embarrassed, then he mutters,
“I wonder if I’ll still be living in this town then.”

 

No one knows that, of course. Maybe some years on from now, the father will spend his days drunk again because his son has left his hometown and family.

And yet—Kaim recalls something he forgot to say to the boy’s weak father.

“We call it a ‘journey’ because we have a place to come home to. No matter how many detours or mistakes a person might make, as long as he has a place to come home to, a person can always start again.”

“I don’t get it,” says the boy.

 

Kaim remembers something else.

“Smile for me,”
he says one last time, placing a hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“Like this?”

He reveals his white teeth, and his cheeks wrinkle up.

It’s a good smile.

He has finally managed to retrieve the smile of a young boy.

 

“Now your turn, Kaim.”

“Uh… sure.”

The boy studies Kaim’s smile as if assigning it a grade.

“Maybe a little sad,” he says. That he is joking makes his words hit home all the more.

The boy smiles again as if providing a model for Kaim.

 

“Okay, then,” he says with a wave of the hand,

“I’m going shopping with Papa and Mama today.”

Kaim smiles and walks away.

Then he hears the boy calling his name one last time.

“Even if we’re saying goodbye, I’m not going to cry, Kaim!
Sometimes kids are tougher than grownups.”

 

Kaim does not look back, his only reply a wave of the hand.

The boy’s expression would probably change if their eyes met.

He decides to play it strong to the end.

Kaim walks on.

After a brief respite, his journey with no place to go home to starts again.

A journey with no place to go home to; the poets call that “wandering.”

End

Thousand Years of Dreams Day 04: In the Mind of a Captive

Posted on by Arleigh

On the 4th Day of our Thousand Years of Dreams we find Kaim, the eternal warrior, remembering a particularly hopeless and spirit-sapping dream of a time when he was imprisoned during his thousand years of wandering the lands.

There’s something beyond just the horror of imprisonment and how it’s  effect on the mind and spirit of the imprisoned is more dangerous than to their body. While the dream is about one of the many time he has experienced such stagnation of the mind and spirit the very theme underlying the tale could be attached to one’s everyday life. One doesn’t have to be in an actual prison to have an idea of what Kaim speaks of.

This actual prison could be of one’s making as they go through life stuck in doing something which saps their creativity and spirituality. Anyone who has ever found themselves in a line of work which does nothing to encourage growth and foster enjoyment of life would understand what Kaim speaks of. Who here has seen themselves stuck in a job they hate, but unable to quit because they’ve lost sight of how to enjoy life thus work is all there is. Who here has found themselves in a relationship which has stagnated and afraid to free themselves because they don’t see themselves as able to find new friends and partners to enjoy life with.

It’s these prisons both real and of metaphorical which this dream tries to impart a lesson which Kaim tries to remember. That brief puff of air moving a welcome respite to the unchanging air or the change of scenery even if the briefest of moments helps in keeping one’s sanity and spirit from dying. It’s such little things that we try to remember to do to bring a semblance of change to our humdrum and locked in lives which brings people a step closer to freedom and fully enjoying once again.

I find this dream quite illuminating in how so many of us refuse to risk new things and attempt the unknown for fear of failure, embarrassment and ridicule. We’d rather keep ourselves safe and secure doing the same things over and over again and as each such day passes the more bricks we build around our own personal prisons.

In the Mind of a Captive

He knows that it is useless. But he can’t suppress the impulse that wells up from within his own flesh.

He needs to do it—to hurl his entire body against the bars. It does no good at all. His flesh simply bounces off the thick iron bars. “Number 8! What the hell are you doing?” The guard’s angry shout echoes down the corridor. The prisoners are never called by name, only by the numbers on their cells. Kaim is Number 8.

 

Kaim says nothing. Instead, he slams his shoulder against the bars.

The massive bars of iron never nudge. All they do is leave a dull, heavy ache in Kaim’s superbly conditioned muscles and bones.

Now, instead of shouting again, the guard blows his whistle, and the other guard come running from their station.

“Number 8! What’s it going to take to make you understand?”

“Do you want to be thrown into the punishment cell?”

“Don’t look at me like that. Start resisting, and all it will get you is a longer time in here!”

 

Sitting on the floor of his cell, legs splayed out, Kaim ignores the guards’ shouts.

He has been to the punishment room any number of times. He knows he has been branded a “highly rebellious prisoner.”

But he can’t help himself.

Something is squirming deep down inside him.

Some hot thing trapped inside there is seething and writhing.

 

“Some war hero you turned out to be!” says one guard.

“You can’t do shit in here. What’s the matter, soldier boy? Can’t do anything without an enemy staring you in the face?”

The guard next to him taunts Kaim with laughter.

“Too bad for you, buddy, no enemies in here? Nobody from your side, either. We’ve got you locked up all by yourself.”

After the guards leave, Kaim curls up on the floor, hugging his knees, eyes clamped tight.

 

All by myself—

The guard was right.

I thought I was used to living alone, in battle, on the road.

But the loneliness here in prison is deeper than any I’ve ever experienced before.

And more frightening.

Walls on three sides, and beyond the bars nothing but another wall enclosing the narrow corridor.

This dungeon was built so as to prevent prisoners from seeing each other, or even to sense each others’ presence.

 

The total lack of a change in the view paralyzes the sense of time as well. Kaim has no idea how many days have passed since he was thrown in here. Time flows on, that much is certain. But with nowhere to go, it simply stagnates inside him.

The true torture that prison inflicts on a man is neither to rob him of his freedom nor to force him to experience loneliness.

The real punishment is having to live where nothing ever moves in your field of view and time never flows.

The water in a river will never putrefy, but lock it in a jar and that is exactly what it will eventually do.

The same is true here.

 

Maybe parts of him deep down in his body and mind are already beginning to give off a rotten stench.

Because he is aware of this, Kaim drags himself up from the floor again and slams himself into the bars over and over.

There is not the remotest chance that doing so will break a bar.

Nor does he think he can manage to escape this way.

Still, he does it repeatedly.

 

He can’t help himself. He has to do it again and again.

In the instant before his body smashes into that bars—for that split second—a puff of wind strikes his cheek. The unmoving air moves, if only for that brief interval. The touch of the air is the one thing that gives Kaim a fragmentary hint of the flow of time.

The guards comes running, face grim with anger.

Now I can see human shapes where before there was only a wall. That alone is enough to lift my spirits. Don’t these guards realize that?

“All right, Number 8, it’s the punishment room for you! Let’s see if three days in there will cool your head!”

 

Kaim’s lips relax into a smile when he hears the order.

Don’t these guys get it? Now my scenery will change. Time will start flowing again. I’m thankful for that.

Kaim laughs aloud.

The guards tie his hand behind him, put chains on his ankles, and start for the punishment room.

“What the hell are you laughing at, Number 8?”

“Yeah, stop it! We’ll punish you even more!”

But Kaim just keeps on laughing; laughing at the top of his lungs.

 

If I fill my lungs with all new air, will the stench disappear?
Or have my body and mind rotted so much already that I can’t get rid of the stench so easily?
How long will they keep me locked up in here?
When can I get out of here?
Will it be too late by then?
When everything has rotted away, will I become less a “him” than an “it,” the way our troops count enemy corpses?

 

Kaim can hardly breathe.

It is as if the air is being squeezed out of his chest and the excruciating pain of it is drawing him back from the world of dreams to reality.

Was I once in a prison in the far, far distant past?

He half-wanders in the space between dream and reality.

He has had this dream any number of times—this nightmare, it might even be called. After waking, he tried to recall it, but nothing stays in his memory. One thing is certain, however: the appearance of the jail and of the guards in the dream if always the same.

 

Could this be something I have actually experienced?
If so, when could it have been?

There is no way for him to tell.

 

Once he is fully awake, those questions he asked between dream and reality are, themselves, erased from his memory.

He springs up with a scream, his breath labored, the back of his hand wiping the streams of sweat from his brow, and all that is left is the shuddering terror. It is always like this.

Now, too—

 

He mutters to himself as he attempts to retrieve whatever memory is left in a remote corner of his brain. “What kind of past life could I have lived through?”

End

Thousand Years of Dreams Day 02: A Hero’s Return

Posted on by Arleigh

While “Hanna’s Departure” was my favorite dream sequence from Lost Odyssey the rest had their own emotional power and for some were more relevant. What I failed to mention in the Day 01 post was just who the person named Kaim being mentioned in the dream. Kaim is the main protagonist in the game and he’s an immortal who has lost all the memories of experiences gathered through 1000-years of journeying the world he’s in.

These dreams, when activated in the game through a fortuitous encounter with someone or witnessing a seemingly random event, begin to add layers of complexities to the Kaim character and what he had experienced throughout the millenia as wandering immortal warrior.

Day 02’s dream sequence is quite relevant to today’s times as we see Kaim re-live a memory of a warrior returning from 3 years of war and battles. We see how Kaim’s reaction to this battle-weary veteran differs from that of a younger man’s who has never experienced war first-hand. With tens of thousands of soldiers, airmen and sailors returning from battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan it’s hard not to find a link with the experiences those men and women went through with the prospect of returning to their loved ones a major reason for them to stay alive and do what they had to do to accomplish that goal.

A Hero’s Journey

Alone in a crowd of rugged men, nursing his drink in the far corner of the old post town’s only tavern: Kaim.

A single man strides in through the tavern door. Massively built, he wears the garb of a warrior. His soiled uniform bespeaks a long journey. Fatigue marks his face, but his eyes wear a penetrating gleam—the look of a fighting man on active duty.

 

The tavern’s din hushes instantly. Every drunken eye in the place fastens on the soldier with awe and gratitude.

The long war with the neighboring country has ended at last, and the men who fought on the front lines are returning to their homes. So it is with this military man.

The soldier takes a seat at the table next to Kaim’s, and downs a slug of liquor with the forcefulness of a hard drinker—a man who drinks to kill his pain.

 

Two cups, three, four…

Another customer approaches him, bottle in hand, wearing an ingratiating grin—a typical crafty town punk.

“Let me offer you a drink,” wheedles the man, “as a token of gratitude for your heroic efforts on behalf of the fatherland.”

The soldier unsmilingly allows the man to fill his cup.

“How was it at the front? I’m sure you performed many valiant deeds on the battlefield.”

The soldier empties his cup in silence.

 

The punk refills the cup and adopts an ever more fawning smile.

“Now that we’re friends, how about telling me some war tales?

You’ve got such big, strong arms, how many enemy soldiers did you ki—”

Without a word, the soldier hurls the contents of his cup into the man’s face.

The punk flies into a rage and draws his knife.

No sooner does it leave its sheath than Kaim’s fist sends it flying through the air.

 

Faced with the powerful united front of Kaim and the soldier, the punk runs out muttering curses.

The two big men watch him go, then share a faint smile. Kaim doesn’t have to speak with the soldier to know that he lives in deep sadness. For his part, the soldier (having cheated death any number of times) is aware of the shadow that lurks in Kaim’s expression.

 

The tavern’s din returns.

Kaim and the soldier pour each other drinks.

“I’ve got a wife and daughter I haven’t seen since I shipped out,” says the soldier. “It’s been three long years.”

He lets himself smile shyly now for the first time as he takes a photograph of his wife and daughter from his pocket and shows it to Kaim: the wife a woman of dewy freshness, the daughter still very young.

“They’re the reason I survived.

The thought of going home to them alive was all that sustained me in battle.”

 

“Is your home far from here?”

“No, my village is just over the next pass. I’m sure they’ve heard the news that the war is over and can hardly wait to have me home.”

He could get there tonight if he wanted to badly enough. It was that close.

“But…” the soldier downs a mouthful of liquor and groans.

“I’m afraid.”

 

“Afraid? Of what?”

“I want to see my wife and daughter, but I’m afraid to have them see me.

I don’t know how many men I’ve killed these past three years. I had no choice. I had to do it to stay alive. If I was going to get back to my family, I had no choice but to kill one enemy soldier after another, and each and every one of those men had families they had left at home.”

It was the code of war, the soldier’s destiny.

To stay alive in battle, you had to go on killing men before they could kill you.

 

“I had no time to think about such things at the front. I was too busy trying to survive. I see it now, though—now that the war is over. Three years of sin are carved into my face. This is the face of a killer. I don’t want to show this face to my wife and daughter.”

The soldier pulls out a leather pouch from which he withdraws a small stone.

He tells Kaim it is an unpolished gemstone, something he found shortly after he left for the battlefield.

 

“A gemstone?” Kaim asks, unconvinced. The stone on the table is a dull black without a hint of the gleam a gem should have.

“It sparkled when I first found it. I was sure my daughter would love it when I brought it home to her.”

“Gradually, though, the stone lost its gleam and turned cloudy.”

 

“Every time I killed an enemy soldier, something like the stain of his blood would rise to the surface of the stone. As you can see, it’s almost solid black now after three years. The stone is stained by the sins I’ve committed. I call it my ‘sin stone.'”

“You don’t have to blame yourself so harshly,” says Kaim,
“You had to do it to stay alive.”

“I know that.” says the soldier. “I know that. But still… just like me, the men I killed had villages to go home to, and families waiting for them there…”

 

The soldier then says to Kaim, “You, too, I suppose. You must have a family.” Kaim gives his head a little shake. “Not me.” he says. “No family.”

“A home village at least?”

“I don’t have any place to go home to.”

“Eternal traveler, eh?”

“Uh-huh. That’s me.”

The soldier chuckles softly and gives Kaim a sour smile. It is hard to tell how fully he believes what Kaim has told him. He slips the “sin stone” into the leather pouch and says,

“You know what I think? If the stone turned darker every time I took a life, it ought to get some of its gleam back every time I save a life.”

 

Instead of answering, Kaim drains the last drops of liquor from his cup and rises from the table. The soldier remains in his chair and Kaim, staring down at him, offers him these words of advice:

“If you have a place you can go home to, you should go to it. Just go, no matter how much guilt you may have weighing you down. I’m sure your wife and daughter will understand. You’re no criminal. You’re a hero: you fought your heart out to stay alive.”

“I’m glad I met you.” says the soldier. “I needed to hear that.”

He holds out his right hand to Kaim, who grasps it in return.

“I hope your travels go well.” says the soldier.

 
“And your travels will soon be over,” says Kaim with a smile,
starting for the door.

Just then the punk charges at Kaim from behind, wielding a pistol.

“Watch out!” bellows the soldier and rushes after Kaim.

As Kaim whirls around, the punk takes aim and shouts,
“You can’t treat me like that, you son of a bitch!”

The soldier flies between the two men
and takes a bullet in the gut.

 

And so, as he so desperately wished to do, the soldier has saved someone’s life.

Ironically, it is for the life of Kaim, a man who can neither age nor die,

that the soldier has traded his one and only life.

 

Sprawled on the floor, nearly unconscious, the soldier
thrusts the leather pouch into Kaim’s hand.

“Look at my ‘sin stone,’ will you?

“Maybe…maybe.” he says, chuckling weakly,
“some of its shine has come back.”

Blood spurts from his mouth, strangling the laugh.

Kaim looks inside the bag and says,
“It’s sparkling now. It’s clean.”

“It is?” gasps the soldier. “Good. My daughter will be so glad…”

 

He smiles with satisfaction and holds his hand out for the pouch.

Gently, Kaim lays the pouch on the palm of his hand and folds the man’s fingers over it.

The soldier draws his last breath, and the pouch falls to the floor.

The dead man’s face wears a peaceful expression.

The stone, however—the man’s ‘sin stone,’ which has rolled from the open pouch—is as black as ever.

 End

Source: Lost Odyssey Wiki

Thousand Years of Dreams Day 01: Hanna’s Departure

Posted on by Arleigh

So, we begin the first of 33 straight days of bringing the best thing about Mistwalker Studios’ 2008 role-playing game, Lost Odyssey, and why to this day its 33 short stories contained within the game as dream sequences remain one of the best writing in gaming ever. These short stories were written by Japanese novelist Shigematsu Kiyoshi. This collection of dreams would be collected under the title, “Thousand Years of Dreams”.

The first dream was the very first one a player acquires and comes across during the game. It is this dream which will trigger the main hero’s recollection of 33 total dreams as he travels and meets up and/or comes across situations to trigger a specific dream. This first dream is titled “Hanna’s Departure” and comes early in the game. Despite being the first it is also one of the best of the 33 and once you’ve watches and read the attached video clip of it above you will understand why. Below will be a transcript of the dream, but I recommend watching the video first and foremost.

Hanna’s Departure

The family members have tears in their eyes when they welcome Kaim back to the inn from his long journey.

“Thank you so much for coming.”

He understands the situation immediately.

The time for departure is drawing near.

 

Too soon, too soon.

But still, he knows, this day would have come sometime, and not in the distant future.

“I might never see you again,” she said to him with a sad smile when he left on this journey, her smiling face almost transparent in its whiteness, so fragile—and therefore indescribably beautiful—as she lay in bed.

 

“May I see Hanna now?” he asks.

The innkeeper gives him a tiny nod and says, “I don’t think she’ll know who you are, though.”

“She hasn’t opened her eyes since last night,” he warns Kaim. You can tell from the slight movement of her chest that she is clinging to a frail thread of life, but it could snap at any moment.

“It’s such a shame. I know you made a special point to come here for her…”

Another tear glides down the wife’s cheek.

 

“Never mind, it’s fine.” Kaim says.

He has been present at innumerable deaths, and his experience has taught him much.

Death takes away the power of speech first of all. Then the ability to see.

What remains alive to the very end, however, is the power to hear. Even though the person has lost consciousness, it is by no means unusual for the voices of the family to bring forth smiles or tears.

Kaim puts his arm around the woman’s shoulder and says, “I have lots of travel stories to tell her. I’ve been looking forward to this my whole time on the road.”

Instead of smiling, the woman releases another large tear and nods to Kaim, “And Hanna was so looking forward to hear your stories.”

Her sobs almost drown out her words.

 

The innkeeper says, “I wish I could urge you to rest up from your travels before you see her, but…”

Kaim interrupts his apologies, “Of course I’ll see her right away.”

There is very little time left.

Hanna, the only daughter of the innkeeper and his wife, will probably breathe her last before the sun comes up.

Kaim lowers his pack to the floor and quietly opens the door to Hanna’s room.

 

Hanna was frail from birth. Far from enjoying the opportunity to travel, she rarely left the town or even the neighborhood in which she was born and raised.

This child will probably not live to adulthood, the doctor told her parents.

This tiny girl, with extraordinarily beautiful doll-like features, the gods had dealt an all-too-sad destiny.

 

That they had allowed her to be born the only daughter of the keepers of a small inn by the highway was perhaps one small act of atonement for such iniquity.

Hanna was unable to go anywhere, but the guests who stayed at her parent’s inn would tell her stories of the countries and towns and landscapes and people that she would never know.

Whenever new guests arrived at the inn, Hanna would ask them,

“Where are you from?” “Where are you going?”

“Can you tell me a story?”

 

She would sit and listen to their stories with sparkling eyes, urging them on to new episodes with “And then? And then?” When they left the inn, she would beg them, “Please come back, and tell me lots and lots of stories about faraway countries!”

She would stand there waving until the person disappeared far down the highway, give one lonely sigh, and go back to bed.

 

Hanna is sound asleep.

No one else is in the room, perhaps an indication that she has long since passed the stage when the doctors can do anything for her.

Kaim sits down in the chair next to the bed and says with a smile.

“Hello, Hanna, I’m back.”

She does not respond. Her little chest, still without the swelling of a grown woman, rises and falls almost imperceptibly.

 

“I went far across the ocean this time,” he tells her. “The ocean on the side where the sun comes up. I took a boat from the harbor way way way far beyond the mountains you can see from this window, and I was on the sea from the time the moon was perfectly round till it got smaller and smaller then bigger and bigger until it was full again. There was nothing but ocean as far as the eye could see. Just the sea and the sky. Can you imagine it, Hanna? You’ve never seen the ocean, but I’m sure people have told you about it. It’s like a huge, big endless puddle.”

Kaim chuckles to himself, and it seems to him that Hanna’s pale white cheek moves slightly.

 

She can hear him. Even if she cannot speak or see, her ears are still alive.

Believing and hoping this to be true, Kaim continues with the story of his travels.

He speaks no words of parting.

As always with Hanna, Kaim smiles with a special gentleness he has never shown to anyone else, and he goes on telling his tales with a bright voice, sometimes even accompanying his story with exaggerated gestures.

He tells her about the blue ocean.

He tells her about the blue sky.

He says nothing about the violent sea battle that stained the ocean red.

He never tells her about those things.

 

Hanna was still a tiny girl when Kaim first visited the inn.

When she asked him “Where are you from?” and “Will you tell me some stories?” with her childish pronunciation and innocent smile, Kaim felt soft glow in his chest.

 

At the time, he was returning from a battle.

More precisely, he had ended one battle and was on his way to the next.

His life consisted of traveling from one battlefield to another, and nothing about that has changed to this day.

He has taken the lives of countless enemy troops, and witnessed the deaths of countless comrades on the battlefield. Moreover, the only thing separating enemies from comrades is the slightest stroke of fortune. Had the gears of destiny turned in a slightly different way, his enemies would have been comrades and his comrades enemies, This is the fate of the mercenary.

 

He was spiritually worn down back then and feeling unbearably lonely. As a possessor of eternal life, Kaim had no fear of death, which was precisely why each of the soldier’s faces distorted in fear, and why each face of a man who died in agony was burned permanently into his brain.

Ordinarily, he would spend nights on the road drinking. Immersing himself in an alcoholic stupor—or pretending to. He was trying to make himself forget the unforgettable.

When, however, he saw Hanna’s smile and begged him for stories about his long journey, he felt a far warmer and deeper comfort then he could even obtain from liquor.

 

He told her many things…

About the beautiful flower he discovered on the battlefield.

About the bewitching beauty of the mist filling the forest the night before the final battle.

About the marvelous taste of the spring water in a ravine where he and his men had fled after losing the battle.

About a vast, bottomless blue sky he saw after battle.

 

He never told her anything sad. He kept his mouth shut about the human ugliness and stupidity he witnessed endlessly on the battlefield. He concealed his position as a mercenary for her, kept silent regarding his reasons for traveling constantly, and spoke only of things that were beautiful and sweet and lovely. He sees now that he told Hanna only beautiful stories of the road like this not so much out of concern for her purity, but for his own sake.

 

Staying in the inn where Hanna waited to see him turned out to be one of Kaim’s small pleasures in life. Telling her about the memories he brought back from his journeys, he felt some degree of salvation, however slight. Five years, ten years, his friendship with the girl continued. Little by little, she neared adulthood, which meant that, as the doctors had predicted, each day brought her that much closer to death.

 

And now, Kaim ends the last travel story he will share with her.

He can never see her again, can never tell her stories again.

Before dawn, when the darkness of night is at its deepest, long pauses enter into Hanna’s breathing.

The frail thread of her life is about to snap as Kaim and her parents watch over her.

The tiny light that has lodged in Kaim’s breast will be extinguished.

His lonely travels will begin again tomorrow—his long, long travels without end.

 

“You’ll be leaving on travels of your own soon, Hanna.” Kaim tells her gently.

“You’ll be leaving for a world that no one knows, a world that has never entered into any of the stories you have heard so far. Finally, you will be able to leave your bed and walk anywhere you want to go. You’ll be free.”

He wants her to know that death is not sorrow but a joy mixed with tears.

“It’s your turn now. Be sure and tell everyone about the memories of your journey.”

Her parents will make that same journey someday. And someday Hanna will be able to meet all the guests she has known at the inn, far beyond the sky.

 

I, however, can never go there.

I can never escape this world.

I can never see you again.

“This is not goodbye. It’s just the start of your journey.”

He speaks his final words to her.

“We’ll meet again.”

His final lie to her.

 

Hanna makes her departure.

Her face is transfused with a tranquil smile as if she has just said,

“See you soon.”

Her eyes will never open again. A single tear glides slowly down her cheek.

End

Source: Lost Odyssey Wiki

Gamescom 2011: Battlefield 3 “Caspian Border” Multiplayer Gameplay

Posted on by Arleigh

I’ve been hyped and itching to get my hands on Battlefield 3 for months now, but still have a little over 2 months to go before I get that chance. Until then EA and DICE (Digital Illusions CE) have come up with another way to tease it’s fans by using Gamescom 2011 over at Germany a new video footage of actual gameplay (using an earlier alpha build of the game). This time around it’s not in-game footage of the single-player campaign. What we get instead is two whole minutes of wargasmic in-game footage showing the game’s multiplayer mode (64-players playing at once over on the PC while the Xbox 360 and the PS3 get 24-player limit for ground fighting).

The footage is of the mulitplayer map simply called “Caspian Border” and it’s a multiplayer game being fought not just between players as foot-soldiers, but also driving armored vehicles, jeeps, tanks and helicopter gunships. But what got me really going is the fact that air-to-air combat with jets. I don’t mean those white-and-green wearing, following the fat, blowhard who has no rings to kiss Jets, but jet fighters performing deadly aerial ballet with their opposing number.

I think if there is ever one reason to pick up Battlefield 3 over Activision’s upcoming title to their juggernaut of a FPS franchise, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, then this gameplay footage with the jets will be one major reason. I may just practice flying those jets for multiplayer and shout “Tally Ho!” over the mike when ambushing another player in their jet.

Battlefield 3 is still set for an October 25, 2011 release date in North America with Europe and the rest of the world getting it the following days.

Trailer: Warhammer 40K: Space Marine (I Am War)

Posted on by Arleigh

Been an uneventful day for me today which usually means a slow posting day. One thing that I did come across which came out today was a new trailer for one of my more highly-anticipated games this year. The latest trailer for THQ and Relic Entertainment’s Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine has been released and shows more gameplay footage and hints at the single-player campaign’s storyline.

I was once asked if I ever was given a chance to be a fictional character who would I choose to be. Well, as this trailer clearly shows I definitely want to be a Space Marine (or the more accurate term used in this fictional world: Adeptus Astartes). I mean look at the size of these guys and they even get to wear very ornate and baroque looking armor. Though I’m sure Lisa Marie would want that I paint the armor in more pastel colors.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine still set for a September 6, 2011 for the Xbox 360, PS3 and Windows PC.

Review: NCAA Football 12

Posted on by Semtex Skittle

Yes, it’s that time of year everyone. Football season looms … at least, it does for the thousands of student athletes within the NCAA system. The NFL is still in limbo, even if it now appears inevitable (although either way, it won’t slow down the annual Madden release). Now, let me preface this review by saying that I don’t actually enjoy college football. I find the poor defensive play and imbalanced match-ups boring, and I hate the way that the BCS standings come together over the course of a season. The fact that the Big East has an automatic bid is a bad joke, etc. All of this is probably because I never attended a university where college football mattered. But absolutely none of that counts in the world of video games!

As a visceral experience, there’s a lot to be said for the college football style. Here, we still live in a world where running the football can be king, and a world in which the QB option (in a shocking variety of forms) can still be a primary offensive tool. Teams suffer every year from playing the service academies (who still run the triple option) because defending it is so different from the spread, or even the spread option, that most teams run. If you’re looking for a football experience where all of these systems are in play, then you should run — not walk — toward NCAA Football 12. Of course, most people are more NFL fans than NCAA fans, if the numbers are to be believed… but the one thing that the video game version will always have over Madden is that it isn’t quite so formulaic. We’re dealing with an eclectic mixture of offenses and defenses. If you care to start a dynasty (and the dynasty features are outstanding in the new version. In NCAA Football 12 we’re treated to the full coaching experience. More on that in a bit.) you have a ton of player turnover, which can make it difficult to have a consistent program. I suppose it’s probably easier if you’re a fan of Alabama or Florida. I’m not, so this title has a refreshing ‘battle uphill’ feel, especially in the Dynasty Mode.

The flagship promotion for this game has to do with the authentic recreations of the university celebrations, pre-game ceremonies, etc. It deserves to be the most outstanding feature. Granted, it has absolutely no effect on game-play, but one of the things that sets college football apart from the professional game is the sheer number of teams in play – each with their own unique celebrations, entries, and whatever else – who have their own tradition. If that kind of personalized experience doesn’t faze you, then you won’t find much of note has changed between iterations of this game. The graphics are still in the same generation, we have the same playbooks, the announcers have actually become less interesting (which may be a selling point, depending on your point of view – Lee Corso has made his departure), and there are no real innovations in game-play. The tackling feels slightly more authentic — that is, there’s less magnet tackling — and the AI that guides defensive players in zone defenses is dramatically improved over the 2011 version of this title. You can actually feel pretty confident when calling cover 3 defense… of course, this goes double for the AI player, who aggressively bats down passes (but mercifully doesn’t seem to randomly intercept any more). Still, the game emphasizes more than ever the value of lofting a pass high to avoid marauding defenders as opposed to just firing laser beam passes from point A to point B.

Outstanding features include the Dynasty mode. Returning are the online dynasty features, which were a huge improvement in last year’s title… but massively upgraded are the single player versions. You can now create your own coaching avatar who can hold the position of Offensive/Defensive Coordinator, or Head Coach, at a university of your choice – but who is held accountable for the team’s performance. The university has expectations, and you can experience first-hand being on the coaching hot seat and being fired from your job. Of course, if you’re good enough at the game, this is hardly a concern… but it does add a fascinating dynamic to the experience – a bad recruiting class could still doom you! If you are fired, you end up on the coaching carousel looking for a new job. It’s definitely a cool feature, even if you probably won’t run into it much.

The other game mode which received a significant overhaul is the Road to Glory mode. As always, you create a single player, and advance from a top-rated high school prospect through your collegiate career at whatever university. However, this time around, the experience is much more interactive. We’re treated with a game mode that allows us to fully develop a single player in a much more immersive way than in previous installments. Your created player will gain experience and skills — as always — but also adapt to (or be moved into) a specific role on the team. I imagine this is a much more authentic recreation of what going out for Div 1 sports is really like… but you tell me.

The game does take a significant step back in terms of calling audibles. I would say that the player is given more freedom than ever in terms of setting up audibles (with the addition of custom playbooks) but gone are the menus that actually tell you which button push calls what. Or, at least, they were absent for me. It seems like a senseless change, and one that left me feeling pretty bitter through my Dynasty play… when I had to frequently consult my audible chart in order to keep track of what I was calling, and when. If I could remember all of this playart, I’d probably be playing Div 1 football myself.

As always, this game will synergize with the Madden release in terms of draft classes, as the Madden schedule continues uninterrupted. Definitely worth a pick-up if you’re starved for some video game football, or if you consider yourself a college ball fan.