Missämja, an agent of chaos, sees a world that is strangled by order and smothered by creation. Humans, the planet's caretakers, are slowly killing it as they endlessly propagate and try to bend the world to their will. Missämja has worked in secret for millenia to combat the overabundance of order and creation in the world and restore it to its natural, chaotic balance. She is going to save the world, even if she must destroy it to do so.
Missämja (working title) is an episodic story that I will be posting chapter by chapter here on my blog. To read the story in its entirety, click the tab at the top of the page, which has links to each chapter finished to date. Catch the first chapter after the break.
This world is dying. The people in it have become fat and lazy, growing ever more complacent even as their planet slides toward ruin. The Earth is so caught up in its own rules and orders that its people do not believe there is any other way to live. Not all; some see what is happening, and a few fight against it. They try to wake up the others, to make them all see what is happening, but they are too few, and too weak.
When I say too weak, I really mean too poor. This world is enslaved by its own greed, and the one true god is the Almighty Dollar. Those who might take action to stop the world's doom instead choose to hasten it in the name of profit.
Luckily for mankind, though they have forgotten the old powers, the old powers have not forgotten them. Order, chaos, creation, destruction, these things exist in many forms. It is my belief that order and creation have gained much too strong a hold on this world, leading to stagnation and overpopulation. Agents of destruction are attempting to fight back with war, disease, and natural disasters, but creation is overpowering them. I hope that by introducing enough chaos into the world, I may indirectly aid them as well.
Chaos, of late, has taken a liking to its old Norse name, Loki. It says the name has a nice sound to it, and the fact that the name essentially sprang from the ether with no clear etymology appeals to chaos. I sometimes wonder if it created the name itself.
My thoughts do have a tendency to wander. I was talking of money.
What is money but a number on a page? There was a time when it was backed by gold, something of actual value, but humanity has long since discarded that idea. Now it is simply a convention that they accept because they know no other way. What they do not realize is how quickly, how easily their carefully crafted tower of nonsense can topple. Money is nothing.
Time is nothing. Hours, days, weeks, years, these things do not exist. What people believe to be time is nothing but an arbitrary set of numbers imposed upon the natural flows of creation. The lion on the plains does not concern himself with what day it is nor where he needs to be at a given time. He has no schedule save the turning of the heavens and the rumbling of his stomach. His life is chaotic and free.
Truly, is there any creature so arrogant as a human? With their artificial rules and regulations, numbers and formulae, they try to create reason and meaning in a universe that is devoid of it. In chasing this impossibility they run themselves to death.
I will stop them.
A squirrel scampering through the branches of a nearby tree catches my attention. Something about its bushy tail and the focused urgency of its movements makes me smile. My mind wanders back a few million years—six or eight, maybe thirteen, I'm not really certain anymore—to the common ancestor that humans share with other modern primates. Some of that creature's descendants would go on to leap and swing happily through the trees, just like this squirrel. Others would walk upon the ground, build their homes and their empires, pollute the air and poison the water, and bring about the end of the world.
I snap back to the present as a passing man makes a catcall at me. I turn to look and find him closely examining my posterior. I am not sure why it concerns me at all, but it aggravates me. My eyes—normally a particular shade of greenish-yellow purple that appears gray to mundane observers—briefly swirl with every color of the visible spectrum, some outside of it, and a few that don't exist at all. The effect is rather like oil on water, with patches of darkness where mortal rods and cones fail to perceive the color of chaos.
The man, who is making no effort to hide that he is looking and liking what he sees, abruptly trips over nothing and falls hard on his face, to the amusement of passers-by. A small offense, so a small retribution, but it is always amusing to see what just a speck of disorder can do.
“Serves you right,” an onlooker shouts. The man picks himself up and slinks away.
I continue to walk down the path, resuming my journey that has no beginning nor destination. I am in a park, if I am remembering the word correctly, a small patch of greenery that the humans have arbitrarily decided should be preserved. I could almost admire the random nature of the choice, but it is not enough.
I hiss in pain as I stub my toe on a rock. The soft boots I am wearing should have protected me from such small hazards, but I recognize this as backlash from the chaos I had channeled a moment ago. Sometimes my abilities turn against me, sometimes not. I cannot anticipate when the backlash will happen, nor what form it will take. It would not be chaos if it could be predicted.
I pass someone on a bench reading a newspaper. On the front page is a story about continuing conflicts in the Middle East. I shake my head slightly; I will admit that that plan backfired. I had hoped, through a drop of chaos channeled into the peoples' respective mythos, to make mankind see how absurd it was to fight over land, a thing that no person could own. All I ended up doing was making two groups fight endlessly over some of the least desirable territory in the world.
Speaking of land and failed plans, I was also responsible for the eruption of Mount Vesuvius some years ago. It was another attempt to make people realize that they cannot claim the Earth for themselves, for the Earth is its own and belongs to no one. How can one believe they have mastery of a place when, at any time, that place could decide to shrug them all off?
Needless to say, it did not work. There were no survivors to spread the tale of the planet's wrath, and later generations took it as nothing but a historical curiosity. I unwillingly remember how badly my powers had rebounded upon me after that incident. I had somehow tripped and fallen into the lava despite being miles away. I may be immortal, but that does not make molten rock any less painful.
I do not wish to make it sound as if my task is hopeless, nor that I am not up to it. Changing the world is not a thing that happens easily nor without setbacks and losses, but I can see progress being made. Wars and rebellions are springing up across the world. There was a successful revolt in France a few hundred years ago as the people came to realize that they were being unfairly constrained by the tyranny of law, and if I am not mistaken there will be one in America shortly. Stories pour in from Europe, Asia, and Africa of uprisings in this country, civil war in that. The world teeters on the brink of change, and it is now my duty to give it a push.
My history is littered with failures and successes, but there is nothing I can do about what is past. My only concern is what I must do now.
I am Missämja, servant of chaos, and I will save this world from itself.
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