Imagine a planet, called Earth. As names go, it's not an imaginative one, except that this planet is more than two-thirds covered by water. But humans are selfish and self- serving, on the whole. Instead, we'll call this planet Terra. Look at its crinkly coastlines, its awe-inspiring natural beauty, the way humankind has managed to inhabit the most inhospitable reaches of its lands.
Imagine for a moment that you are equipped with the finest technology available anywhere in the known universe, and that that technology enables you to see through a cloaking field. If you took it to Jerusalem in early 2002, what you might see is a young couple in the cockpit of an extragalactic vehicle. You can tell they're a couple because they're arguing. Thankfully, the cockpit is soundproofed, so you don't have to hear the more grown up words.
We all know how these things go. You get a boy and a girl, similar age, nice personalities, generally pleasant dispositions, and you put them in the same room together. Eventually, it is hoped, sparks will start to fly.
In some cases, the sparks start straight away, and burn out not long after. Brief, fiery, passionate, these are often temporary relationships born out of high stress situations. Hollywood movies would have us believe that the only way two people can end up sleeping together without rings on their fingers is when one saves the others life.
In this case, however, that didn't happen. These two, Mike and Noreh, met when Mike was involved in one of the aforementioned relationships. It ended soon enough, but the line between the two had been drawn. They were fast friends, and the attraction was clear, but in the scandal-driven world of Mendellian society, even the most avid rumourmongers could find nothing improper about their relationship. They remained friends, and were mostly unconscious of the growing feelings they had for each other.
Of late, things had become more intense between the two. While they had previously flirted good naturedly, now there was an edge, and for two healthy humans in their twenties, such an edge was leading toward an inevitable conclusion.
Imagine now that the advanced technology you possess allows you to move through the outside of the cockpit. You can hear and see everything. Isn't technology wonderful? The two of them are still arguing, though.
I'm assuming that your presence here indicates your utter lack of morals, by the way. This is a deeply personal moment for these two young people. I am merely an ideological construct of your own subconscious, but you have all these societal guidelines that should really discourage you from listening to other people's relationship conversations.
You want to keep listening? Well, that's fine. I think there's some juicy stuff coming up.
Look at the man. He looks weary and stressed, but he's smiling. Shrugging off persistent enquiries from the girl, he's laughing and joking. The man, Mike, is not taking anything seriously. Look closely at his eyes, and you'll see the stress lines. There's a sensation of something tightly bound, coiled, ready to erupt. I don't know about you, but I'm standing well back.
The girl is a stunner, no point disputing it. Going by the name of Noreh, she's been the target for every unattached male from 15 to 50 for the last year and a half, but she's not let anyone get close. You get the feeling that she's had trouble with men in the past, and that she's probably another person who holds their true self close.
Will Mike just walk away? That's the question of the moment, the thing Noreh wants to know. He has so much to come back to, and-
If he stays, one day he might not come back. The laughter vanishes, the eyes tighten and the lines deepen. He seems to age before our eyes as he sinks slowly into one of the plush chairs that sit in front of the control area. She sits in the other, and watches him cover his face with his hands.
They sit together, a frozen tableau, each lost in their own thoughts.
Why can't she see? There's a big world out there, and he's seen so little of it. A million stories to tell, so many countries, so many people, so much he can do that will allow him to help this world without putting his life at risk. He's found his calling in life, and he has to go.
Why can't he see? He makes a difference where he is, and he needn't risk his life. He can just be the mechanic, surely? And his radio show is popular throughout the island, and he uses it to give people the chance to air their opinions publicly. He does so much for our country, and it's not even the country he was born into?
It's amazing how much one person can achieve, Mike thinks. If he were given the chance, he could make even more of a difference. But he has to make the break cleanly. It's a hard life he's chosen, and the temptation to leave and go home, either home, if there were something there for him . . . He knows himself well enough to know that that would be too big a risk.
Anyone who wants to build castles in the air needs to keep their feet on the ground. It had been one of her father's favourite sayings, and one she thought about a lot when she was cruising through the sky. Everyone needs someplace to call home, and if Mike cuts himself off from everything he knows, what would be the point of going on?
It's not that he wants to cut himself off, just that he can't afford to be thinking about some other place when working to make the world better. Everything has its place, Mike thinks, and his place is away from those he's come to call friend.
How can he just abandon those who care for him? Once before he'd pushed people away, and surely he'd learned that there was no peace to be found in being alone.
Those who care for him will want his happiness. His happiness lies away from Mendellia, away from Terra Group. . . Away from her. For now.
She had hoped that Jerusalem would witness his rebirth, that the final part of himself he kept apart from those around him would become available to them, that he would trust her and his other friends, that he could finally be completely happy.
For more than a year he's lived in a palace, and he's seen his friends falter. Josh Cochran has faced the Dark Side and gone missing, Vickie has stumbled and would need time to recover, Josh Nolan had taken even more extreme steps than he, Mike, was planning. To insulate himself from the world completely was to go too far; to celebrate life, as Mike was planning to do, was the way for him.
Never to tie himself down, always moving on, a wanderer on a global scale, justifying himself by doing good works.
If he could help people along the way, then so much the better.
As long as she'd known him, Noreh had suspected that Mike was holding back, that what she saw, what the others saw wasn't the real him. He was a joker, an extrovert, the life of the party. And yet sometimes she had found him alone in the hangar, or running through a self-defence routine, and she could see more to him than he probably cared to show.
He'd hidden himself behind the persona he'd created, and for a time it had fit him. But with the mounting problems of the world, to continue to joke around in his ivory tower was increasingly unsuitable and uncomfortable. From his parents he had inherited a social conscience, and now it was pricking him. The only problem he had with leaving. . .
Noreh thought of the real Mike, and what he was truly like. Would she feel the same way for him that she did for the person she'd known these many months? That he wanted to help others was noble, that he would do so alone if necessary was nobler still. That by doing so he would hurt her in a way she'd not been hurt since she was a child was her biggest problem with his leaving. . .
He stands abruptly, and again there is the sensation of tension, something being held back. She stands to greet him, and the two are scant inches apart. He looks down on her, and his lips part, as though he is searching for the right words, the words that will explain what he has to do.
And that is exactly what he is doing. For in his heart, he knows he is making the right choice. How can he measure his own happiness against the suffering of so many others? He can do so much for so many, so what right does he have to be selfish?
And yet. . . Does she know how beautiful she is? How his only thought is to sweep her into his arms? How he dreams of the feel of her hand in his?
One man can make a difference, but why does it have to be this man? Why does she feel like this about a man she may never see again? Why did it have to be him who thinks he can challenge the woes of the world?
Why did it have to be her man?
A tear forms at the corner of her eye, and slowly slips across her pale skin. She bites her lip, cursing herself for her immaturity. He watches, impassive until he reaches out to her and takes the tear on the tip of his finger. He brings it to his lips, and kisses it. Then he cups her head in his hands. . .
And at this point, lack of morals or not, we turn and pass through the door of the cockpit into the body proper of the ship. There are other people aboard, and they're doing interesting things too. Some things just aren't meant to be shared.