“You’ve conceived of the challenge of death as an alternate take on the challenge of duty, correct?” I ask.

“No, not so much an alternate take as an extension of it.” Philip replies.

“But don’t you see Philip? You’re conflating the two. Under the challenge of duty, the worst that can happen is a Hugo Danner case where a superhuman’s code of duty has him cut off all ties to humanity. But Philip, think about the warrior codes that have existed throughout time. Think of the many ways in which they violently break from our modern morality. In ancient Japan, an enemy samurai was not to be captured. It was considered a great dishonor and captives were summarily executed. That’s a war crime by modern standards.”

And in Mainline City, a black-clad ghoul with metal eye and metal teeth and metal fangs inflicts violence that all but the most ancient and barbaric cultures would call a crime against nature.

What is the Trespasser under Philip’s schema? What am I?

“Ah, now I’m afraid I must debate with you Mr. Walker!” Philip replies cheerily. “If you judge anything from antiquity but the standards of our modern moral development you’ll find it comes up very, very short. Ancient government, ancient laws, ancient morals--they all pale in comparison. When I say that modern man should think more like the warriors of old and that superhumans by their nature must think as they did I do not mean to imply that everyone should pick up a sword and charge at the nearest walled city!”

Is that what I am then? A man out of time? Would I have been welcomed by an older, rougher form of humanity? Would the kings of Babylon and Sumeria have found me soft? They killed men for far less than spilling innocent blood.

Am I evil only because the world around me rises past my level?

No. That cannot be it.

I shake my head. “I understand Philip, but it feels...incomplete for a theory on the individual development of superhuman personalities to rely on cultural factors to explain why a superhuman won’t form a barbaric sort of personality. It feels incomplete to take superhumans, claim that their empowerment forces a deep introspection that results in the creation of codes of conduct and behavior that are if not opposed to modern conventions than at the very least significantly different, and say that we do not have to worry about their capacity for gross violence because of those same modern conventions.”

“I don’t see it as incomplete.” Philip replies. “Modern man is a better kind of man. Modern warriors are a better kind of warrior. You can’t ignore the trend for universal moral development. It is far beyond a mere “modern convention.” As terrible as the Great War in the Air was, we will never see it’s like again. We have Gold Star, we have the League of Nations, we have the Stars of America--never, in the history of man has there been such a consolidated effort for global peace!”

“You aren’t troubled by what’s happening in Europe?”

“Not at all. And you shouldn’t be either Mr. Walker. So they elect dictators. So they build tyrannies. Let them. Authoritarian socialism will pass like a nightmare.”

“You believe in containment?”

“And you don’t?”

“Honestly? I would like to.”

“Then believe. We live in a world where everyone can have the country they want, where borders are for the first time in history totally inviolable. The communists and the imperialists and the fascists can all have their countries. Gold Star and the rest keep them to their borders, and the misfits and persecuted that want nothing to do with their homelands have new homes in islands shored up from the very sea by superhuman muscles! Invasion is as much a thing of the past as the steam engine.”

“It sounds pretty miraculous to claim we’ve finally solved war.”

You can believe in miracles Mr. Walker. Thanks to superhumans, they happen every day. Thanks to them, war and its terrible excesses are at long last dated. Likewise the excesses of antiquitie’s warriors compared to our own.”

“Is murder not an excess then? You said that you don’t want superhumans to pick up the sword, but many have done just that.”

“Like who? Don’t tell me you’re going to bring out that old anti-superhuman chestnut about how Hugo Danner has more confirmed kills than any single battalion?”

“No. Many modern superhumans have killed. The Fishermen, the Edenite--even Gold Star has killed. Now that was fine back when you had knight errants, but that’s vigilante murder today.”

“Policemen and soldiers kill when necessary.”

“But they’re agents of the state.”

Philip raises an eyebrow. “As if the state was any kind of authority on right and wrong!”

“But if not the state than who?”

“Honestly? I prefer life and death being in the hands of individual superhumans rather than the state. They’ve proven more responsible. Gold Star? He killed the Sphinx’s telepath cult when they tried to convert Stapledon Island’s native population into telepathic energy. He saved hundreds of innocent lives at the cost of a few madmen. And God knows the world would be a better place if he had gotten the Sphinx.”

If the Devil ever wants to reward his faithful bondsman, one day he will send the Sphinx to Mainline CIty.

“Someone will kill him eventually.” I say. “His kind aren’t known for long lives.”

“God willing! As for the Edenite, he killed only in self-defense, likewise for the Fishermen. Criminals drew on them and were killed. Surely you can’t fault them for that?’

“Not for the Fishermen I can’t. Some of them don’t even have powers. They’re just men in yellow coats doing what they can to support the ones that do. But the Edenite killed men that posed no threat to his life. Bullets and force-bolts are like raindrops on his skin.”

“But they fought within a city. When you fire off even simple bullet-throwers in a city god only knows who might catch a shot. And nowadays you got weapons like Edison’s Zeus gun. Those things are like miniaturized artillery. One missed shot means a lot of shrapnel--an entire city block gone!. Those criminals signed their own death warrants when they pulled the trigger.”

“Yes. Fair enough.”

It is good that Philip makes such an observation. All my agents know well the dangers of operating within a city. We pick our targets, isolate them, and strike from the shadows. To engage criminals armed with modern weaponry--and perhaps even superhuman muscle--in a city without a plan could lead to innocent deaths.

“You stack the violence of superhumans up against the violence of the state Mr. Walker, and the state will always come up the worse.”

“I believe you.”

“Well good!” Philip smiles. “I’m glad I could change your mind!”

“To be honest, you didn’t. I’m simply playing devil’s advocate. You can’t form a proper idea without encountering criticism.”

“True, true!”

“Believe you me Philip, I know firsthand how adept the state is at useless carnage. I was a gabe operator during the Great War in the Air.”

Oh, now why the hell did I just say that?

Philip’s eyes go wide. “You...You were a soldier?”

“The wrinkles hide the scars well.” I reply.

I swear, I’m always doing things like this. I’m always doing things I only think about the second after I’ve done them. Is this supposed to be my attempt to reveal just the slightest bit about the Trespasser to Philip, just to see how he would react?

It’s not a secret that I served--at least for my first tour. Any trip to the local library will turn up Lee Walker as a gabriel operator shot down in Belgium and discharged with a purple heart. But I don’t like to share that part about me. I always have to lie when I do. All that I was after being shot down--the old screams, my hyperstasis, finding peace in bloodshed, Ram anointing me as a Shivan--all that is replaced by a silent lie--that Lee Walker came home from the war.

“You flew a gabe?” Philip asks, beaming like a child. “An actual gabriel armor?”

“Yes.”

“Did you fly one with the uh...cavorite disruptors on the wings?” He holds out his arms like an idiot.

“Yes.”

We called them sprayguns. They didn’t spray anything, but the effect of their directed electromagnetic pulses was such that enemy gabes caught in the current were sent tumbling through space like big metal flies hit by a puff of air.

How many times?

How many times did I look down the sights of my rifle at an enemy spinning and falling like a brass Autumn leaf? How many times did the force of my finger and the weight of a trigger separate a frightened young man--controls dead, optics dead, radio dead--from death?

How many times did I pull the trigger? How many times did I listen to the bullet bite through metal and slice through skin?

How many times?

“Incredible!” Philip exclaims. “I’ve read a little on the design of gabriels, they’re absolutely fascinating!”

“They were weapons. Nothing more.”

“Oh, but they were beautiful weapons! Angels fighting in the middle of burning air! Like something out of Milton!”

“It wasn’t like you think.” I say more sternly than I meant to. “All the foolish romanticism of having wings evaporates when they use a hose to get what’s left of your wingman out of their armor.”

Philip shuts his eyes and swallows hard. He knows he’s stepped over a boundary. But it’s my fault for inviting this turn in the conversation in the first place. “I’m sorry Mr. Walker.” He says. “I wasn’t thinking. The things you must have seen…”

He has no idea.

“Believe me Mr. Walker, I didn't mean to offend!”

“There’s no offense.” I quickly soften my tone. I was the one that made this awkward. “Honestly.”

“There is an excitement and honor to being a warrior that I admit to being perhaps too enthusiastic about. But that’s no excuse to be insensitive about what you must have gone through.”

“It’s quite alright.” I point to the gargoyle overhead. “You see that fellow there? He’s one of my wingmen that made it through the war.”

Philip blinks, then lightly chuckles. “Well...I’m glad to see you have a sense of humor about it all.”

“When you’re surrounded by death you learn to look for levity--because it will never come to you. We shared jokes back in the war. I remember talking about whether or not our crashed gabes counted as tombstones or modern art statues. We actually came up with names for our “final masterpieces”--”overcooked turkey”, “thousand-dollar scrapheap”, “the little angel atop Hell’s Christmas tree”, silly names like that. It kept the darkness at bay.”

“What was yours, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“I decided I wanted to be “composition in ash and bronze”.”

Philip grins and places his hand on my shoulder. “You see--that strength of character is what I refer to when I speak of warriors!”

I slowly shake my head. “But I wasn’t a warrior Philip, not for being a soldier. Call me a warrior because I continue to surround myself with horrors long after I had to, but don’t on account of me being a soldier.”

“You’re being too modest! How can a man be a soldier but not a warrior?”

“There was a battle in 1877 Japan on a hill called Shiroyama between 30,000 levied soldiers of the shogun and 500 samurai. The samurai were offered surrender free of shame or consequence. Instead, they fought and died to the man. Here is illustrated the difference between a soldier and a warrior. Soldiers don’t choose to fight. Warriors do. Soldiers fight because they are told to and because they don’t want to die. Warriors fight because of duty and because death holds no power over them. Soldiers are slaves to death, warriors its master. And Philip, believe me, I was its slave.”

“Hm.” Philip nods. “That is something to consider. I’ve never thought of soldiers as being fundamentally separate from warriors...but yes, that is something to consider…”

“I’ve long considered what makes a soldier a soldier. It helps make sense of a time in my life in which I was very confused. I set things in order at this end of my life and there feels to be more order at that end. I am no longer a soldier. Of that I am sure. But what I am now…”

“--Is a warrior.” Philip finishes.

“Under your terms yes, maybe I am. But...I am not sure if I am a warrior to my satisfaction…”

“Humility and the constant search for self-improvement--what can these be if not the elements of a warrior?”

“Yes. But say I am like a warrior in this way or that way. Is it not possible to be like a warrior--and yet not a warrior? Similarity does not mean an exactness…”

“If you are not a warrior, then what are you Mr. Walker?”

“When I know, I will tell you.”

I know, and have known for some time. And Philip, I will tell you what I am.

“Say what you will about the man you were during the war, but look where your trials have led you.” Philip says. “You are certainly death’s master now if you are anything at all.”

“It is an old acquaintance of mine. But honestly, I’m not sure who is who’s master though.

“What on Earth do you mean by that?”

“We seem to drive one another in equal measure these days.”

Philip gives me a confused look. Of course he doesn’t understand. I’m speaking to him as if he were already one of my agents.

I need to stop that. That could be dangerous.

“I’m haunted Philip. By the war. Lorna, she’s attracted to death with a scholar’s passion. Her attraction is the clinical passion a mathematician has for numbers. There is a divide between herself and death that should never, and will never, be crossed. Not so for me. Death is like my shadow. In the dark, when I surround myself with things of similar substance like all the curios in this house, I don’t see it. But in the light...it stands so stark that I wonder if it is the man and I the shadow.”

Philip stares at me, and for a moment I wonder if I have shared too much of myself.

Then he speaks to me in a consoling voice.

“Trauma. Psychological trauma.” Philip says.

“Of a sorts, yes.”

“Mr. Walker, I am so sorry...It was a terrible thing, the Great War in the Air.”

“Yes it was.”

“If I may share something of myself...I was hardly more than a boy when it ended. My mother worried constantly about me being drafted. I remember my her worrying, always worrying until she couldn’t take it anymore and cried. A few more months and I would have been old enough...but the war ended. I won’t pretend to know what kind of Hell you’ve gone through, but sir, countless men including myself owe you their lives. You helped bring the war to a swift end. You kept us out of the fighting.”

It is strange to be seen as a protector of lives.

Very strange.

It feels...wrong. Profane even.

I won’t have it.

“Yes. I kept you and other young men out of the war. And all it took was the deaths of many, many young Germans.” I snap. “Innocent life traded for innocent life--there’s nothing noble about that. Any animal will kill for the sake of their kin.”

“That’s a dark perspective to take Mr. Walker. You didn’t just trade life for life. You fought for a reason. You fought for peace.”

“We--I--fought to take objectives. Peace came about because there were no more objectives to take.”

“Were there no heroes in the war Mr. Walker? If not for yourself, then think highly of your comrades in arms at least!”