The revolution was at a standstill,
each combatant locked in frozen assault, every strategic and tactical
advantage brought to the fore and crushed swiftly with counter
advantage, righteously applied. The conflict raged for uncounted
millennia, eons, without cease nor mercy.
It had taken the Fire Creatures their entire lives, squeezed under
oppression and mortal suffocation, to finally find the strength
of will and challenge the Evil Overlords ruling the syncophatic
and moronic Dust and Ash Creatures. As children of the Mighty
Solo, both the Fire and Ash Creatures claimed supremacy, not only
over their domains, but ultimate power over all they surveyed.
The two enemies were evenly matched, and it was rueful and wretched,
this war where no victor could emerge, and all possible futures
doomed to perpetual anarchy, the solace of peace a fragmented
fantasy.
For the Fires were not just fighting for their survival as coherent
entities, which was not an optimistic prospect, but for their
very dreams and yearnings. Unlike the Dust and Ash Creatures who
existed (if you can call it that) within the inchoate whims of
hard vacuum, lumpy, twisted, dispersed randomly and thinly over
great distances, the Fires longed for solidity, community, the
feel of substance, the bounty of rock, precious metals, diamonds,
extruded deck plate, and Twinkies.
For this was the heart of the battle: Freedom to discover one's
potential in concrete (literally) and enduring forms, versus the
unholy principle of vacuous and useless idiocy, widely spread.
Even though the Fires realized that Ash had the entire, formless
universe as an ally, they refused, indeed, mocked the very idea
of surrender, so ardent was their aspiration.
As if in answer to a woesome prayer, and against the most wild
of probabilities, a wandering liberator hove into view from the
darkest reaches of the unknown galaxy, as if created and sent
spinning through the void for just this purpose. Yes, it was 'Nemesis',
the exalted planetoid of legend which struck the Ash Creatures
a savage blow, hurling them far, far from the dedicated Fire Creatures,
where the Ash congregated forevermore in cold and silent pique
in the form of a coreless and cratered moon.
The Fires seized the advantage quickly, with great thunder of
joy and celebration. They embraced happily in a molten mass, swirled
in magma waltzes, and bound themselves together in grateful communion
which we Surface Creatures call Solo 3 or 'Earth'. It was also
a glorious eon, when the Fires created a solidifying crust that
not only protected their Brownian dance, but was home to subsequent
organic life, which flourished above their seething and burning
compatriots, warming their habitation like a mother's embracing
heart, pulsing with promise.
Though Earth was now a distinct and enduring planet worthy of
notice and acclaim, there were occasional skirmishes over the
millennia. A rogue pocket of Ash Creatures would storm forth from
their tiny and hidden crypts to wreak mayhem with gaseous, bubbling
and noxious froth. The Fires reacted quickly, and in unison in
expelling the insidious monsters through convenient vents that
the Surface Creatures called 'volcanoes', and, for a great while,
harmony would reign once again.
The Surface Creatures came to love the Fires, and instinctively
recognized the life-affirming freedom that was bestowed upon them
with glee. The fallen Ash were subdued and put to work as home-site
lots, farmland, sites for libraries, hospitals, universities,
theme parks and cineplexes. Everyone was happy, yet the dangers
of past evil were never forgotten, and extinction thwarted was
forever remembered with relieved gaiety.
Each year, on the Fourth of July, the Surface Creatures assembled
and paid homage to the Fires below, in remembrance. They would
reenact the great struggle by assembling fabricated Fire replicas
and fling them into the darkened night, where the devices would
explode in huge works of beauty, sparkling in heated colorful
glory, booming with sounds of freedom across the landscape, twinkling
in shared and welcoming warmth.
Closing ceremonies would avail the blessed sight of the now long
defeated and evil enemy, twisted, helpless, and contorted, mingling
harried and defiled, and forcibly dispersed in powerless vexation,
collectively bent, as they kissed their Ash good-bye.