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Chiron, Who Sinned
I feel myself growing old. So much time has passed, and my soul is ancient, although my body is still that of a seventeen-year-old human boy. Chiron was my one chance to be young again, to be a teenager in love again. That chance is now gone. I cannot even pretend to know how long it had been. I have seen a thousand races, and I have seen a hundred planets born. How many million of years have already passed? I can no longer even remember what Earth was like. All of those things I have seen have mixed together, has faded into each other, and it is all just a mess in my mind. Chiron is clear to me, still; but he was a recent episode in my existence, and he was very important to me. One day he too will fade, but now I can remember every moment we spent together and how close I came to leaving it all just for him. Chiron entered my life when I was living on his station cluster. His race had destroyed its planet long ago, and had built a number of stations in space on which they lived. It was a very advanced race, a society of scientists, yet they had no contact with aliens because they lived many galaxies away from the next sentient race. Chiron was an expert in extra-terrestrial studies, the leader in a narrow and unappreciated field. His work was hard, and many did not believe him, but all that he had proven and all that he believed was true. God and I spent much time at the station cluster, for God was very interested in these creatures that were so wise, yet so isolated. I did not mind. I appreciated any moment in which God was fascinated by others, for it meant a free moment for me. The sameness of God can suffocate. I wonder if I will be able to keep my sanity in the years to come. Already I have been tempted to leave God's side, and time still stretches on before us for eons more. Will I be able to keep my mind? God is wondrous, and God is beautiful. God is all and He is everything. There is nothing in the universe as great as God. Yet God is but one being, and I do not love him, and I fear that one day I will tire of him forever but still I will not be able to leave. I have tried once now to leave him, and I have failed. I know I will be his forever, and sometimes I fear that I cannot stand it. Chiron attracted me immediately. He was all those things that I have ever loved, taken form in one being. I lay eyes on him and I knew he was for me. He was a very handsome creature. His race was sturdy, save for their fine hands of science, but of all of them Chiron was the most attractive. He was dark and he stood tall, and ever he was toned and ready. His mind was one of the most advanced that I have ever seen. His forward thinking amazed me and I marveled above all the courage he had to continue in the face of all of the rejection and incredulity that he received. Chiron was a caregiver as well—wise enough to know best and strong enough to protect. He had no love and no family, but he seemed ready for it. As I met him, as I spoke with him, I imagined myself in his arms. I have always wanted to be cared for, I think. Was it that I missed my father? Was it that I yearned for stability? Whatever the reason, I searched often in my life for those who would protect me and hold me so that I could feel safe. After all, did I not pick God as my companion? He is the greatest of fathers, and he has taken me to stand by his side and now no one can ever hurt me. I have found myself a protector indeed. Chiron had more to him as well. Underneath his outer shell of caregiving and strength, he was as vulnerable as any have ever been. The rejection received did hurt him. The disapproval that others held did affect him. Above all, he wanted someone to understand what he was saying. He was a victim to me, as well. He was someone that I could control. Like those in my past on Earth and other aliens that I had met and many others and many to come, I could manipulate him. With my boyish charms and the beautiful body that God gave me when I was there, I had power over him. I delighted in swaying his thoughts and changing his emotions even the slightest bit. I suppose that I have always been like that as well. I have always manipulated. I have always controlled. It is in my nature—it is part of me. God is the exception to it all. As much as He loves me, as much as I may weaken Him, He is still too strong. God I cannot change, God I cannot use, God I cannot control. Is this why I grow weary of him? Do I search for power, and does this lead me astray? Oh, but it does not matter. I cannot leave, and I will be at God's side forever. Chiron fascinated me as early as the first moment I saw him. There was something about the way that he walked though the halls of the station that pulled me to him. He was anxious to have a student as interested as I. For hours he would talk to me about his work, and he would let me sit with him as he reviewed star charts and looked through telescopes. Every thought he held was correct, and I ached to tell him so; but in doing so I would have need to reveal myself. God had forbidden me from doing this. Instead I merely listened attentively and agreed whenever he gave me the chance, always anxious for his words, always delighting him with my attention. There was no progression in my feelings from interest to love. The extremity of what I felt was there since I saw him, walking alone in the hall of the space station with a hundred other people. The only thing that changed was my knowledge as I came to realize that I was more attached to this creature than I was to God. I have survived this long, that is true, but I do not know how I've done it. What power is it that keeps me by God's side, when there is no love? How can I survive his company moment after moment and day after day and year after year if he is only an interest, a curiosity, a study? I am obsessed with him as no being has ever known obsession before. I destroy chances and people because that way I can understand him better. I hold by his side for the obsession. But: love? No, there is no love. Chiron was an intelligent being. Eventually, after the initial euphoria of finding someone to listen to his theories had passed, he began to wonder who I was and why he knew so little about me. I gave him excuses and reasons as best I could, but there was no record of my birth or my life, and he had never seen or heard of me before the day I saw him in the hallway. It made me hate myself to lie to him. I loved Orion for all that he was and all that he knew—I loved him for being such a perfect scientist—and the act of keeping information from him made me sick. Bit by bit the pieces of the truth began to rain down on him. I did not mean for any of it to happen, but I could not help it. The secrets escaped, for I could not contain them, and Chiron came to know the truth. He found out that I was an alien, and that there were a thousand million other races outside of his own. I did not tell him of God, for God was far from my mind when I spoke with him, and – I know it: that was why I wanted to be with Chiron. Chiron made thoughts and memories of God fall to the back of my mind, and I was normal again: me, a teenage boy. —Chiron accepted it all. He found facts in my words, and he understood facts well. He found out, too, that I loved him with all my heart. I would not do it again. I would not walk though that hell again. I would not make myself love and lose again. I must learn to be content at God's side, and I must understand that I can never leave. It is slow, this process of coming to terms. The facts have always been there before me, but I have been reluctant to accept them. Only now am I open to the truth, and coming to understand it is taking some time. But I have all the time in the world. Chiron was nothing less than overwhelmed. He was delighted, not only with the proof of aliens but also with my love, for he had grown very close to me and he had always desired a companion. But I could not touch him, and that he found forever disappointing. I did not tell him of God and the end of the world, and I did not tell him what I was, and so he could find no explanation for the atrocity that was my body passing though his. The lack of contact, however, was nothing compared to the hell that God wrought upon us. How did He find out? I do not know. God is powerful, and God knows many things, and I was careless. He found out, somehow, that I had been unfaithful and that I had slipped away. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil—but what evil was there in the love of a good and honest being? What evil would there be in escaping the hell that God has given me? Even if I could not touch Chiron, even if he one day died, there was still no evil in being alive for just one moment after being dead for so long. But, no, God opposed it, and God's will is law. All that God deems to be evil is evil. He is the creator. He is the name giver. I obey his command. Chiron was in the dark for every moment of the fall. God told me how it was to be, and there was no question. I was to remain with Him, and Chiron was to die. The argument was safety, but the reason was jealousy, for although Chiron possessed knowledge that no other had, he would die because he had my love and God hated that fact. Chiron's death rested on my shoulders, not only because my love had caused it but also because I volunteered to kill him. I could not stand the idea of God's cold touch being the end of him, and so I asked to do it myself. God let me. But I could not do it. He knew I was in his doorway, he knew I was watching him, yet he continued to work without a word, for we had fought the day before about why I could not touch him and he was still angry. Myself, I felt nothing but love as I watched him, and I did adore him, and not a single atom of my frame could ever hurt him. In the end, I ran back to God while Chiron was still alive. Chiron, who sinned—for he stole my love. Chiron, who made me sin, for I loved him. I must remember that Chiron would have died one day and I would have been left alone. God is certain, God is constant, God will be here forever. God loves me. What He did, He did out of love. Sometimes I forget my place. Sometimes I forget I am His consort, and that I cannot survive without Him. Sometimes I forget because I am stupid. Sometimes I forget because I want to. Chiron did not even know that his death was coming. I had not the courage to kill him myself and I had not the courage to warn him. I only ran back to God's side and held Him and begged for Him to do the deed, for I could not. What it a flash of lighting? Was it a silent death? I do not know. I know only that it happened and that God and I moved on from it together, hand in hand. I will be in God's arms forever more. If there are tests, if there are temptations, I will remember that I cannot leave his side. No matter the pedestal I am put on, no matter the title given to me, I am still God's underling. He controls me more completely than I have ever swayed another before. Chiron disappeared from my life and I left that place. I say it over and over, my mantra, my dirge, my hymn: God is good. God is power. God is my father. I say it because He makes me say it, and I say it because it is true. God is my maker. God is my world. God is my reason. No matter the games I play, no matter my thoughts and my wishes, God will have me as His forever. He had seen the threat now, and He has made Himself prepared for it. God is good. God is power. God is my father. As so it goes on, and I will never leave His side. |