our individual icons

“You wear that patch, but you have no conception of what it means.”

High Tide examined his arm. “Of course I do. Peace only means getting rid of everyone who opposes or oppresses you. It’s also an abstract joke of a concept. You ask me, the only peaceful world is a world with only one person. As long as there are two people around to rub their ideologies together, there will always be conflict, there will never be peace. I wear this to remind me of that. We all have our individual icons, Sarge. You wear that badge—metaphorically—because you think it stands for something. But it doesn’t stand for anything anymore than this chicken foot on my shoulder stands for something. We are all just drones in the service of abstractions. Though, I have to admit the prospect of a world with only me in it is one of my principal fantasies.”

“And you’ve spent your life trying to make that so.”

High Tide leaned forward. “No. No, not at all. I said that it would be interesting. But it surely would not be fun. That’s the thing about peace—it’s boring. The moment no one has anything to fight is the moment that everyone gets bored. And boredom breeds malice and malice breeds war. Peace cannot sustain itself, that’s just the fact.”

Opera considered. “So you wear that symbol as justification for the work that you do. The evil that you do.”

“In a tremendously reductive sense, yes, I suppose that’s true.”

-from the new book