Chapter Five
A Vision of What Could Be
The moment my hand touched the Minister of Justice’s garment, the first world disappeared.
We traveled through a silence unlike anything I had ever known. There was no wind. No sound. No darkness. No light. Only an endless vastness beyond the limits of human understanding. I searched for words to describe where we had come, but words belong to the world of men. This place seemed to exist beyond them.
My heart still pounded.
The cries of children, the smoke rising from the camps, the faces of starving prisoners, and the endless rows of broken humanity remained fixed within my mind. I closed my eyes, hoping the images would fade.
They did not.
The Minister of Justice stood beside me.
“Marine… are you well?”
It took several moments before I could answer.
“I don’t know, Sir.”
He nodded.
“No one leaves that world unchanged.”
For what seemed an eternity, neither of us spoke.
Finally, he broke the silence.
“You believed you understood what happened because you had studied history. The Teacher watched you search through books, photographs, testimonies, and documentaries. He watched you ask question after question, trying to understand how an educated people, living in a civilized nation, could descend into such darkness.”
He paused.
“You now understand what history cannot place upon a printed page.”
I lowered my head.
“Yes, Sir.”
Again there was silence.
Then the Minister of Justice extended his hand.
Before us another globe slowly appeared.
Like the first, it seemed no larger than a child’s snow globe suspended in eternity.
It too was hidden beneath a veil.
At first it appeared peaceful.
Yet the closer we drew, the more unsettled I became.
Something about this world was hauntingly familiar.
I could not yet see beyond the veil, but I could already sense it.
The faint odor of burned fuel drifted through the stillness.
Oil.
Smoke.
The unmistakable scent of military rifle powder.
The distant echoes of voices reached my ears. They were no longer spoken in a foreign language. Though I could not yet distinguish every word, I recognized the cadence, the expressions, the emotion. This world spoke a language I understood.
A heaviness settled over me unlike anything I had experienced before.
“Sir…”
I could barely force the words from my lips.
“Why does this one seem so familiar?”
The Minister of Justice rested one hand upon the veil.
“The first world belonged to history.”
He remained silent for several moments before continuing.
“This world is different.”
“It has not yet been lived.”
His eyes met mine.
“What you are about to witness is a vision.”
“It is not history.”
“It is not certainty.”
“It is one possible path that could emerge from the choices of mankind.”
He looked once more toward the veiled globe.
“Prepare yourself, Marine.”
Slowly…
…his hand reached toward the veil.