Needless to say, the Brave yet Foolish Sir Robert was apprehended by the Priests of that Holy Fortress and a Major Stir resounded throughout the land -- for a mere nave had desecrated the sanctity of their sacred domain.
Now the townspeople and the servants thought him a foolish lad for such an act of apparent disobedience whilst the Knights of the Warrior Clans were simply aghast over the ease at which their security had been breached and the arrogance with which their hierarchial protocols had been impudently ignored -- the devious overlords above them, of course, guaranteeing that heads would certainly roll over this simply unacceptable oversight.
Yet in the Dark Castle which sat high upon The Hill, the Dark Lords gloated in glee as they beheld the fruition of their devious manipuations -- thinking themselves oh so clever for sacrificing what to them was merely a pawn as they attempted to place the opposition's king in check. For they had measured the risks, plotted the strategies, manipulated the players, and launched the scheme.
And we beheld all of this and -- pseeing the many analogues -- wept bitterly.
Yet in the stillness of our weeping, we hearde an distinct voice remark unto our hearing, "There remaineth a Greater Kingdom, O mage" and our inner eye was opened thereunto, and beheld the Greatness of that Enduring Kingdom -- one which lieth far beyond the mundaneness of this Carnival of Fools; one which existeth from everlasting even unto everlasting and perceiveth such mundaneness not as necessarily trivial or unimportant in it's own right but as an Greate Drama and an Grand Dance peopled by beings which -- though clad in ostensibly disparate vestures -- were at their rudimentary core not so unalike you and I; longing for love, happiness and acceptance, all.
And it was this very kingdom -- which is Far Greater -- which we then observed orchestrating and choreographing those steps in The Dance which we had just pseen. For though the Prince and the Nave had thought themselves clever for acting out the scheme, and though the Guards of the Holy Fortress had deemed themselves victors for apprehending him which had appeared to brake step from their National Security Dance, and though the Dark Lords of the Dark Castle on The Hill had perceived themselves clever manipulators for pushing the poor nave to the very brink of his own destruction, it was that Greater Kingdom which had the Final Word and which had designed the Dance such that the various sub-levels would fancy themselves Kings, though Pawns, all.
"Beyond the word and the fool, yea, beyond the word and the fool."
And this brings us to the next chapter of the self-same book, a chapter wherein it is only the names which have changed. For as miners in days gone by would take with them canaries into the depths of the shafts to serve as alarms -- when the oxygen had sufficiently depleted to cause the death of the canary the miners knew it was time to break for the surface -- so a Very Clever Pelican has caged himself a Canary (which looks much like a Little Chicken) and taken it to the depths of a very dark labyrinth.
And now that canary is showing the predictable signs of stress for, having recently earned it's right to fly, he has now taken to fanciful dreams of flight; buzzing in his imaginings that Greate House Which is White or landing unexpectedly upon the very lawn thereof.
"What's a girl gotta do to get a drink around here, anyway?"
But what saith the Pelican of these things? Is he wicked for having pushed his friend to this brink of disaster? For sacrificing, as it were, the life of a lesser bird merely to check the ambient temperature with his living thermometer or to ascertain the state of the weather with his sentient barometric device?
What is to be gained by all of this? The jailing of a nameless "domestic terrorist" who will be regarded as nothing more than a poor, deluded kook? Who will be mocked to scorn by the soulless media vultures who yet remain utterly sans clue?
Or the irrevocable opening of an eschatological Pandora's Box as the attention of the Profane and Unwashed Masses is fixated -- even if only for a brief moment -- upon the prophetic voice of one crying in the wilderness of materialistic scientism; "Science Without a Conscience?"
And who is truly in control here? Who truly has the Final Word? Is it the Canary which dreameth up the Martyrdom of the Lightning Rod? The Clever Pelican which pusheth him thereto? The Dark Lords who pull the Pelican's strings?
Or remaineth there yet a Greater Kingdom, O mage?
-Brother Blue
[* = Pink Floyd, "Shine on You Crazy Diamond"]
An Hypothetical Eschatological Ultimatum
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