A Weapon’s Serenade

The girls had found their way to Dresden and tomorrow they would continue onward to Berlin. But tonight, they would just enjoy the cool breeze. It had been a hot day. Thankfully, most things they wanted to visit were very close to each other and the Semperoper was properly climatized. Going to the opera hadn’t been on the initial list of things they wanted to do in Germany, but it just to happened that their trip to Dresden fell on a day on which Die Zauberflöte was shown.

It was after the showing that the girls were now making their way back to the hotel, wandering the city centre.

Melody looked up at the starry sky. “It’s always so weird to see the forces of darkness as the evil ones. I mean, we are the forces of darkness.”

Anne nodded. “That was always going to be our fate. Children of shadow and fire and all that.”

“True… The forces of shadow and fire also have quite the benefits.”

“Oh absolutely. So many benefits, friends with benefits, cats, food, cuddles. All the good things. Also the optics. Have you seen what we are wearing right now? Sure, wearing a prom dress to the opera might be overdressing for normal people, but we are walking around like fantasy villains. I love it. I wasn’t sure about wearing this again, having people stare at me… but knowing that I can pull a dagger from thin air, yes it’s just a fancy kitchen knife, but having that power that no one else around me has is reassuring. I feel safe now. Let them stare, I don’t care.”

“I know you better, my love. You do care. You don’t like the stares normally, but when you are in control like this? You relish them.”

Anne sighed playfully. “You got me.”

“It is really hot though.”

Anne kissed Melody on the cheek. “Oh, I know.”

Melody giggled. “Can’t wait to get you back into a soundproof bedroom again.”

“I am a patient woman.”

There was a lot of beautiful old architecture in Dresden, carefully restored after the war. Berlin, while also having some awesome buildings to see, held something else the girls loved: museums. An entire island full of them. That alone made Berlin one of the longer stops on this trip, but there were so many other monuments here. Not far from the Brandenburg Gate, where the girls were sitting now, was the Holocaust Memorial. Two-thousand-seven-hundred-and-eleven blocks of concrete placed on the same area that once held the mansion of Joseph Goebbels and the Führerbunker. That alone would be symbolic enough, but this area had also been part of the death zone just east of the wall during the time Berlin was divided.

“I almost want to ask why all this was allowed to happen. Why, when everyone was watching, did anyone allow this to happen? And not just that time, not just Hitler. So many genocides… over and over again. How can this be part of the good path?” Melody looked at the ground before her.

“I want to say that I wish I knew, but… I can’t. I don’t know and whatever reason there could ever be for that much death to be part of any good path must be beyond our minds. I don’t want to be able to know.”

“I don’t want genocides to have meaning. No matter how much good was done to get away from those horrid times, no matter how much was done to prevent anything like it in the future, nothing can give meaning to genocide. You can’t tell me there wouldn’t be a European Union without Hitler.” Melody sighed. “The worst part? That's just coping. There wouldn’t be a European Union without Hitler. I don’t want to believe that there is a silver lining to genocide, that’s just not right. But I can’t deny that so much necessary good was brought about by genocides being opposed.”

“I don’t want to say that such evil is necessary, but humanity has proven many times that they will never learn from anything but the worst case. There must always be death at a large scale for change to happen. All lasting peace came from the most horrid of wars. Among mortals, evil is inevitable. I don’t see the genocides as having reason because good followed, I see the good having reason because it is humanity turning against evil. Genocide is always pointless. Resisting it never is.”

“I hope you’re wrong. Not about the pointlessness of genocide but about humanity needing the worst to progress. But at this point, I don’t know. Right now, the monuments here, the remnants of the wall, the very fact that the streetlights are still different between the two halves of the city, prove you right. Even climate change proves you right. The sirens do. Atlantis did. The Hand did. Hiroshima and Nagasaki did. All these things were very predictable in how they would end and those in charge didn’t believe it until they saw it.”

“Not just those in charge. I can’t speak for most events, but you can see how many people don’t take climate change seriously and how many outright reject it. Back in the empire, the Hand was seen as a curious group of weirdoes, nothing to be taken seriously either. Even the destruction of Atlantis was put aside as overblown at best and ‘fake news’ at worst. Even Atryca needed to see the construction of dirty bombs to turn against the Hand. She was the only one who saw a problem with that and they punished her for it. Just look at what is being done to protestors who are too disruptive. Who cares that billions are about to die because the greed of humans cannot be satiated and more of this world has to be destroyed to keep up. You can’t just inconvenience your betters. You worthless, carless, creature. Why do you care about nature? Are you an animal living in it? Why do you care about Jews? Are you one? Do we need to report you to the friendly SS officer down the road? Did I hear you criticize the state? That sounds like you want to flee to into the west, and I better inform the Stasi about it.”

“Do not try to create change. Change comes from above. Try to nudge those above and you are a terrorist. How well we know this song and dance by now. I want to believe that Jolene is telling us the truth and this is all going somewhere good. Not just for us but for everyone. I also want this good to be reached without the high inquisitor’s prophecy to come to pass.”

Kuria grumbled. “If it’s a guarantee that she will be the end of humanity and there are so many other species out there… No. I don’t want to consider the option that humanity’s end is the good path for everyone else.”

“I don’t think Jolene would go that route. Unless absolutely necessary… No, bad thought again.”

“Let’s not go that way. How about we go find something good to eat and enjoy the spoils of humanity’s hubris?”

Melody chuckled. “Alright, let’s do what we came for and enjoy ourselves a bit.”

Anne swallowed her bite of schnitzel and broke the food-enjoying silence. “I had a little thought.”

“I like it when you have those. They tend to be quite good.” Melody returned a smile.

“Well thank you. So, the queen of the night gets torn to shreds by the forces of darkness, right?”

“What?”

“Zauberflöte.”

“Ah, right, yes. She gets killed by them, yes.”

“That’s how evil always falls, isn’t it? It falls to its own kind. The Hand fell apart from their hubris and failure to listen to those who knew how to work the stones. The sorcerer king of Atlantis turned against the one force he could never hope to beat. Hitler decided to fight a war on too many fronts before he had managed to, pardon the phrase, ‘clean up’ his own front lawn. The Roman empire destabilized through the greed and misplaced ambition of its emperors. The entire civilisation became decadent and refused to acknowledge reality. We literally saw that in Trier with the city gate. Even God and his many thousands of years he ruled the heavens. He fell because he thought himself invincible, killed by his own right hand. Evil always falls to its own.”

“But it destroys so much on the way.”

“That it sadly does. Even when ‘good’ steps in to defeat evil, it is always using the weakness evil itself presents. Humanity’s good is opportunistic and very relative. How many Brits or Americans would have liked to side with the Nazis… The appeasement politics, the normality of antisemitism in so many countries until the Nazis took it to the logical extreme. Humanity has no saints.”

“That’s a dire view of things. I think there is good in humanity, just that this good is not always in the position or has the interest to fight evil. That good is creative, it creates art of all forms, it invents the future, it brings people together. Fighting evil is only done when necessary. I guess that is its biggest failing. Humanity’s good isn’t a fighter, it’s a creator.”

“Fair point. I hope that it finds its weapons before an evil arrives that is too great. With how people have been acting recently, I am worried something bad is on the horizon again.”

Melody frowned. “I hope so too. I hope even more that our ‘forces of darkness’ don’t need to step in to protect what little good is left. The consequences of that would be…”

“Dire. To say the least.”

Melody just nodded and shoved another bit of salad into her mouth.

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