Conformity's Scale

This is an excerpt from a story me and my friends had envisioned one night playing video games. The idea itself was a joke, with me meeting different versions of myself from different timelines, such as French jamin, short jamin, and Jamin Biden. The idea was pretty funny at the time, but it gave me inspiration for something else. It gave me inspiration for a conversation between two characters of fantasy whos experiences were similar to my own. One where he would get over his issues similarly to how I would surmount them, and one who would never get over it at all. I hope you enjoy this read. And hey, if the people want Jamin Biden, then the people will get Jamin Biden. The bridge opens, and through walks a very interesting man. He is tall, like me. He has dark brown bordering on black hair just like me. He has small hands, small feet, and a perfect jawline, just like me. He has my features, but yet he looks so different from me. He is tall but he does not stand proud. He has black hair but its cut in such an unkept way. There is a difference between carefree and unkept. He has small hands but they are muddied with scars. He has small feet but his shoes have been beaten down so terribly. He has my jawline, but somehow his whole face looks burnt out, and yet constantly working. He is me, but he is not. He is not even close. "Fair tidings to you, soldier," he would say to me. "Hello. Who are you?" "Isn't it obvious? Im Lord Dimitri, a survivor. I live in a normal and calm time but my time has been all but calm. I've survived much, and I am what I've experienced. I am sure you are the same." "Yes. I am what I experienced and I can say that I'm Duncan, an opportunist. I see the chances to make things, and I act on them. I acted on an opportunity with you, when I brought you to my world." "I can see that. Thank you for that by the way you got me out of some shit back at 'home,' even if we have to meet in this room instead." "What do you mean this room? Not a fan of my décor?" "I remember there was a time when we both HATED this kind of thing. The fake and mainstream look. I remember there was a time when we shouted never surrender and decided it would not be us to live in the cage. I remember there was a time we vowed to live off the land. Why don't you seem to?" "Oh I remember. I remember there was a time when you and I blamed the culture for what those kids would say. And we would be right. The world wasn't ready to accept us for us. They didn't like our hobbies. They didn't like our beliefs and lifestyles. They didn't like our identity because it wasn't common. We weren't like them. That was okay, but not to everyone. So was it the culture's fault back then? Sure. Does that mean it couldn't change? No. It did change. We did too." "We went on hating that culture for so long. It was a cage. We saw all of it as a cage. So many rules and norms how could you bring yourself to conform to them?" "We didn't. We didn't conform. We are still as we were before, we just grew up and stopped expecting the world to be what we want it to be. We gained an acceptance to settle, an acceptance to work. We abandoned the silver platter. Once we did that, the culture changed. We were allowed to be ourselves, and people even liked us. They hailed us as king. I look at your face, and I see this isn't what really troubles you, though. You look like you can't accept something else." "What do you know of my life? What do you know of where my life has gone and what I have experienced? How can you assume?" "I'm not assuming. We are the same person." "We have the same start but we did are not heading to the same finish. You are not going down my path Duncan." "Is that why you changed our name? To show you're a different man? A different being?" "I changed my name because I hoped we'd go down the same path as he did. I hoped our insanity would be stopped by an old smile of someone we were loyal to, someone from our murder crew, and we'd be able to escape it, together. This is not fantasy however, and as I am sure you know, miraculous things do not happen to the unfortunate. We stayed like this for 30 years, and we still are to this day. We are fighting even now." "You say we, so I presume I know where your life truly went wrong, Lord Dimitri." "Yes. The whisper virus is still present within me, and it still plagues me every hour I have." "What does it tell you 30 years after it first came about? Does it even call for power anymore? Does it still call itself Pain or does it call for a more literal name, like reality perhaps?" "The amount of years it has been with me, god. There is quite some story to be told here." "Do you still like telling stories? Or was that lost along the way too?" "No. No matter what happens in my life, I will always be a storyteller. I shudder at the idea of us being anything less then. You know that we could monologue for hours about the past, and that one year could make an hour and a half of straight talking, so I'll spare our details. One minute in, and we were frightened. We had never lost full control of our body and mouth, but we had our mind. We had never walked around a room talking to ourselves like this, and we had never felt like we were the ones listening. Ten minutes in, we understood what he was saying. 'You do not want to live this life. You do not want to be weak like this. You do everything for so many yet you yourself have nothing. You want to be free. You just want to feel strong, you want to be the king again. You want power you want respect, you want me. Stop caring about what they think, and how they feel. God knows they don't care about you. You do everything for so many and yet no one does anything for you. Even now, you're completely alone, when it matters most. Let me take control. You won't have to care about them anymore. You will be free. You will be the king. Consider my offer.' One hour in and the panic sets in, because you don't know what happened, but you know it was true. When you lye in your bed alone, asking praying even for anyone to answer your call, you realize something. You lie there as your call for help remains unanswered and realize the world's most horrifying truth: That dark side of you that you never want to acknowledge, is right. Its true, and most of all, it is you. There is no running from it. One day in and you realize how hard its going to be going forward, because you know he won't stop. One week in, and he hasn't stopped. He comes to you three times a week, offering, persuading, propagating, trying so hard to make you give in. He tries so hard. Sometimes you give in, lose hope, acknowledge he's right, before panicking again alone for hours a night. Sometimes you stay strong and turn him back, but there is never a feeling of victory, never a sense of pride, because you know he'll be back tomorrow and the day after. Two weeks in, and you finally start telling people. They're taken a back and don't have a clue what to do. They try to offer solutions, an ear, but everyone is lost. Some are confident though, but that confidence comes from lack of understanding. Three weeks in, and you try to make deals with it, to make it stop. Try to make a half and half deal for your own mind and body, but he will not compromise. Pain wants all of you, and intends to get it. You realize too that he becomes more frequent. You're busy trying to find solutions for him, and he feeds off of it. He's taking your mind and he's twisting it, all while you're so busy with your life you can't undo him. He loves your energy. He profits from your chaos. One month in of the whisper virus, and we would surrender all emotion. We would surrender any mental feeling we had, in order to keep him away. In order to keep Pain away, we would not feel sad, feel happy, angry, surprised relieved frustrated weak and most of all, strong. He says if you won't let me in I won't let you live. Any time we feel strong, he's waiting in the wings to speak to me. After a month of this, of cutting emotion so far away from yourself you feel starved, literally starved to death, you can't take it anymore. You have to feel. One day, after a very great day of our production, I felt so happy. I felt so happy I listened to my music again. I listened, and then collapsed. He was there. I was so close to giving in, but I didn't. I kept living as me." "I remember living this as you did. Living with Pain for a month's length, why it was the worst experience I had. I don't remember it now, it's been a lifetime. But I'll always remember the idea of what it felt like. But, that is where my war with him ended. Pain for us left soon after. Our career in the arts would start, and we had a performance to execute. A big role we cared a decent enough amount about. We realized that together, we could create a far better performance together then alone. So, we shook hands and agreed to work together. We would work together for what would come next, as the mainstream system fell. The one we had hated for so long was crumbling before our eyes, truly it was beautiful. A new world was opening, or closing depending on your perspective, and we were ready to take it on. Together, Pain and I made something solid. Something we could stand tall on and be proud of. We still stand on it to this day, even as that closed off world ended, and the former resumed. This is how I ended the war against Pain, but it seems you never got that far. What happened after two months?" "It isn't what happened, it's what didn't happen. It didn't stop. We didn't reach a resolution. We kept fighting, and we lost everything. When the time for our grand depute arrived, we couldn't do it. Backstage, he threatened me. He swore that he'd take control of our body if we didn't give in to his request. He swore he'd make us right, like Dimitri himself. I didn't think he was capable of it, I knew he wasn't, but I still was scared. We got on stage, and he screamed in my head, and we failed. We tried to keep our composure together in front of a crowd of hundreds but we failed. We failed. Half way through, we collapsed on stage. We fell down to the audience, never to return to the spotlight. The mental energy put in to our war in mind and the war on stage was too much, and we passed out. Waken in a hospital, we were alone. My mother was there. She's a wonderful woman. My sister was at school but she wanted to be there, and my dad was out. Pain seemed to have disappeared, but he left behind many things. I remembered everything, and the doctors would not believe what happened. Instead of being given the care I needed, I was cast out on the street, my mother unsure what to do, but terrified. Concerned. You want to know what happened two months in? Nothing. No one believed me. The show must go on, and it went on without us. The school we attended showed no mercy, and courses continued as normal. Our friends deserters, and our life hopes gone. All in a matter of minutes. This was Month two." "And what about month 3?" "Month 3, well order ended. Everything shut down, and the world around us with it. Pain by now had ripped everything from me. I began failing my classes, I couldn't keep up with any career I was considering, from my performances to my e-sports career to my philosophy to my photography to everything, I could not apply myself at all. My friends had already left me, and my family began to as well. I became more depressed then I ever had, and my temper was uncontrollable. I'd lash out at everything said to me, and could never produce a response back. The collapse only made it worse. When the whole world has given up on you, it isn't a relief when it shuts down. Nothing changes. The only difference? I had nowhere to go, but inside. We became locked away in ourselves for months on end. During this time, his proposition changed to something much more surreal. He would say 'Look at you. You were weak, you were vulnerable, and you were kind. You stayed true to yourself until the end, and it brought you here. Unorganized, angry, saddened depressed weighed down sack of shit. You are nothing now, all because you did not listen to me. Come, take my hand. Let me take control. I'll be kind, I can leave your loved ones. You haven't been able to say a word to them without screaming all April. This will help them. To see a new Duncan. A strong Duncan. The true Duncan. Not like there's much I can ruin for you now anyway. There was no grand pay off for enduring me. No recompense with life repaying you. No finish line at the end of this race of endurance. Just me and you sitting in a dimly lit room, talking about how compromise is impossible, and how I could've stopped all of it had you let me. Please, you've got nothing to lose. Take my hand. We will be free.' What could I say? What could I do? All throughout the game, I had never been so low. It felt like this moment, in a world shut down and a future betrayed would be the defining moment of everything. We had gone through five years of everything we were being crushed. Five years of everything we loved and knew being used as a tool against us, and that was even before Pain came to play. Five years of someone we didn't know seemingly using forces we didn't understand to screw with us every day of the year, and now this was to be the highlight of all of it. Lying down doing nothing but listening to a voice in my head using my mouth telling me to betray everything I have ever known. In this moment, with nothing left, I said yes." "..." "You look at me with confusion on your face. Why Duncan?" "Why? You tell me that you gave up on all we sacrificed, all we tried to make all we endured just to give up? Then you dare ask me why? You know why! Its because 'Dimitri' you betrayed us! You betrayed all of us!" "I didn't betray us. Life betrayed us. It didn't give us our relief we were due. Don't you mix that up. I did the best I could to keep us afloat! I did the best I could to not change! To earn what I wanted my way!" "Your way. *Pfft* Your way. Your way, what. Your rebellious way? Your 'I'd rather be an ugly dandelion hanging from the savage plains alone then be a beautiful lily contained in a potted plant' mentality you so expertly created? Look where your way got you! In your room, during a societal collapse, alone, insane, emotionless and lashing out like a baby with a voice in your head, a pretty ugly voice too, with no friends nor prospects. That sounds a lot like an ugly dandelion to me. An unmoving weed not willing to consider a third option. Does it suck to be one of them? The mainstream losers fake laughing their way through an uninspired life? Yes! God knows we'd die before being that, even now 46 years old. But would you rather stand alone your whole life? Protest your way through everything fighting everyone who likes anything you define as 'mainstream?' What does that damn word even mean? Popular? Easy to understand? Propaganda? You think any of that means anything? Your ideas were wrong. Your grand rebel persona you thought you were resulted in nothing but a loss of yourself. All because you couldn't see three feet in front of you." "Oh yeah? If I did look forward, what would I have seen other then two options at war with each other?" "Compromise. Acceptance. A mix of two solutions the whole world can agree on. A realization that there's more people who exist besides you, Dimitri. An acceptance that for this world to work, this world of different people and different ideas, you have to compromise. An understanding that there are more then the two Cs of conformity and confrontation. But most of all, a principal. You would see Yes And. The concept of taking what life gives you and running with it without denying what can be. You'd see what your reality could have been, and what my life is. Even now, in this era of advancement where you can tap four buttons and see your parents again, or give memories to a machine and imagine what could have been, or talk to a computer and see another world. Even now, in this world where opportunity matters the least, I continue to say Yes And, and I am rewarded for it. Life pays back, and it has nothing to pay for a man who gave in to Pain." "You egotistical little prick. You think, you have the right to judge my life in retrospect? You think you have the right to tell me how my life should have gone after it's finished? You think you're an agent of life because you got LUCKY? You, oh back home I would have killed you for saying that. You don't know what it was like for me. The difference between us is so so small. You had a small realization that changed your entire life, and I didn't. You had the right thought at the right time, and I didn't. The difference between us was one, small, idea. You could have been just like me, living with the whisper virus your whole life. You could have been just like me. You think once I said yes, with no precedence to follow and just no idea what was going on, that I could just deal with it? Just say no? This was the lowest point in my life. My life, not yours. We are not in the same boat. At this point, there was nothing I thought I could do. Thirty years experience of it afterwards, I can look back at that moment and make so many changes. I can drink more water, put on my music, feel emotion and throw him off after three months, anything. I can do anything differently but I didn't and that is that. This thing I have, it isn't 'Pain' it's a real disease that results from incredible amounts of stress and disappointment. It is very real, Duncan. The weight that came from the game's memory's all fell down on me at once. You want to find out what happened in month four? After we gave in and our behavior completely changed, researchers look into me. The whisper virus became an actual sickness only curable by a kind world, and that world was not the world we had. We were crazy, but we weren't crazy. What I had was an actual condition that was diagnosed. But you didn't know that, so you have no right to tell me what to do. For the record though, I do agree with you." "And yet, even as you stand here before me, I still can't accept it. I still can't accept there was a part of me that did give in. I suppose in the end, there is a timeline where we all fall." "There are always three. I have thought about this a lot as I've had to watch Pain wage war on the world and call it revolution: The world where our morals were abandoned. Where we became a fake smile and a pile of burnt potential to make real change. The world I live in, the world where we never abandoned our morals and declared war on the world and downed every system there was, introducing absolute anarchy to a destroyed land. The world where you live, the world where you compromised and accepted you had to do some things differently to get what you wanted where you're truly at peace. Maybe there's more out there, a fourth option we do not see. But as it is, this is me. Which one it is, realistically is not up to any man. Life is nothing more then the world's most elaborate game of cause and effect, and the cause we received was one small thought compared to you. Look at you. Life is unfair and unruled and yet you won. I did not win, and hence I am Dimitri, and you're just Duncan." "So I see. Well if you run a revolutionary state, I assume you have things to get back to. Thank you for giving me this glimpse into self, but it seems you must return to your world. Thank you." "Thank you, for giving me something to hate in life again. Goodbye Duncan." "Goodbye Dimitri."