When I left Earth, I was not a good person. Don’t get me wrong, I was trying to make amends for all of the pain and suffering that I inflicted on those people I loved and those who loved me. I just didn’t know exactly how to get started. After you have done so much damage to every meaningful relationship in your life, taking that first step is the most difficult part. I have said it before but I truly believe that if I had stayed there any number of bad things would have happened to me. I was locked in a cycle of self-inflicted poverty. Getting decent employment would have been impossible with my criminal record. I would have bounced between low wage jobs getting ground down more year after year. I might have fallen into despair and gone back to the instant gratification of drugs. Or perhaps I would have ended up deeply depressed, maybe even trying to take my own life. I don’t know what it says about our society, but it seems like once you have been branded unreliable or untrustworthy, no amount of effort can right your past wrongs. You are marked for life, bearing the weight of your indiscretions forever.
I am going to come right out and say it. Coming to this world was the best thing that ever happened to me. Here I got a clean slate. I was able to start again anew. Certainly, my first few months in the world were a time of great personal peril for me. I made many, many bad decisions. I couldn’t seem to find my footing, bouncing from one catastrophe to another and barely surviving. I was battered and bruised, broken and remade. Although I made many wrong decisions, I made some right ones as well. None were more right than the one I made when I saw the slave coffle marching out of Shroud Hallow. I decided right then and there that I had the power to make a difference. I followed through with my plan, not without many additional missteps along the way. I was still making it up as I went along, day by day and hour by hour, but I had a goal. My goal was to be a better man. Even though I couldn’t go back in time and make things right with the people that I had hurt, I could at least help the people right in front of me that desperately needed my help.
Going to that slave auction in Westfield was the seminal action of my life. I wagered almost the entirety of my wealth on a dream – to find more people like me and build a community where we could be safe and prosper. I certainly made many more mistakes along the way. How could I not? I was working with the information that I had and my knowledge was scant. Nothing in my life had prepared me to be a leader. I know so many other people back on Earth who would have done a better job, who would have been better at managing all of the angles. But they weren’t here and I was, and I tried to do my best with the little skills and experience that I had. When I bought those slaves at auction, when I seeded our community, I really had no idea what I was doing. We were a band of misfits. Yet somehow, we persevered and made a life for ourselves.
As I write this, I am seated in the library of what is essentially a manor house. I have wealth I never would have dreamed of having back on Earth. I have built a legacy that I hope will persist long after I am gone. I have found the love of my life. We are still together and we have had children that are skilled, smart, and well adapted to the world they find themselves in. I have no fear that they will squander the things that I spent my life working for. Long after I am dead, in the ground or when my ashes are blowing throughout The Crossroads on a warm spring breeze, I know that I have given them, and my adopted son Mero, everything they will ever need for a long and successful life. But it is not just their lives I ponder. Some of my children have children of their own, and if things go well there is no reason to believe that they will not pass down the lessons that they have learned to countless future generations.
On Earth, I was a nobody with a felony record. Here, I am someone. James Smith, former spy and prosperous business owner. And all it took for this to happen was a willingness to entrust myself to a band of thrown together strangers from countless other worlds.
My children and their children and even their children’s children will likely never have to suffer like I did. But is that not the role of a parent? Aren’t parents supposed to experience pain and privation so their children don’t have to? It was here that I learned that actions, large or small, have real consequences. Sometimes those are life or death consequences. And although, even with my degree of wealth, I don’t have the power to make everyone’s life better I do have the power to make some people’s lives better. I have tried to do that.
Our efforts to free slaves and improve the lot of the five fingered people of this world have fruited. Not a week goes by that I don’t receive a missive from someone, somewhere, thanking me for helping them earn a life worth living. I have funded so much vocational training, and so many small businesses all over this world. Our outreach efforts have reached every country in this world that does not adhere to the practice of slavery. We have provided free education to so many people like me. Education really does make a difference. Being able to read and write, to do simple mathematics, to reason, these are tools that once learned only the passage of time can take from you. I do not delude myself to believe that we have helped every single person that we could have. Life is not an all or nothing proposition. I am certain there are those who have been left out, either because we couldn’t reach them in time or because of their personal inclinations. While I lament these failures, I hope that I have done enough.
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There is still casual racism in this world against five fingered humans. We are still second class citizens almost everywhere. But that racism is starting to erode at least a little bit. The more of us who demonstrate that we are skilled and determined, the greater the likelihood that we will be viewed as people like any other. It is difficult, at least for reasonable people, to form binding relationships with others while still seeing them as subhuman. If you patronize the same bakery decade after decade, and the baker has five fingers but still turns out loaf after loaf of delicious bread, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep viewing that person as less than somehow. It is especially true after you have talked to the person several times a week and learned that they have all of the feelings and challenges that come with being a sapient being. Sharing burdens, seeing that others suffer just like you suffer, that makes things relatable. And that feeling of builds friendships and those friendships can change the world one person at a time, until the other is no longer other.
I don’t know how many generations it will take to make the change real, lasting and permanent. I only know that it will be many. Societies don’t change overnight as much as I wish they would. Something ingrained for centuries takes more than a little time and effort to winnow away all the stereotypes, misgivings and hard feelings. I don’t know how many generations it takes to effect true social change, but I am certain that it won’t happen during the lifetime of any person who is currently alive. Sometimes, though, someone must sow the seed so that later others might experience a bountiful harvest.
Have I lived a good and virtuous life? I would like to think so, but even the most unrepentant sinner would like to think the same. I have certainly done better since I reached this world, but can all of my good actions here make up for all of my stupidity back on my Earth? As much as I would like to believe the answer is yes, I remain uncertain. How do you balance things like that? Someone might know, but that someone is not me. It is true that I have spent many more years doing good rather than bad, but when I was bad I hurt so many people. If there is an afterlife when I pass on, then I guess someone better equipped will have to do the score keeping. If there isn’t one, then I assume I will never know. That’s the thing with age. When you get older and take stock of all of the facets of what makes you the person you are, it is easy for some things to get muddled in the process. If anyone ever reads this, I guess the readers can judge for me.
Not often, but every once in a while, I still think of Sara. At one time, I thought we had a love for the ages, but that time is long passed. I wonder how long she survived. The lifestyle we were living is not one that leads to long, successful lives. Is she dead? Is she imprisoned? Has she fallen so deeply into the throes of meth psychosis that there is no coming back? That’s the thing about first loves. They leave a mark on your soul. I wish that I could forget her but I know I never will.
Aleyda, on the other hand, is my center. I have built my life around her. I worry so much that she will pass before I do. If she does, I have no idea how I will handle it. My heart will be broken and my life shattered. She has been my partner in every real sense of the word. When I imagine living without her, things turn drab, cold and gray. Of course, I will still have my children but they have their own lives, their own trials and tribulations. I don’t want to burden them.
I hate to wrap things up on a down note, but as I have written this account, I have tried to be as true to the facts as I can be. That means that sometimes I don’t come out looking like some action hero from a twentieth century movie. Really, that happens most of the time.
Who knows? Maybe when I have rested up I will be inspired once more to put quill to paper and recount more of my adventures. There are still many stories to be told. And I faced them all with my own singular style. I made things up as I went along.
If you have made it to the end of this tale, then I offer you my thanks. Thank you for putting up with my ramblings, as I am imperfect just like almost every other person who has ever acted, thought, or tried to write anything.