The Movement

I was born in the ashes of the last war, when the fighting was over,
but peace was yet to come. In the camp where my mother was, I was the
first child born in four years. My mother often told me how, even when
her world was in such ruin and despair, my appearance was considered a
good sign; that things were going to get better. She had lost my father
to the murder squads six months previously, and I symbolised
hope.

That's how the Movement came to be. My mother listened to them. So did
most others. They had plenty of vision and hope, even enough for those
with none. And that was a lot. In those months following the cessation
of hostilities, most people took to reflecting on what had happened.
They sought explanations, and the Movement offered one. They said the
war cleansed the planet. They said we'd survived for a reason. They
said it was all part of a process to bring us closer to God. And they
offered my mother everything she wanted: a better future for me.

I have not seen my mother since I was six years old. I don't remember
much before I went to the Order, but I'll never forget my mother
leaving me there. Someday I may see her again, though I don't think I'd
have anything to say.

I would like to tell her that she made the right decision. I would like
to tell her about my life: those wondrous early days of adventure and
learning, my spiritual awakening, and the unadulterated happiness. My
world consisted entirely of those 600 boys and thirty minders. That was
a small world, but it was a world of which we were all kings. Within
the walls of the Order, we were shaped to build tomorrow in the
Movement's image. We boys became men.

But I was still a child when Eclair came to the Order. I still believed
in the inherent goodness of mankind. I still believed in the Movement's
vision of the future. I still want to believe that now.

* * *

The night on which he appeared was particularly unpleasant. Autumn was
almost upon us, and the last of the summer thunderstorms was bearing
down on the Order. He snuck into our dormitory, shaking all over and
hobbling on a broken ankle. He looked at us with crazed eyes, clinging
on to my arm when it was offered.

"Get some towels, Samuel."

"Help me get these wet things off him."

Together we stripped and dried him, then slipped on a spare night-gown.
All the while he participated passively. It was if he wasn't all
there.

We all stayed awake and watched him that night. In the morning he did
not wake, and Samuel, the youngest in our dormitory feared him dead.
But he slept all that day, and well into the next morning as well, his
sleep becoming ever more restless. He looked plagued by nightmares, and
I wondered what could possibly have been chasing him.

Christopher and I were sitting with him when he finally awoke.
Christopher was reading quietly from a book on the independent
consciousness of the human soul, whilst I sat beside the bed, imagining
all sorts of fantastic things about our visitor.

"Water." That was the first thing he said. Christopher closed his book
immediately and fetched a glass. We had been dripping water into his
mouth, but not enough. He almost choked as he gulped the water down,
flooding his dry, contracted throat. He dribbled some down his chin
when the glass was removed, so I helpfully mopped it with a flannel. He
looked at me. It was a strange look.

"Who are you?" he said to us both.

"You're at one of the Orders," Christopher told him. "Been here a few
days now. Do you remember how you got here?"

He frowned, squinted and opened his mouth as if to tell us. But then he
said, "No." He raised himself up on his elbows, rubbing his eyes with
his fists, and blinking them clear of sleep. He regarded us once more,
and I felt uncomfortable under his gaze. "I should go," he finally
said, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He tried to stand on
his bad ankle, winced, and fell back heavily.

"Soon," Christopher said, reassuringly. "Soon, but you need to rest for
a few more days yet. Don't worry. We'll look after you. That's what we
do."

Eclair nodded, slipping back beneath the sheets. "My name's Eclair," he
said.

Shortly after, the others arrived and surrounded the bed. I shared
their excitement and fascination, for we rarely saw any from beyond the
walls, but I was also afraid. Something about him scared me, and I
would have let the minders know about him there and then, had the
others not dissuaded me.

* * *

Something dropped inside of me a day later when I spotted three new
faces amongst the crowd just before supper. They were too old to be new
members, and too remote to be new minders, who always ate with us.
These three left with the abbot, and I thought even then that it was
more than a coincidence that they should appear so soon after Eclair. I
finished my meal quickly and hurried back to our dormitory to report
what I had seen. Christopher and Samuel had been watching him whilst
the rest of us fed. I returned to find Samuel trying to explain as
simply as possible our guiding principles.

"We're all reincarnated but we were all part of God once but we got
separated and spread out. And we'll all go on being reincarnated until
we're all pure and then we'll all be with God again."

Eclair's response was a curt laugh. Explained like that, I could easily
have shared his sentiment; there was so much more to it than that. I
felt my face flush red, and almost felt embarrassed about the very core
of my beliefs. Neither Christopher nor Samuel seemed to
understand.

* * *

It was about an hour after that, as dusk bore on, that the abbot
summoned everybody to the hall. He rarely did this, so we all knew it
must be something important. Not one of us was going to fail to attend,
so this meant leaving Eclair on his own. This did not seem to bother
anyone else, so I did not mention it.

"Today," the abbot began, once we were all seated, "I had some
visitors. These were very important visitors. You may have seen them.
They came to warn me about a man. A very dangerous man. They came to
warn me about this dangerous man, because he disappeared in this
area."

There were some concerned mutterings that spread about the hall, and
the abbot waited until they'd reached their peak and died down again
before continuing. He went on to tell us more about this man, though
I'd already heard enough. I sat there nervously, listening but not
hearing. I knew it was Eclair. I just wondered what he'd done, because
the abbot was not saying, and I wondered what he'd do. I wanted rid of
him, and told Christopher and Timothy as such as we returned to the
dormitory.

However, when we got there, we found Eclair to be gone. My initial
reaction was a feeling of relief, but I also had that niggling fear we
hadn't seen the last of him. Christopher mounted a search of the entire
Order. He and I would split the other dormitories between us, Timothy
would check the libraries, whilst the other boys would go floor by
floor. As it was raining, Samuel had been elected to go outside and
search the grounds.

* * *

It was Samuel who found him.

When I went looking for Samuel later, I found the two of them sitting
in a secluded little spot, protected from the rain by the canopy of a
nearby tree. Eclair held on to a stick, whilst Samuel crouched over the
flowerbed. He was telling Eclair about the spiritual significance of
plants with great enthusiasm.

"That's where we all come from. We were all plants once but we got
reincarnated into people and then more people. Plants are where it all
starts. When they die they become people."

Eclair smiled, looking to me as I approached. He looked bemused, and
not in the least bit threatening. If he attacked, I intended to take
advantage of that ankle. I stopped, standing over them, and Samuel
stood up. "Help a man up?" Eclair said, reaching up with his hand.
After little hesitation, I pulled him to his feet. I put as much
strength into it as possible, if only to prove that I would be a
capable opponent, despite appearances. I think he was impressed.

"I want to know who you are, and what you did," I said,
authoritatively.

He looked surprised. He hesitated, then nodded, "Okay. Okay, I'll tell
you. You won't like it, but I'll tell you if you want."

I told Samuel to go inside. He obeyed.

"Do you know anything about the regression process?"

I nodded, "It's what they do to find out who we were in previous
lives."

"Yeah," he said, shifting his crutch to a more comfortable position.
"They're forcing them on people where I come from now." He stopped
there. He looked pained, and I honestly don't think it was anything to
do with his ankle. "I guess they didn't like the look of me. When I
went through it, they came back and told me I was personally
responsible for the deaths of 72 people. Me... who didn't even know
what a murder squad was until they told me I led one." He shook his
head.

That was it. He shrugged. Either he didn't care, or he didn't believe.
The first thing that occurred to me was that I could well be standing
completely alone with the killer of my father, and that he was utterly
defenceless.

"So now I'm a Deviant. Capital D. A risk. A threat. Spiritually impure.
Whatever you want to call it. You know what they do with us Deviants,
don't you?"

I shook my head.

Eclair chuckled, "No. Of course not." He did not give me a straight
answer. Instead he crouched down slowly, running his free hand through
the flowers. They were nasturtiums. He found a purple one and plucked
it. He sniffed it, and then he ate it. Before he swallowed, he said,
"Guess it can be reincarnated now, huh? Anyway, gonna help a man
inside?"

* * *

I did help him back to the dormitory. Against my better judgement, I
also helped him into bed, and didn't tell the others what I had been
told. In all honesty, I was confused. I longed to ask Eclair what he'd
meant. I knew what he seemed to be suggesting, but I didn't believe the
Movement did what he was implying they did. I knew what the Movement
was about, and it was compassion and love and the future. And he'd
admitted himself he didn't really know anything about the
Movement.

He didn't share this story with anyone else. Over the next few weeks,
as we witnessed several return visits from those three strange men, the
others visited him regularly. The novelty did not wear off. He told
them exciting stories about his escapades beyond the walls: raiding
hoarders for good, swindling merchants out of goods to trade, and
escaping military policing units. There was no mention of the Movement.
I almost convinced myself that he had lied.

Eventually he announced his intent to leave. It was a dry evening, and
Timothy managed to pilfer some food for him to take with him. He had
eaten the bread by the time Christopher had finished applying a new
bandage. And then he was ready.

"Come with me to the wall," he invited, so we went with him. They were
all sad to see him ago, and helped lift him up onto the wall. He
stopped there and looked back. "Thanks," he said. "You've really done a
lot for me, you know."

I reckon he got to the road before he was caught. We didn't even get as
far as the house.

* * *

I awoke the next morning on a bunk in a cell. This was the first time
I'd been out of the Order's grounds in nearly fifteen years, and I was
scared. I'd stopped being excited by the new when Eclair had arrived at
the Order. I longed for familiarity. Instead I had a numb arm, the
sensation of which preoccupied my thoughts. I examined it, finding
several needle puncture marks. My head was sore, as well. It wasn't
aching or thumping; it just felt tender.

I had been awake an hour when my counsel arrived. He handed me a
document and waited whilst I read it. It was a profile of someone
called Rolph Baumeyer, a soldier that had lived a century ago. He had
been executed in the aftermath of the previous war, and it listed his
crimes. I read the first two, and wanted to read no further, so handed
it back.

"You have been served with a Deviancy status. Do you understand what
that means?" said my counsel, sharply.

I shook my head. I had a good idea, from what Eclair had said, but I
still hoped he'd been wrong, and that my counsel was now to prove it
so.

"Well," he said. "In one of your previous lives, you were a member of a
group known as the Waffen SS. In the second war, you terrorised
innocent people and put them to death. Much like the murder squads, but
on a much larger scale. Do you remember any of this?"

I shook my head. That was the truth. This was all new to me. I knew
nothing of the previous war. I only knew it existed because they said
the last one was the third one. I wasn't capable of murder, but if the
Movement was right, there was a murderer within me. My shaking hands
had ended someone's life. It was just too difficult to accept. I
started to cry silently.

"Typically, you would be purged, but I have here a clemency invitation.
Accept its conditions and I can work something out for you."

"Yes," I said, sniffing loudly. "Anything."

* * *

I accepted their invitation, even once the details had been read to me,
because I still believed in the Movement. Though I watched Christopher
and Timothy and Samuel and all the others being led the other way, I
still wanted to believe.

I'm down south now. In a couple of days I will try and hide out in one
of the Movement's camps. And a few days later, my colleagues will come
after me. After that, I will be going to an Order in the west-country,
but beyond that I do not know.

I am part of the Movement now; more so than ever before. And the funny
thing is, I still want to believe.