TM 198 - Super Power
Oct. 1st, 2007 02:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
arrow_of_apollo198 - If you could have any mutant/super power, which one would it be, and what would you do with it? (If you already have a mutant or super power, what one would you trade it in for?)
Have you ever spoken to an Oracle?
I'm not talking about those women at street fairs who sit in silk tents full of perfume and incense and offer to read your future for a handful of cubits or reveal your true love for a handful more. I mean a real Oracle.
It's an always strange, often disturbing experience, and not one I care to have more often than I absolutely have to.
Oracles, you see, are supposed to be gifted with visions. Those visions are, if you believe the teachings, sent by the Gods to their voices here among mortals, and are intended to guide us in the right direction. Not, of course, that anyone of us here really know what that direction is supposed to be, eventually.
I remember the first time I spoke to an Oracle alone. It was in War College, and a few of my classmates and myself left the base and went into the city. Apparently, young officers had been coming to this Oracle for decades, beseeching the old woman to tell them where they would be posted and just how glorious their careers would turn out to be.
To be perfectly honest, when they were first convincing me to go, I thought we would end up at a socialator.
But she was an honest-to-Gods Oracle, all right. One by one, we left the small, timeworn couch in the waiting room and stepped into the Oracle's den. There was perfume and incense, sure, but there was a kind of tension in the air like when you stand too close to a power transformer.
The Oracle was tiny-- an old, wrinkled woman whose voice barely registered above a whisper. I sat down opposite her, waiting as a gnarled hand raised a cup of tea to her lips-- what I now know was chamalla extract-- followed by a few candies from a dish. I opened my mouth to speak, but when the old Oracle breathed the word "Apollo", the callsign that had been handed to me just that morning, I was too stunned to do anything but listen.
An Oracle's pronouncements are always cryptic, and are often not actually about what you think they might be. I might have asked a question about my career and gotten an answer about my family. So, confused and unsure as to what I ought to be doing with myself, I just listened.
Today, it's hard to remember everything the old woman said. There might have been allusions to my falling out and reconciling with Dad, or references to the Cylon Holocaust. She might have seen my setting foot on Kobol, or my moment of dying out in space. The Oracle could have been lying through what was left of her teeth, or she might have been dead to rights about it all.
It's not knowledge that anyone is really meant to have, I think. And I know that if most of us could predict the future, we'd use it to prevent the things we don't want to happen and guarantee the ones we know we want to.
I've seen what happens to people who are supposed to be able to see into the future. The Oracles must need to be-- or become-- more than a little mad. And if that's the price, I'm not prepared to pay.
(557)
Have you ever spoken to an Oracle?
I'm not talking about those women at street fairs who sit in silk tents full of perfume and incense and offer to read your future for a handful of cubits or reveal your true love for a handful more. I mean a real Oracle.
It's an always strange, often disturbing experience, and not one I care to have more often than I absolutely have to.
Oracles, you see, are supposed to be gifted with visions. Those visions are, if you believe the teachings, sent by the Gods to their voices here among mortals, and are intended to guide us in the right direction. Not, of course, that anyone of us here really know what that direction is supposed to be, eventually.
I remember the first time I spoke to an Oracle alone. It was in War College, and a few of my classmates and myself left the base and went into the city. Apparently, young officers had been coming to this Oracle for decades, beseeching the old woman to tell them where they would be posted and just how glorious their careers would turn out to be.
To be perfectly honest, when they were first convincing me to go, I thought we would end up at a socialator.
But she was an honest-to-Gods Oracle, all right. One by one, we left the small, timeworn couch in the waiting room and stepped into the Oracle's den. There was perfume and incense, sure, but there was a kind of tension in the air like when you stand too close to a power transformer.
The Oracle was tiny-- an old, wrinkled woman whose voice barely registered above a whisper. I sat down opposite her, waiting as a gnarled hand raised a cup of tea to her lips-- what I now know was chamalla extract-- followed by a few candies from a dish. I opened my mouth to speak, but when the old Oracle breathed the word "Apollo", the callsign that had been handed to me just that morning, I was too stunned to do anything but listen.
An Oracle's pronouncements are always cryptic, and are often not actually about what you think they might be. I might have asked a question about my career and gotten an answer about my family. So, confused and unsure as to what I ought to be doing with myself, I just listened.
Today, it's hard to remember everything the old woman said. There might have been allusions to my falling out and reconciling with Dad, or references to the Cylon Holocaust. She might have seen my setting foot on Kobol, or my moment of dying out in space. The Oracle could have been lying through what was left of her teeth, or she might have been dead to rights about it all.
It's not knowledge that anyone is really meant to have, I think. And I know that if most of us could predict the future, we'd use it to prevent the things we don't want to happen and guarantee the ones we know we want to.
I've seen what happens to people who are supposed to be able to see into the future. The Oracles must need to be-- or become-- more than a little mad. And if that's the price, I'm not prepared to pay.
(557)
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Date: 2007-10-01 10:55 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2007-10-02 08:59 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2007-10-02 10:06 pm (UTC)Yeah, I'm doing better not knowing.
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Date: 2007-10-03 03:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-10 06:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-10 08:37 pm (UTC)