Words have power. Everyone seems to be in agreement there. It is, however, in the connotation of this sentiment where men can be led astray. The runic gospels assert that the words themselves hold the power, and that this power remains, despite any lack of meaning or application to reality. This is false. I know this because I myself have fiddled with runes, and for my considerable trouble, I received no power, save the knowledge gained from failure. No, without a reader to supply meaning, words are nothing but lines on paper or etchings in stone. Words are power in potential, incapable of anything if not through the conduit of human understanding. Once that understanding is attained, words can build or demolish civilizations.
After a brief introduction explaining the check-in process, the movie found its groove as a series of testimonials given by people who had just completed their civic duty. It was clear the filmmakers had told these rubes what to say, and the rubes said it, verbatim, without the slightest sincerity. “I think it’s great that we get to participate in the justice system,” one woman said. “This really is the most important thing, short of voting, that you can do for your community.” This other guy nodded and said, “I know people joke about it, but I took it very seriously. I mean, Heaven forbid I might be on the other side of it some day, and I’d like to think that the folks hearing my case wouldn’t just shrug it off.” A younger Mexican chick said she actually felt honored to have been selected. Honored. At this, Evan stopped giving the video his full attention.
Which is why he couldn’t be exactly sure he had heard correctly when the old man, who until now had been sitting quietly on the left side of the frame, looked directly into the camera and said, “If you have any survival instincts at all, you’ll get up from your chair right now, and run. Run as fast as you can, anywhere you can. Don’t look back, don’t listen when they yell. Just get out. Save yourself.” Evan heard the words, but they didn’t quite register. The old dude hadn’t screamed, or cried out, or anything. The only betrayal of his emotions came in the form of the words themselves, which, judging from the room, nobody else had totally heard, either.
From here, the news anchors started talking about the selection process. The audio for this part was out of sync, with the voices sounding a few milliseconds after the mouths moved. Evan became transfixed, not with the the content of the video, but with this brief interlude between sight and sound. He felt himself being pulled into the time of the video, not left and right, as we know it, but inward, along the z-axis, between the now and then. This sensation, however, was cut unfairly short by the screeching microphone feedback coming from the podium in front of all the prospective jurors.
Like every accomplished liar, Vector was actually nothing more than an authority on truth. He simply understood the bizarre ways in which reality manifested itself. In San Castelano, they had a phrase: truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. Vector found this to be grossly inaccurate. Truth, he knew, was always stranger than fiction, one hundred percent of the time, since it required neither narrative symmetry nor moral imperative. The truth owed nothing to Homer or Joseph Campbell. It was just a bunch of stuff that happened. A good rule to live by: if something makes sense, you don’t know the half of it.
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