Debase the Currency - Whether Coin or Clout - Show Who Rules Them - And Set Yourself Free - Go East Old Man - To Learn Something New - Make Peace With Darkness - And Shine Your Light - Witness Inaction In Action - Before the Great Game - Of Two Competing Conceits - Leaving a Strange Legacy
8
365 B.C.
Anti was dying. He was a full eighty years old. He never pursued political office, so he didn't have access to the quantities of virgin blood required to sustain a hobo beyond that. He'd lived rough, but none could say he hadn't lived.
The priests tried to initiate him into their death cult before he died. Doing so would ensure he enjoyed endless benefits in the Underworld. Instead, he asked them why they didn't just die now to enjoy it themselves. They didn’t know. They still don't.
But reason didn’t make dying any less painful. Particularly for Anti, who as mentioned, was doing the majority of the dying this night. His standard humor was a bit off. Moist and bloody. Doctors like dry humor when Uranus is in descent.
He’d been put up in a home owned by a wealthy man. He bloodied a fine bed. His benefactor had been a fan of his for years, but never did or would embrace poverty the way Anti and Dio did. He lived frugally, in a way, offering his friend a place to die.
Stubborn darkness draped rafters overhead, defying the anemic light of a lamp atop the cedar end-table by the bed. Its flame danced, grasping ever upward. The lamp was a farewell gift for the great cynic, now dying.
Anti's patron also invited the most famous doctor in the city. He came highly recommended among the city's wealthiest citizens, but Anti didn't care. He didn't need his anus oxygenated to meet Charon. Just hard, legitimate coin.
Dio was no help with either, of course. Nor was the physician of any use to anyone but himself.
Dr. Ozymandias fluttered about the crowded room, tutting and tittering, socializing and pontificating among the men. “A woman’s uterus needs to produce children,” he declared. “If not, it will rage inside her, smash into her other bits, and suffocate her.”
The dozen attending intelligentsia of the city all nodded along. It made sense to circus seals consuming a steady diet of the good doctor's mercury supplements and lead infused mineral wine. Available for sale at all accredited pharmacies.
The doctor continued, “For this reason, it is imperative a man impregnates as many women as possible. Sperm is medicine!” More nods from the seals, though several twisted their faces up at the thought of a vagina. Dio rolled his eyes.
The finest thought-critters had gathered to see one of their own die a fine death in a fine bed. Minus one and plus one. Plato was absent but had sent one of his pupils instead. A young and silent man, his face fuzzed with pube-adjacent down.
The custom among philosophers on their death bed is to pretend they are not. Anti had been there when Socrates drank the hemlock. His cool reserve and peaceful approach to death had stayed with Anti all these years.
“Hera's frigid, useless tits!” Anti wailed and cried. Not all lessons stick. “Who will free me from my pain?! Wowzah, this sucks so bad!”
“This,” Dio said, producing a knife from his cloak and waving it about. “If you ask it.”
The assembled full-time thinkers all gasped simultaneously, due to professionally thinking the same professional thoughts at all times. The boy merely raised an eyebrow, whether at the unified shock among the seals or the dagger was unclear.
“Free me from my pain! Not my life! Gods damn,” Anti cried out as he turned to the physician. “You got anything for pain, doctor?”
“Well,” Dr. Ozymandias said. “Hemlock works miracles. Or I could drill a hole in your skull. That might work.”
“What did I just say?” Anti demanded with the impatience of a man whose time is spent.
“You called me a doctor,” Dr. Ozymandias purred. “I appreciate that. I worked hard to get that accreditation. They don't just hand them out to anyone who donates seven-and-a-quarter talents of silver, you know.”
“Gods,” Anti moaned. “I called you a doctor because titles mean nothing to me. You're a flatterer and a crow. You'll eat someone alive and don't stop just because they're dead,” Anti sighed. “That joke plays way better in Doric. Puns don't translate.”
The old dog paused to cough up more blood. Or choked on a clumsy, diegetic narrative device. Who could say? “This is just the pits. A man should die happy, not surrounded by idiots.”
“Well, at least I believe science is real. Wait, are you dying?!” Ozymandias asked in alarm. “Death is contagious! Everyone out!”
A general panic took hold as terrified circus seals stampeded from the room, leaving only Plato’s young pupil behind looking uncertain. Dio laughed at their backs before raising an eyebrow at the boy who stood against the grain.
“Get out,” Anti croaked at the kid. “It’s fine. Death itself isn't contagious, but cowardice definitely is. More than courage. Remember that whatever your name is.”
“Arithtotle,” the brave nerd lisped. “And thank you, Antithtenethe, for having me here. You are a great man, no matter my mathter'th mind. Your thenthible object work ith great and detherveth praithe.”
“Why praise?” Anti replied. “Now I wonder what's wrong with it.”
“Nothing. But I thank you for the idea. I hope your journey ith a good and happy one.”
“Sure, whatever. You’re welcome,” Anti weakly waved a hand spotted with blood. “Get out and take your tongue with you.”
After the boy left, closing the door behind him, Dio said, “He seems nice for an Academy kid.”
“He knows Plato is full of it, too. Sharp. He pays attention to everything.” Anti choked on either italics or blood again. “Oh. Soon,” he said, pulling a dripping hand away from his mouth. Blood it was.
“Master?”
“I’m about out of here, Dio. Despite your genuinely stupid nattering, I enjoyed you doing my chores. You ask annoying questions. You forced me to defend myself and I was stronger for it.”
“Would you say you learned more from me than I learned from you?” Dio asked hopefully with wide, innocent eyes.
“Gods no. That's the kind of thing an idiot teacher trying to get fired says. But I suppose if I can where I’m going, I’ll miss you.”
Dio blinked suddenly blurred vision away. He hadn’t expected that. He expected to get slapped, or at least watching the old dog try. Instead, the end raced ahead without his permission. “I’ll miss you too, master.”
“Don’t call me that,” Anti demanded. “Don’t call anyone that. Ever. Unless you're paying and you're a pervert or something. Then it’s cool. Or a bedroom. A bedroom can't hurt anyone without their permission.”
“You call Socrates that.”
“He deserves it. No one else does. Not me, not you, certainly no king. You piss on anyone who demands it,” Anti chuckled, a trickle of blood stoutening at the corner of his mouth. “Now listen. I got last words. Don't make me waste them explaining myself.”
“Yes, Anti.”
“We should live and die in accordance with Nature. We are all slaves to our senses alone. Whatever real knowledge we have comes through them. Not from great men and their myths. Beware storytellers. They lie and feel no guilt over it.”
“A lot of room for interpretation there,” Dio mused. “Sounds like you’re condemning everyone, including our dear narrator.”
“Good. Everyone lies. Now shut up.”
“Yes, Anti.”
“Dr. Ozymandias is an idiot. Never be afraid to consort with the unclean, or the sick, or whatever terms cowards use to derogate people they don't understand. Many of them are beautiful, brave people. Language deceives. Everyone lies.”
“Yes, Anti.”
“If you must have enemies, pray their children live in luxury. They will destroy themselves. Just look at social media. So much free time, those people, and they're miserable. They lie, too. A lot.”
“Yes, Anti.”
“A man's and a woman's virtue is the same. A slave's and a king's virtue is the same. A thinking man is no better than another. Birth means nothing. Status means nothing. Judge action only. Everyone lies. Can you dig it?”
“Yes, Anti.”
“Now slap yourself.”
Without hesitation, Dio slapped himself with the force of Heracles. His ears rung and his eyes popped, but his teacher sighed happily and closed his eyes. “You're a good boy,” he whispered. “The best boy.”
Dio knelt beside the bed, rested his red cheek in his best friend’s open palm, and felt him die.
To feel someone die is not the same as seeing it. Tiny imperceivable motions only become sensible once they stop. Movement ceases entirely, utterly, never to return. Not like they had been. This is death. Immovable, immutable. Ancient.
Dio wept. His body convulsed and cracked. His ribs felt they could break. He didn't care. No physical pain could compare to an idea he held. The last honest man had died, and his like would never be witnessed again.
Worse, he understood it in that moment. The Idea of Pain, of irretrievable loss. He understood, in this moment and in this place, this one time, Plato was right. He wailed the harder as he forced himself to admit it.
Tears pregnant with pain tumbled to the floor, catching the stubborn light of the lamp now burned low. Light danced inside the tears as they fell and splashed. Fractal, luminous lives lived and snuffed out in an instant. In a lifetime.
He didn’t know how long he knelt there beside the bed. Hours, maybe. Minutes? Who could say? He’d emptied himself and little remained. He stood slowly and sniffed.
A new resolve stole upon his mind in the low light of a room owned by death. He picked up the lamp. The world would never see another Antisthenes of Athens, but Diogenes of Everywhere would find an honest man again.
There had to be one more out there. There had to be. Without callous honesty and hard truth in the world, there were only noble lies, told by ignoble liars, for selfish ends. That simply would not do. Counterfeit currency. Delusional economy. Unearned clout.
Dio left the room and shut the door quietly behind, taking the light with him out of that fine house and into the night. He wandered in the direction of the Stoa of Zeus, praying to Heracles someone tried to mug him.
Overhead, a shooting star passed across Canis Major, and if Dio had seen it he would have sworn the old dog winked.
Debase the Currency - Whether Coin or Clout - Show Who Rules Them - And Set Yourself Free - Go East Old Man - To Learn Something New - Make Peace With Darkness - And Shine Your Light - Witness Inaction In Action - Before the Great Game - Of Two Competing Conceits - Leaving a Strange Legacy