Soldiering On by M. K. Dreysen - A Tale Of Making Do With What You've Got

Marcus Hudson wasn't entirely sure just which day it was that he gave up.

Not on life, that didn't happen for years and years and years. Not on the joy of simple things, that he never did give up.

Success, well, he'd not really given up on that. He'd just come to grips with his own version of it. Not what his hive mates had in mind, when they thought of success, kudos from That Which Gave Life, mates and offspring to gather the stars. Gestures of, not good will precisely, but perhaps momentary acts of mercy, from Those Who Know.

Here in the ass end of the universe, assigned the poor task of observation of an unruly, untempered, ignorant, barely sentient species, Marcus had resigned himself quickly to the fact that whatever success he found for himself was going to have to be categorized in ways only he could score. If nothing else, the odds that any of his birth cohort would ever even know of anything he did here were so remote as to be laughable. There being no one else to mark up anything he did, nor even to know that it happened, there just wasn't any other choice.

And in the simple terms of the mass of humanity, those poor dumb bastards he'd been tasked with keeping an eye on, most of the scurrying ridiculous fools would have said that Marcus had given up on success pretty much from the day he'd graduated high school. That's when he'd set himself to be, of all things, an accountant.

No military, no scientist or doctor, not, heavens forfend, a lawyer or an entrepreneur. But a simple accountant. Do the taxes every spring, spend the rest of the year patiently explaining to his business clients why they couldn't claim that as an expense, or that, or for Christ's sake not that!

No to being a carpenter, electrician, or even a plumber for that matter. No earning a decent wage right off the bat and rising up to master's license and starting his own business. No, Marcus had to spend four years, plus the CPA bit, on student loans and scraping book and rent money from a handful of summer jobs, before he ever got the chance to earn a penny. And then it was ten years after before he'd earned enough to pay off the loans and contemplate a house for Elena and the boys.

By which point, wait, what was the point again, Marcus?

The point was being in a place to see more than anyone would ever know. It really was amazing, Marcus had to admit to himself, what he could learn by having open access to everyone's books. Whether keeping them himself, or the audits that he was forever traveling for, Marcus was privileged to get a good hard look at the way the world went round, from its money-oiled insides. For an observer, well ok then a spy on humanity, he couldn't have chosen a much better avenue.

The views of his classmates weren't much more interesting to him than the mostly theoretical views of his birth cohort. The only difference being, his classmates weren't light years away. That, and that he made himself go to the class reunions every ten years, so he had to know the views of his classmates up close and personal. Rather than imagining them, late at night when he stared at the Darkness Above.

His wife, Elena had started wondering years ago when Marcus would give up on their sex life. Oh, she admitted they were well matched, comfortable in that way that old married couples are. Touches in the dark, mostly, hugs, casual handholds here and there, he wasn't demanding or anything. She'd just started sweating at night, her menses were spotting now more than flowing, and the whole thing struck her now as more silly, those few minutes of sweating and grunting. Even the orgasms, real as they were, were more work than she remembered from the days before the boys were born. Elena knew that her patience with the whole matter was about exhausted. Now she just hoped that Marcus was ready to let it all just kind of fade away.

But sex and the complexities of a comfortable long term pair bond weren't what Marcus was giving up on. The physical part, he knew that was looking less and less like something they'd be keeping up with, but the rest of it, well, both he and Elena were content. No reason to give up on something like that.

No, what Marcus was giving up on was something he'd trained himself to not think about. Not even dream about, if he could help it. No long imaginings, in the time drifting off to sleep, no pictures in his head, no whispers into the Dark.

Marcus was giving up on the Voice. The Whisper. That which could command him, draw him in. Push him to greatness, or to debase himself in front of all that might be or ever was. Demand loyalty, information, that he murder children or infiltrate the highest echelons of the human government.

The Voice of what? The Voice of the Hive.

Not Those Who Know. They were From Beyond, outside of kenning. Past, perhaps, his capacity to understand.

The Hive was the closest that Marcus would ever come to knowing Those Who Know. It grew him, his hivemates, perpetuated them, scattered them all, these poor spores, to the stars, and gave them their one true purpose. Spawn, conquer, create.

Observe. That's what the Voice had Whispered, night after patient night, across galaxies and nebula, through dust and vacuum; through the patient years of learning to be human, until that singular moment, the night when he'd listened, well and truly, to the Whisper and comprehended what it had to say. What it demanded of him. Observe. Learn. And be ready to give that knowledge when required.

The Voice, his most fundamental companion; his first conscious mentor. That night, when he'd recognized that the Voice was a Thing of Power, one which could command him, had also been the night of his senior prom. Marcus had his epiphany. His date, unfortunately, hadn't survived the experience. From Marcus's point of view, she had perhaps been necessary. He'd needed something, some small energy source outside of himself, to power the transition to full consciousness.

The Voice, on the other hand, had chided him for going beyond What Was Required. Marcus had almost, but not quite, given up right then and there, shamed by the only sin. Presumption. But the Voice had allowed him some measure of forgiveness. Enough so that he'd spent every night since, staring up in the Beyond, doing the only thing he'd been requested to do. Listening. And then going out into the light of day and observing, as he'd been instructed to do.

No more, and no less.

Every day, since that point, every hour, he'd had something to remind himself of. Marcus Hudson had to remind himself that he'd screwed up, monumentally. There was pain down that route. Tortures unimaginable, at least to those with whom he was stuck sharing a planet. His imagination, his capacity, was more than capable of encompassing the possibles.

Nightmares weren't images of falling, not for such as him. Nightmares were those nights when the Whisper didn't come. When It left him, all on his own, to think about what he'd done wrong. And then to remember that he was here, so far away from the embrace of hive and Totality, and here he would be forever. There would be no Call to Return, if he didn't follow his Command.

And so he did. Right up to the moment when someone new, a security guard he'd never seen before, a ponytail and glasses were about all he recognized of her. When she sat down next to him on the bench where he habitually took his peanut butter sandwich and banana, he didn't really notice. People were always sharing the bench with him, the park in front of their office building was right in the middle of the city. Coffee shop traffic in the morning, lunch crowd at the cafe at the front of the park here at noon, and a good number just like Marcus, studious types with their well-counted calories and well-matched proteins and vegetables balanced.

Marcus wasn't yet so far gone that he'd had to give up the bread. But he'd at least switched over to whole wheat. That wasn't that big a deal, he kind of liked it better, just that extra bit of flavor and texture.

She sat down next to him, he'd passed her a couple times; he knew she'd have to start asking names, but they hadn't turned her loose on her own yet. Her partner at the desk knew most of the faces, so he'd taken the lead.

"I know your face. It's been given to me to Do." She said it matter of factly, the Summons he'd come to never expect.

"I am directed to observe." Didn't matter what she had to say about herself; if she was who she claimed to be, she would know that there were no commands to be passed between Those Who Serve. The Call was the only Source. It had ever been so, from birth to this moment. And Marcus wasn't in a position to test the waters, not after his mistake.

She smirked at him. Openly, perhaps she was so brave as to pretend to status. No hive member could claim such. They were servants, no other path was open to them. "I would never dare to give you orders, observer. Merely something more to observe. And, perhaps, to warn you to pay attention to the Call. I suspect unusual circumstances will require us to use atypical measures."

Unusual circumstances? Marcus made an effort now, to gauge the physical age of the young woman sharing his bench, and then to guess at the age of the spore buried in her mind. How much interaction, how many times around the Wheel, how much experience had she had with the mass of humanity? Just one of their short lives? Perhaps two?

This was Marcus's first cycle to observe anyone, much less humanity, this planet, and he'd learned even in just these forty years that these people were always involved in unusual circumstances. Self-murder, yes, on an epic scale. Shitting the bed greed, indifference bordering on blindness, these were how humanity pissed on the trail and warned their own what the boundaries were, decade after decade. Anyone who pretended to believe these were unusual times had never bothered to look around.

The Hive as a whole would be aware of this, surely. So perhaps she pretended to individuality. Perhaps Those Who Do could be forgiven, not for visions of status, so much as for pretensions to individual success.

She would not have been warned away from events such as his prom night. Those would have been, probably, considered as training. Necessary tests, like gauging the sharpness of a knife against the skin of a tomato. The only way the tools could be considered useful, known to be useful, testing.

Marcus had known of three others who claimed membership in The Hive. Not a one of those others had he been in any danger of running into five minutes after they met. The first he'd met on a plane on the way to his first big audit. The second, when he and Elena had taken their children to Orlando. The third had been a passing stranger on the subway, someone on a tourist trip to see the Liberty Bell.

Assuming she was for real, he would have to pass her, wave at her, see that smirk every morning for the next unknowable period of his life. And every night, he'd have to listen to the Voice, wondering if she was correct. If she was better at observing than he was, and he'd be called into Service in a new way. Would he have to learn to Do? Would he turn his observations to the next possible step?

Was it time to subjugate humanity?

Marcus didn't know it. That was the moment. It is not given to all, to know when the little moments arrive, the ones that change the path forward. Sometimes, they're easy to see. Sometimes, they pass as just another point in time.

It wasn't time for that, subjugation and conquering, not from Marcus's point of view. There was the easy thing, ignoring her. She was not The Voice whispering in his ears at night, in the quiet times. He might have gone delusional enough to be seeing faces and hearing voices, he could admit it was a possibility.

There was just precious little evidence that he had to pay attention to her. There was no fresh epiphany waiting that night, after the kids and cats and wife were safely asleep and he had nothing to do but wait and listen. There were no instructions, no bolt from the blue or Command to change anything.

It was a whole lot of nothing.

So he waved at her when he walked into the building, and he nodded at the things she told him when she sat down next to him on his lunch bench. It was a pleasant way to pass the time, listening to her.

"They know so little, these humans." Or, "They've just barely begun to play with the forces of the universe, and yet they believe they have discovered all there is to know of them."

Marcus had to admit, he'd had similar thoughts. Listening to her discover these things was kind of like listening to his kids. All the world in front of them, her, and they had it all figured out.

And just like them, she had that current of contempt for those who'd traveled the path ahead of her. Lurking underneath all of her comments, just like any other young fool, the eternal question. "Why in the hell didn't you do anything about this when it was your turn?"

Marcus tried, he really did, to remember when, if, he'd carried that same chip on his shoulder. He didn't think so. What was the point, he'd been an adult, married and on his way, before he'd ever met another of his kind in this form. And carrying a grudge against humanity was kind of silly, kind of like being pissed off at ants, or roaches, or a herd of cows.

They had no real volition, not as he understood these things. Letting himself feel anger, frustration, at their stumbling efforts to Know was as pointless as blaming a puppy for pissing on the floor. And about as useful, for one who'd been directed to simply observe and do nothing.

"When did you know?" he asked her. Three or four days later, two or three hours all told of listening to her vision of herself.

She seemed a little shocked at the question. He wondered if she thought of him as anything more important than the humans around them. It was a fair idea, Marcus admitted to himself. If he was to be nothing more than an adjunct to her plans, she'd have no reason to pay much attention to him.

Really, when he considered the whole thing, and his place in it, he was kind of surprised she'd continued talking to him.

As it turned out, she'd only noticed The Voice over the past year or so. "I had a rough couple of semesters. I ended up on academic probation for a year."

"Had you been privileged to hear Whispers before?" Had she really gone so far, only to hear The Voice when she was desperate for a new place in life?

"Hints, I think. It came to me, then, in full glory. Told me that I had a Purpose, something far more important to do than recover my academic career." Her human parents had gotten her the security gig, an easy way to pass the time while she waited out her year.

The Voice considered this a good time to begin her preparations. At least, that's what she told him.

"Were you told to seek me out?"

"No. I recognized you, your Purpose shines around you like a beacon."

Oh, now wasn't that a kick in the pants; Marcus knew the other members of his hive when he saw them. There were subtle indications, smell, things visible only to his Sight. The indications were subtle, though, and never yet had he seen anything that would indicate to him the Purpose, the Calling, that any of the others followed. And he'd had the good taste not to ask.

If the others saw him differently, though...

"Have you met others, then?" he continued.

"You are the second. The first was... less than helpful." She didn't elaborate, and he was left to speculate to himself what she meant.

If she was directed to activity, to prepare herself to engage this world, and then to seek to control it, what then would she have done if another of the hive was not helpful in her pursuit? Should he ask?

The question bothered him. It lay on him, almost as much as the quiet, the way The Voice yet refused to provide direction. Should he pry?

"One wonders what you meant by less than helpful. I'd hate for you to have gone through these first stages of your goals without receiving the proper support." He needed to be careful, he told himself. The threat was implicit to the situation.

"She refused to believe that it had been given to me to Do. It was unfortunate that I couldn't leave her in such a questioning state. I, we, remain vulnerable in this state."

And now, the threat was made explicit. If he wasn't careful, Marcus would find himself in a similar situation, wouldn't he? If she believed him to be a threat, he would be removed.

Problem being, to discover what she might consider to be a threat. He'd never questioned her Purpose, and he wasn't about to now. Marcus just needed to question her boundaries.

Find out where the lines were, the buried ones that he couldn't cross, unless he absolutely had to.

This was harder than hard. Being an auditor had its advantages, though. Pouring through records, asking the questions no one wanted to answer, or more often, the questions they couldn't quite answer.

She was like that, he found. A bundle of nerves and tensions, strung together and held that way by... not willpower. "What sort of entanglements are you engaged with?"

Meaning, parents? Girlfriends, boyfriends, drug habits?

"I... this person I was before... has a boyfriend." She didn't go any further.

He guessed the reason. "A fiance, or someone who was prepared to become so?"

"Yesss. Unfortunately. I... this person I was... had led him on."

Marcus wasn't quite sure if he should do so, but he stepped into the implied breach of the conversation anyway. "And you don't yet know..."

"How to get rid of him. Or..."

"Whether you should? I've been married going on thirty years now." They'd met in college, second year, he and Elena. An art history class, of all things, he'd sought out avenues to train his sight and mind, observational avenues that had suggested themselves. A little of this, a little of that, learning to see and to listen.

She'd been an artist in high school, and had yearnings for what might have been. The art classes were her way of feeding the spirit while still working on the degree her parents wanted her to get.

"You built this life, then?"

"There are many ways to blend in until the time comes."

She almost said it, then. Admitted that The Voice didn't reassure her, these nights. Instead, "There may be... demands. For Doing."

He wondered if she was questioning him, or herself. "I'm sure only of what I have been Told. The other avenues, well. I understand that you have to discover the pace expected of you." Would she?

"You suggest a..."

"Place in the scheme of things for understanding. Experience, and, perhaps, the wisdom of the moment." You have to be able to make up your mind, girl, he wanted to say, like he was talking to one of his boys. Instead, "The Whispers will be there, if you deviate from that Path." Oh, and didn't he know it.

"Listen..."

"Do, and learn." There were precious few other ways, he told himself. There were no other teachers like experience. Even the humans got that part right.

She left him that day with an odd look in her eyes. Questioning, he hoped. Or, at least, with the horizon a little further away than it had been yesterday.

Marcus fully expected to be chastised for presumption. For The Voice to come again, visit him in the Dark with a reminder. That he had reached beyond his position again.

It didn't. Perhaps he had not quite... crossed over into Teaching, rather than Observing. He'd watched his words as carefully as possible. Offered only the possibilities of a lifetime of Listening.

What she did with them was her business.

He did admit, to himself, a certain amount of relief. When he read the headlines two days later. She hadn't appeared on his lunch bench on the day between. So when he picked up the paper, one of three (the local, she was a moment's notice in the Chronicle, beneath the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal entirely) that he still allowed himself, technology bedamned, and he read the barely front page article entitled "Area Woman Murders Fiance, Kills Self", he knew that she'd found an answer of some sort.

He waited another long week of nights, staring into the Dark. For any acknowledgment at all. And nothing came.

And that's when Marcus's moment of doubt was fully sown.

It grew, bit by bit. With every new encounter. A lady on the subway, that was the next one. She wasn't a security guard, she was another accountant; another one whose steps were on the Path of Action. "Do, it said," she confided in him, that first whisper.

She too had seen his Purpose as a shining beacon. "I've followed you, three days running, on your way home."

He'd noticed, given her time to approach him in her own way. Along her own path, as it were. "When?" he asked.

There was only one such question that mattered. "Since I was three years old."

Poor thing, she'd heard the Voice, Voices, every night since. Pushing her, pulling her, dragging her sleep down into magnificent dreams of the Push and the Design. "I still don't quite understand where an accountant fits into this."

Marcus was just happy that he was talking to someone a little more comfortable with her place in the world. She'd still take him apart, down to the constituent quarks, if he so much as twitched in the wrong direction, of course. But at least they could have an adult conversation.

He enjoyed it; he learned more of her than perhaps any of the Others, before or since. It was with some regret that he returned to her confusion, some six weeks into their acquaintance. "I wonder if there's something about being an accountant that you may have forgotten." An observation, that's all it was.

All it ever needed to be.

"What's that?" she asked.

"There are many avenues for action. All of the successful ones, from what I've seen, require resources, and those who can marshal them." He sighed, patted the laptop that was his constant companion. "I send my electrons hither and yon, and hope only that they all consent to line up at the end of each day in their proper columns."

She wanted something more, it seemed. That next day, nothing; the one after, and he was sad once again to learn of a broken relationship, however brief. The Journal was the one most interested in this one, though the Times was happy to post a bit of juicy financial shenanigans, as well.

Seems an accountant for one of the Big 5 had discovered, unfortunately for her just a bit before the IRS did, that there were certain possibilities inherent in the avenues of cash flowing between certain classes of subsidiary companies. Her employer, suitably horrified of course, had been happy to testify against her.

Just to make sure that she got her twenty years. No one else in the company joining her, of course.

Then there was the guy running the sandwich counter. Marcus allowed himself a treat, once a week he wandered down and cadged a sub, sometimes a cheesesteak, sometimes a hero, occasionally just a giant Greek salad. Always, a break from the normal and a chance to see the ebb and flow of humanity in the underground food court. It was connected to the main train station for the city, so there was always a crowd worth watching. Enough so that he couldn't do it every day, the sound and the mass overwhelmed him if he let it.

The guy was pure Jersey, muscles on muscles and in a hurry to get through the order. Marcus was far more patient, slow, than the normal order, so the guy took to rolling his eyes and saying "Oh, here comes slow poke, everybody take a minute and let the gentleman grace us with his order."

Marcus took it with good grace. He didn't order anything ridiculous, so making the sandwiches he wanted more than made up for the extra thirty seconds the counter guy had to deal with him.

This had gone on for years. And then, a couple months after the other accountant had found out what Club Fed accommodations she was destined for, the guy leaned over the counter and asked, "So, did you hear something new?"

New? Marcus had grown comfortable enough with the Quiet that he almost ignored the guy. "You mean..."

"My Purpose has changed," the counter guy told him. The sandwich man's eyes were almost glowing he was so excited. "It's been given to me to find a new place in the world. A new Path."

Marcus wanted to pat the guy on the shoulder, apologize to him maybe. Or maybe just run away from yet another one. How long had this guy known who he was, served up his order once a week and just let him go by?

How many times had Marcus passed the counter without realizing there was another Listener? Should he be worried about that? "When did you hear the Change?"

"Couple months, maybe. It's hard to be more specific than that. It happened gradually."

It was a slow day, the guy filled the two orders behind Marcus, then came out from behind the counter and joined Marcus at his table. "The Whispers didn't change all of a sudden. It happened a little by little, something different one night, then a couple nights later something else new. And then one day, I woke up and realized that the whole thing had changed."

"How long had you known I was here?" The rest could come later.

"About the same time. I didn't notice you at all for all these years. Not until this week, when it all crystallized for me." The guy beamed. "Know what I'm gonna do now? I've been working out, going to the gym every night. I hooked up with this gal, she's got this sweet gig down in Florida, personal trainer to the snowbirds, the ones come down to get out of the cold, and she needs someone down there who knows a thing or two about running a place like that."

"That is nice." Especially in winter, the snow and the wind for white sand beaches and the sun on his face. Marcus was almost jealous. "It sounds like a hell of a change." And more than a change.

"I'm a whole new person. Dropped thirty pounds, I'm up to ten miles running every day. I figure, the first thing I do, when I get down there, is find me a place I can swim every morning. Work up to a mile or so every day, then learn how to scuba dive."

Scuba dive? "Way you make it sound, you've got more than just getting into shape in mind. Is there something down there, something more that you've been Given to Know?"

The guy started to tell him about the wrecks. New ones, navy scrap and oilfield retirements, set down to grow new reefs and rebuild the Gulf. Old ones, Spanish and English detritus of empire, decayed scattered and buried under sand and fish shit.

Cutting nets free so the dolphins and the manatees could swim free. Camera hunting, spear fishing, long days with a fly rod in his hand and a cold beer waiting back at the dock.

What kind of Purpose was this?

"There's a handful of 'Economic Development Programs' out there. Now that there's a chance Cuba and the U.S. can make pretty eyes at each other again, even if it's forty years down the road, there's opportunities there, for someone like me. Get in good with the right people, find my niche. And then I'm all set."

Set to do what, Beach Bums R Us? Wait, the guy'd mentioned the snowbirds. "How many contacts can a guy make, helping people work out, taking them fishing and diving..."

"Getting in good with the people with money and time on their hands." The guy nodded, his smile now about ready to split his face wide open. "I'm gonna make sure that the people who know, know me."

This was new; it was as old as time. Marcus rolled the idea over in his mind; part of him wanted to pack everybody up, Elena, the boys, well the youngest, Milo, Will was out of the house and away to school, the three of them could run down to Florida, find a townhome in the Keys, Marcus could hang out his shingle and do taxes three months out of the year...

The other part of him, the Observer, put the brakes on that. Sure, he'd thought about it, retirement. Maybe not Florida, maybe Savannah, one of the barrier islands. Marcus didn't play golf much but there were plenty of other things to do, and it didn't quite get as ridiculously hot as a couple hours south. Running off after this guy was like a quarter horse trying to run the Derby. No, he had to spend a few nights separating the rush of something new, get down to the core of it.

Spend another few weeks, a different day every week, not every Friday, sometimes Wednesday or even Monday instead, go down to the Underground and sound the guy out. "How's it going?" and "What's the plan, Stan?"

"Great, it's going great. I've got a line on a place to stay, two bedroom, brand new, all bills paid and it's right on this little canal, I can get a boat set up five minutes after I get there."

Boats, fishing rods. Surf boards and beach shorts. "Sounds more like you're retiring than anything else."

"Well, sure. If nothing else, it's camouflage."

"I wish you well, my friend. It sounds like you're going to have a whale of a time. Don't get too sunburnt, and have a drink on me."

The guy left just a few weeks after, headed for sunnier climes and a slower pace of the day.

Marcus didn't notice anything in the papers for quite a while after that. And for quite a few other encounters. The way he found out about the counter guy was dropping by for a sandwich, almost a full two years later. "Hey, Marcus, did you hear about Tony?"

Tony? "Oh, our snowbird friend?" Marcus had just about forgotten. "I hope he's doing all right?"

The lady shook her head. "He disappeared on his boat, it must have been six weeks ago. They found him, his boat anyway, washed up in the Everglades."

"That's a shame." They found him, what was left of him after the gators and the insects had their way, a few weeks later. No idea what had happened, maybe too much sun, maybe too much beer, who knew. 'At least he had the chance,' Marcus told himself.

Tony was one of the few who seemed interested in alternative Paths, of the ones that came to him after that. Marcus met engineers, ditch diggers. Computer geeks and goth chicks, pop princesses and country club swingers, one at a time, here and there, on the subway, getting a cup of coffee, waiting out a layover in Sheboygen.

All of them. "I am given to..." or "I was told..." or "Have you heard...", each one a Purpose, some thing to Do; each one turning their eyes to the light of Purpose that still followed Marcus around like gum on the bottom of his shoe.

Each one of them, whatever their Path before, going sideways. Prison, graves; in one memorable instance, the lady he met at the layover in Sheboygen ended up being institutionalized by her children, a dopamine drip with the nice padded straps on the bed her fate in life. At least until the kids saw the inheritance money. They were so torn up about it, they posted it to their web site, what with all the familial grief.

Each one, and Marcus slipped further and further away from what he'd once thought of as the purest of faiths. There was never a Word against him. His observations, simple words and questions here and there, passed without notice. The light of Purpose brighter, more of a beacon the less he felt the Call. The Quieter the Darkness became, the quieter the darkness became.

And then, finally, he was able to admit it to himself. That there would be no more voices in the dark. No purpose, his observations, no, his method of observation was whole, seamless. There would always be new things to learn and see on this world, among these, his new people. On the day he sent his youngest son off to his own senior prom, Marcus was finally willing to admit himself to be, now at least, just another dad. With only an occasional question, word.

Observation. For the questioning souls who often sought him out, before they found the chaos that awaited after meeting him.

The only voice left was his own. This one wondered on the Last Observation.

There are many ways to Serve, Marcus could admit to himself.

What if he this was what he was meant to Do? Was it possible that even yet, he was still One Who Served?