Where am I? How did I come to be living on the bottom of an unknown sea?

You might say that my story began long ago.  Then again, depending on your understanding of that fickle measure called Time, my story began a short while ago: not Now, but not far removed from Now.  Similarly, depending on your understanding of the thing we call Space, my story begins either far away or practically next door to Here. But, no matter where in the space-time continuum you choose as the beginning point for this story, the inescapable truth is that until fairly recently, I was not from around here. As you've surmised, I'm not native to these parts.

 Whether good fortune or bad, I can't say with any degree of certainty how to return to the place I'd called home before I washed up against these shores. I have little idea where I am, and I’m not entirely certain that the ship I had come to call home still exists. I've got no clear idea of how to go about bridging that distance. Let it suffice to say I can't easily get there from here; I seem to have neglected to pack the legendary ruby red slippers that traverse any distance with three clicks of the heels.

 I suppose, were I a better pilot, or had my navigator plotted my course differently, I'd have no need of the ruby red slippers. Then again, were I a better pilot, I probably wouldn't be standing anywhere near this place, having never needed to abandon my ship, leaving me stranded on these shores. Perhaps, if I had the right navigation equipment, the right collision avoidance system, or a sufficiently advanced piloting program I wouldn't be watching the sun rise and set on these foreign lands. But, as I currently possess no simple way to return to that place I called home, my choices are to either embrace these shores as home or remain forever apart from the people here, a refugee and castaway in their midst.

 On the other side of the equation, if I were less of a pilot, or a bit less lucky, I wouldn't be here either -- or rather, I'd be here as a stain, a relatively new landmark, my first and final impression being less than favorable and one of the lasting kind.  When all is said and done, I find being stranded on strange and foreign shores far less of an inconvenience than being part of an impact crater on those same shores.

And if I had a steak, I could have steak and lobster, if I had a lobster... assuming I could manage to choke down the once-living flesh -- which is to say that all it would take for my circumstances to be different is me to have made any of the circumstances of my life different. I might have been a better pilot, might be a better pilot, if I weren't, instead, a field medic. Then again, if I were a better pilot, chances are I probably wouldn't have been a medic at all; both tend to be full-time occupations, demanding continual practice to hone the skills that define how we and the world around us comes to think of ourselves.

Which brings me, in a roundabout fashion, back to this place on the bottom of the sea. Funny how one relatively small object at the wrong place and time, a seemingly chance encounter, can so shape fate. But fate, as they say, is made up of two main elements: seemingly chance encounters that we cannot control, and the way we react to those chance encounters over which we have full control. Pondering the past, without the wherewithal to alter the past, tends to be an exercise in futility, frustration, and guilt. I can play "what if" until the end of time as we understand it, and the only thing that it'll change is how much I get done in the here and now; when I spend my time and energy playing "what-if" I am left with little left over for shaping the present. When it's all said and done, regardless of whether I call myself pilot or doctor, regardless of how I've arrived at this time and place, it would appear I'm going to be here for a while. This isn’t a bad place to be shipwrecked.

Is there some higher purpose in my being here? Possibly; I have found that I am pretty much where I need to be, when I need to be there, whether or not I am aware of that need. It may not always be in the place I want to be, or at the moment I had I want to be there; at times, being when and where I need to be tends to disrupt the plans I'd thought to make. Though I may curse or bless that thing called fate, kismet, joss, or any number of less flattering names, unseen winds carry me along as a mote of dust, my course little changed for my wishes. I may attempt to fight against those winds of change, allowing them to beat and batter me before they carry me away, or I can give in and soar on those winds. Either way, regardless of wishes, I am carried along.

Ah, wishes... how hard and yet how easily wishes get abandoned in the face of necessity. Today I wear the vestments of a doctor, though I have not always aspired to that path. Long ago I had thought to be, as all my people before me, a Singer. Though in retrospect, at that time musicians were not called by any such name, for music in the Song lived in all of my people. In the Darkness, since before the dawning of time, we had been a Singing People; we greeted the First Light in Song. By the very nature of our harmonious existance, we were musicians.

But the First Light has long since dimmed. The Song of my people has faded away, I suppose, save for the one last, lost note, echoing down through the corridors of time. Of necessity, this would-be musician has become something for which no word ever existed in his native tongue, and with each turning of the world, little, if anything, remains as once it was.

Understand that in that halcyon age, we had held all life to be sacred, a gift. How could we, who Sang in the Light together, who held our very essence to be the Song, not live in harmony with each other and with the world around us? How could a lack of harmony, discord and dissonance, be conceived, much less endured as anything but a transitory state?

And then the Silent Ones arrived. We greeted them, as we greeted each other, in Song. The Silent Ones Sang not a word, not a note, answering only with uncomprehending looks and cold silence. Confronted by irrepressible silence, the Song wavered, then slowly faded as the People that Sang fell silent. Cut off, isolated from each other, the Song died on the lips of my people and the Unity of the Song shattered.  As a people, as a race, we Sang no more, becoming an entire world filled with isolated walking corpses that had been denied the final mercy. In my dreams, in my nightmares, I can still hear the dawn breaking on that day my people became silent.

Tears replaced the joy of the Song in the wake of the Silent Ones. How many tears make an ocean? And yet, from out of the ocean of tears came those who named themselves for one of their ancient healers, sojourning amongst the remnants of my people. Though silence and separation clung to these, too, and they knew nothing of the Song, theirs was not devouring Silence, rather, an expectant stillness between them.  

Healers, they called themselves, possessing the ability to mend damaged individuals, yet they did not know the means to heal the gulf between individuals. As a people, they were a collective of individuals instead of belonging to a corporate body: each, alone. And yet, what were we who had known the Song, whom had been overcome by Silence, but isolated and alone?

To be alone in a strange place is not as difficult as being alone in a familiar place made strange by changed circumstance. I left with them, searching for a way to recreate the harmony my people had lost. If people are the parts of a corporate body, I reasoned, then secrets of mending body and mind, of binding the body together, must by logical extension surely include the means by which shattered communities could be healed, breaches repaired and unity restored.

I learned names for their healing harmonics that felt strange and awkward to my tongue: latrosis and mentosis. I learned from them how to hear the thoughts and intent behind the spoken word, regardless of language. Yet, for all I learned, for all my searching, even attuned as they were to healing harmonics, I discovered no note or harmonic to rebuild the Song of my people.

In the end, though I had the will and the desire, though I mastered technique and theory, my final composition lacked the heart, soul, and life of the Song. How could I have thought to find, much less teach something for which I have no words to express? How do I impart something which once came from within, that perfectly defines the self in relation to the One, the Few, and the Many? How does one recreate an expression of identity and relationship to the All, when the means of expression lacks the means to express such a rapidly changing quantity? Call it vanity, call it ignorance, call it grasping at illusions, but in the end, the Song eluded me.

Thus unable to find what I needed within myself or within the halls named for the ancient healer, a well-intentioned effort that nonetheless failed to reach a lofty goal, I departed those halls. For if the Master cannot further instruct the Apprentice, and the apprentice still hungers to learn, then the apprentice must move on. For if the tinder cannot be coaxed into flame by a spark, the spark smolders and dies. When a burning log is removed from the fire, it burns for but a short while; if it does not soon kindle a new flame, the fire consumes the branch before it smolders and dies.

Sad to say, where ever people gather, some choose to disregard the commonality that is theirs by birth and deny each other the right to differ. When an unrelenting torrent of people hold aloft their differences, forget that they have far more in common than the differences which divide them, when they see only violence as the means by which to bury their differences, there is strife. Since departing the tutelage of the ancient order of healers, I find that discord encroaches upon unity, no matter where I’ve looked. Is it that way throughout the entire space-time continuum?

And, where there is strife, there are healers sorely needed. In truth, before violence breaks out, as in the aftermath of strife, there is much healing to be done, by healers of a different sort, on a much bigger scale. In doing what I am able to mend, I attempt to counter strife, yet is this not also strife? In a shattered, fragmenting, divided and dissonant world, I cannot help but wonder if the Song shall ever be Sung, much less heard, again. 

I have seen wars, schisms, divisions, and no end to strife. The battles blur together; the names and places change, yet for the victims of strife the story remains the same. Some, we reach in time to prevent loss of life or limb; the lucky ones go home, the not-so-lucky return to the fray, and too often the only peace in these troubled times is found by those whom we return to the earth, the sky, or the sea.

And, occasionally, something happens to interrupt the cycle of rending and mending: peace, or something intervenes to remove the medic from the fray. I do not doubt that the battle rages on, that soldiers and civilians alike continue to die for the whims, fears, and insecurities of a few.

With one fewer healer to bind the wounds and treat the wounded, the battlegrounds may claim a slightly higher toll. Or perhaps, with a slightly greater risk, the chance of arms clashing might actually diminish; in my absence, I lack the perspective to offer anything from this place save conjecture and suppositions.

For better or for worse, I find myself absent from the battleground, in a place where the memory of conflict has faded from the minds of most people. Were it within my power, I would create a shield around this world, a hidden wall to shelter this place from the winds of war. Yet by so doing, would I then attract the very sort of attention I wished to divert? For to some minds, that which is protected behind a wall must be valuable, and strong walls may indicate that the inhabitants cannot rely on force of arms to protect themselves and all they hold dear.

But the simple truth is that I possess no such shield to lend this world. It would appear they have had no need for any such shield, whether or not it such intervention is appropriate or ethical. All possibility aside, I could foresee lengthy deliberation and debate at levels far above my pay grade to determine whether or not such intervention would be ethical and to consider the consequences.

Truth be known, politicians and philosophers have been trying to work out a coherent policy on intervention for almost as long as one culture has had the wherewithal to come in contact with other cultures. Perhaps they have formulated an answer everyone will live by in my absence and I have not heard because I have not been anywhere that such news would be heard.

The local population calls this place Atlantis. Ironic, they should choose that name for this place, when I wrestle still with the guilt for playing a part in the fate of that culture. What are the chances that they remember, that any of them might be survivors of that long-ago cataclysm? How many of the original Atlanteans were able to escape the violence that destroyed their home? Are there any others that remember ten thousand years of folly that destroyed Mu and Atlantis, shattered entire worlds, and changed the face of the sky for all time?

In light of what I have seen here, I would hope that this Atlantis fares better than the original. Perhaps, in being here, I can in some small way find absolution for past actions. Though by bringing the past into the present, do I then tie the fate of the present to that past? By my involvement, do I then draw them in and doom them to repeat the cycle? Or do we move on?

So many faces visit me in my dreams. Their shattered limbs and broken bodies offer blood-soaked testimony to my failure to find and teach the Song, the only thing I know that has united a people and fostered a common vision, a shared understanding, a single community. In this place characterized by rifts and schisms, when the only true cure comes from within, how can I call myself a healer? Which is more abhorrent: the foe they struggle against, the cost of the struggle, or a person who sacrifices trusting lives on the altar of duty to perpetuate the Discord?

Which are saints, which are sinners, and which are the monsters, indeed?