The Tromonian Revolution

chapter 7

“I've written the best song ever,” Max told the group after they paid for him and Hope to stay in a hotel, while they slept in one of the vans in an unknown place. It wasn't clear how he wrote it as his guitar was left with them, but he had done it.
He played it to them all after they handed him his guitar, the Tromonia now visibly inserted as a sort of chakra between his eyebrows and it was the greatest song ever written as he claimed it to be. It could be the only song left to be heard and it would be without the need for any others. It would be the king. Of course, it would be changed and improved by many people through many centuries but the heart of it would beat the same throughout its rule as. It would be the undisputed sovereign master of their world until another was powerful enough to take its place. Though if that ever happened, it would surrender honourably without a fight because it was not just one song but all of music manifested beautifully into one piece, with each instrument honouring its individual incarnation with the knowledge that they are all united through each role they play.
It was a gradual song, almost impressionist like. They clapped when he finished. It was their home, their mother and father, siblings and cousins and uncles all together to welcome them back as successful adults, with shining smiles and redeeming looks. That is why the revolution felt right. Nothing much had ever been right in their lives, some of them had never felt it at all. They'd strayed so far from it and even now they continued to but Max always brought them back home. There was a time when there was no other path than that which was right, he told them. And that is what they were bringing the world back to, he said, on christmas day.
They believed it all. Everything that Max said was going to happen. They knew it would, he was the messiah. At the start, that's how it was.
Hope followed because she loved him, mostly. She trusted him and when she worried about Elijah, Max promised her that on Christmas day she'd be reunited with him. He'd see the right path too. He'd feel the happiness they felt. “He will!” he said to her, impassioned. “I promise, we will all feel it. We feel it now, the group and everyone that meets us. It'll be the whole world before we know it. Cherish this time, it'll be taught in history classes.”
Every night, the group would party and meet drunken strangers who wanted change. They were frustrated, something was missing, but that night they would become whole.
The group travelled through all sorts of towns and cities, making new connections, meeting so and so who knew so and so who could get you a gig at such a place. That was how they made their money. They saved up quite a bit as they didn't spend it on much other than food and places to stay.
He hallucinated without the thing, when he'd left it alone for a few hours. He'd see awful things, which brought immense dread that overwhelmed him. Though, when he entered Tromonia he realised the devil was attempting to pull him astray, which just demonstrated further how much good they were doing. The devil opposes of course whatever is right and attempts to invent its own warped version of goodness. The world was riddled with desperate uncertainty and there in Tromonia he could be engulfed by everlasting euphoric truths.
Sometimes, he would say, “I am Jesus,” or, “I am god,” which would trigger a few people but they were condemned by the majority. “Let him think freely man!” One would say to defend him. Most people who surrounded him glorified him totally, believing genuinely that he was divine.
He lived in a disorienting world, a melting pot of Tromonia and real life that his friends guided him through, especially Hope. She held his hand always but he rarely talked to her.
Often he travelled on trains with a few of his favourite devotees. They'd play him his songs or songs that he liked, snorting lines of cocaine and singing out to God the father, hanging on a pipe watching the tracks go past.
By this point, they had been away for quite a few days really. Max didnt know how many exactly, but quite a few he thought. He was glad, they all were. Even though he didn't sleep much anymore and he didn't know where they were going, he was glad. They all were.
He woke up and he was playing music to another quite large crowd. This was a vast improvement from the usual scene as he was becoming more well known. He woke up to it at least once a day, when he'd be singing a song he'd never even heard; sometimes the crowd even sang with him so it must've been a song he sang many times. But he'd never heard it, he would just sing out the lyrics from a piece of paper in his hand.
He played one more song then sat down with a glass of whiskey. Many people sat with him, expecting the usual stitch but he just said, “I can't be bothered today. I'm too tired. You do it,” and pointed to one of his followers. “You know it all, right?” The guy was thrilled by the opportunity and preached like he really mattered. Max just observed. He never got to observe. He felt tired; Tromonia was not exciting anymore, he just needed it. Everyone needed it, he felt them all attached to it, grabbing onto his shoulders desperate to save their life.  All of their mistakes they projected onto him and expected him to become an ideal.
Then, he found himself walking along a beach with no clothes; somehow he escaped everyone who constantly followed him. He felt it again, everything he was chasing as the tide came in and splashed his naked body. He fell to the ground and took in the cold water as if he were inseparable from it. He breathed only when the water allowed and exploded with clarity and happiness only on its terms. He found it hard to submit but when he did the path seemed right again and he walked towards the rest of his friends.
“He's here!” they shouted and cheered when they saw him. “And he's naked,” one of the girls laughed and he laughed with them, still hugging them all and kissing Hope on her neck.
They talked of breaking into a house yesterday and trashing it for him. “For me?” he giggled and they continued. “For the cause!” One of them exclaimed.
They had met a kid that hated his parents. You could see it the way he talked about them. With short blonde hair and a skinny body, he complained of them even to Max with an indiscriminate hate for their entire being and life.
The followers had convinced him to trash their house with their help and so after half a bottle of vodka he was ready to take them down.
The night was exhilarating for the people that lived it. Every inch of hatred in each of their bodies moulded together to form a special kind of satisfying evil. “They should be ashamed,” they whispered when they smashed the window to get inside.
They didn't steal much, just smashed it all up. They ripped the furniture, the carpet. Threw books and electronics on the floor, smashed vases and anything else they could find.
His father had run downstairs with a shotgun when he noticed the sounds. "Everybody freeze!" The big fat man screamed but they all left. Soon the cops light flashed and they ran faster laughing and singing in the dark.
“It's great to meet you,” he said to Max when they introduced him and Max just giggled again.
As they drove the boy they met started to ask questions about the crystal in Max's head. “It's a Tromonia,” he finally said. “It makes time nonlinear and makes the right path clear. That's why we call it the Tromonian revolution, got it? It's guiding us. This is what will save us.”
But the boy continued questioning arrogantly and ignorantly, “well, why don't we all have one?”
“There's only one and it's mine,” Max explained. “You wouldn't be able to handle it.” He tried to answer all the questions but the boy wouldn't stop and Max became frustrated. “Just, stop asking questions,” he demanded. “You can't have the Tromonia.”
Soon, they dumped him at the side of the motorway. “Get this kid out,” Max told his friends, enraged, and they did as they were told. “No, please, I'm sorry, don't leave me I've left everything for you,” the kid pleaded, his face turning red and his hands trembling but they chucked him out and kept driving. No one said anything but a few watched the boy fall to the ground and put his head in his hands, crying the worst cry.
None of them had ever seen Max angry and their thoughts started to question more, though they couldn't go back. Most of them had nothing left, they were dependent on the prophecies but the thoughts didn't care. They prevailed, making everyone sick with fear. Even Max could not overcome it.
The boy didn't go home, he couldn't. He walked along the motorway until hitching a ride, staying quiet as they drove him wherever they were going, eventually stopping off in an unknown town. Then, he trotted further, with an atrocious headache and a strain in his back and legs, no money and no one to call.
Soon they got to another hotel. “Leave me alone for tonight,” Max told them and brought Hope in with her. “Go find new people,” he commanded and stumbled inside holding the benevolent hand of Hope Leigh. I haven't mentioned their second names in a while have I? I bet you didn't even remember it. Try and think what Maxs second name is, you won't be able to remember. I'll give you a clue, there is a band with the same name.
“Don't ever wake me,” Max told Hope when he lay on their bed and entered the darkness underneath his eye lids. No matter what was happening in the waking world, sleep was always the same. Nowhere to go, nothing to do. His only purpose being to rest. It was a clear purpose, which is what made it so meaningful. It's what we all want most of all, those of us who believe in a purpose: for it to just be undeniably clear. It wouldn't matter what it was, it would cause great things if we truly lived with a common goal.
Fred proposed in their new house that they bought together a few months after they bought it, when they still slept on a mattress in their cold bedroom.  Perhaps they should have bought a bed by now but the truth is they didn't mind.
He loved her so much. He loved that she had kept up her passion for music, spending all their money on a grand piano for the dining room. She no longer played the popular satie songs like gnossienne no.1, she always found new ones in the books she bought that Fred couldnt read. “I love when you play,” he finally said to her one day. He couldn't remember if he'd ever said it before but the words felt overdue. “Why do you think I do it?” She joked and he got a little embarrassed.
Anyway, he asked her to marry him. “Will you marry me?” He asked, showing her a diamond ring he had bought just that morning. He didn't get down on one knee like his father had or his grandfather but she said yes with a smile larger than he'd ever seen on her face, a smile revealed after years of waiting for this special moment.
They got married abroad in the hot sun with their friends and family. Both the families loved each other and embraced each other fully and their friends came together as one group. They decided on Christine as a name for a girl when they have kids, and John for the name of a boy. Names in their day that were unique and good. As you can tell, I don't really know what people talk about at weddings. 
The bride walked down the aisle with her father, their arms locked. It was a ceremony that cynical teens would condemn but one that brought understanding that could only be understood through it. She noticed everyone who they graced past, people who they knew well and people that they'd met once or twice in association with the people who knew them well. The crystal stained glass intercepted light from the sun that lit up her white dress making it unimaginably more beautiful and white. Those few minutes of the start of the ceremony she would cry over and over about in her life, reminiscent of the music Fred had picked for her that she never heard but he knew she would love and seeing his nervous grin.
The love they shared was incomprehensible usually but at the wedding everyone saw it the same. They held hands and said their vows written by the priest. Their voices echoed as it entered the kingdom of heaven through the roof and they kissed at the end when the man said, “you can now kiss the bride.”
Their honeymoon was in hawaii. It had not gone mainstream yet in fact I think they popularised it, Hawaii i mean. “Hawaii? Where's that?” One of Jillys friends wondered at the afterparty. “Is that in europe?”
“No it's not in Europe. It's in America,” Fred lectured her.
“Well she doesn't know does she?” Jilly piped in, telling him off in a way she often did, a way he liked because it made him better and gave him a laugh.
While Max slept his friends started to doubt him. They didn't doubt his ideas, they knew the Tromonian revolution was coming but they doubted that he would be the one to make it happen. His flaws were revealing themselves, how he had kicked that kid out of the van for simply questioning. Max claimed a lot of things that made sense and a lot that the sense had justified. More than anything, many of them wanted to use the Tromonia but they knew he wouldn't let them.
They'd sit around collectively, a small group of them in the dark and each add wood to the fire of anger that was slowly brewing with each point and story. Brewing an image of Max as a pompous devil.
"He's not jesus!" One of them would shout and the others would cheer, disenchanted. "He's using the Tromonia to make himself feel good! If we want real change," another carried on, warming their hands against the flames of destruction and renewal. "If we want real change, we need to get it off him, the thing. The Tromonia, we all need to see it. That's what's giving him the ideas. Any one of us could be the saviour."
Their collective frustration burned the idea of Max. They planned to steal Tromonia and save the world themselves collectively. Now they would not answer to anyone or worship anyone but the ideas that were not owned, only distributed throughout the glorious world they would create.
At a time they knew him to be asleep, they used the key to unlock the door of his prestigious hotel room and took the thing out of his hands.
When he woke up the destiny of humanity was a definitive chaotic hell and one in which he was dead. Well, that's how he saw it at first. “It's ruined,” he said to Hope who  grabbed his hand screaming, “It's not!”
“It is,” he told her and once again she pleaded and cried, “it isn't!” Every persuasion she uttered, she grasped his arm tighter with him pushing her off each time she did. Then he noticed what else they had stolen. “They have my guitar! I can't even play music!” The words mirrored the anger of  his once devoted disciples. “And all of our money! It's all gone.”
“It's okay Max,” her voice became more gentle and divine. More than he'd ever heard. “Go away,” he demanded. “I need to be alone.” And she left, seducing a cold white man into paying for her train ticket home.
And so I said that was how it was at first. At first the revolution was over but soon he sat on his bed and he realised the revolution had never begun; it had been a complete delusion, created to combat his colossal insecurity and that was what really broke him. It broke him totally. It broke him the way the loss of a husband breaks your grandmother. He'd been coughing for years the way a dog barks but now he was gone. Though it was different to that. It was as if he had wanted to jump from a tower to kill himself but as he reached the bottom, he realised that he had a family and many friends who loved him. But actually it was different to that also.
And though he should have expected this; somehow he had always known this is what he would become, predicting it in his trepidation, which had been with him since he was a boy, he was coming to convince himself that he was wrong through the revolution. He was praised, his music and his mind. That was what he had prayed for, for so many years previous, that his music would be recognised. But of course, he was right.
He stumbled through streets in an abhorrent disorience feeling hungry but unable to eat because whenever he tried, he would gag. He looked down at his unchanging feet, unable to observe the rest of the world without seeing things that weren't there or not seeing things that were. Tenebrous spirits welcomed him. They wrapped his whole body with feelings of disgust and shame and dismay and inquietude, dancing around him, manifesting every fault he had in their stare. What he hid was grousomly ripped from the depths of the dark forest that had grown beneath his conscious mind and smothered against his eyes by them with their claws.
And he fell onto the floor so many times and cried, “God! Why have you done this to me? I was trying to do good! You tricked me!”
It was immortal pain as all pain is. Why does pleasure have to be so fleeting and yet pain can never die? It outlasts at least the first person that inherits it, scourging them until they start to do it themselves and then to others.

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