I created a rudimentary world out of six bottle tops and a crushed can of Orange Fanta. It was all I had to work with. I created a rudimentary world out of the limited materials that I had available and then I stepped back to admire my work. I hadn’t made a bad job of it at all. I felt like letting out a big old “Whoop!” – I’d pulled it off, I’d made a sterling job of it. I walked around the brand new world several times, checking it from all angles, inspecting it, probing it carefully in my mind. Finally I felt satisfied – against all the odds, under what were very difficult circumstances, I had succeeded. Dizzy with the heady perfume of my own unexpected victory I sat down and mopped my brow. I’d done a good job, that was undeniable. I deserved a bit of a sit-down, I reckoned. No one was going begrudge me that…

And then, just at that precise moment, evil quickly darted into my newly created world and contaminated it. It happened so fast I could barely register it. “How does evil get to move so fast?” I asked myself. “How can a thing like that even happen?” I’d taken my eye off the ball, I’d relaxed too soon. I had congratulated myself prematurely. I wondered how I could have made such an obvious slip-up. How come I hadn’t been expecting this very thing to happen? Isn’t this what always happens, after all? It’s an old, old story. It’s the oldest story there is in fact – the contamination of evil. You make everything pristine and pure and then the next thing you know evil darts in under your very nose and spoils everything. What else is evil for after all, if not this? What else would you expect evil to do? I could have kicked myself at this point – how could I have been so stupid as to take my eye off the ball at this crucial moment?

Following on from this unfortunate ‘accident’ I was left with only one possible course of action – I had to split off an avatar and send it into the world that I just created. Then I could take tackle the problem from the inside, as it were; that was the only way the problem could be tackled without having to destroy the infected world. I didn’t want to destroy the affected world, miracle that it was. I resolved therefore to split off an avatar to locate the evil and expel it. Eliminate it if possible and expel it if I couldn’t. Of if my avatar couldn’t, to be more accurate. As it happened this didn’t turn out to be too easy a job at all. It turned out to be very difficult and very problematic indeed. Forbiddingly so. The whole thing was a very bad experience as far as I was concerned. It turned into a real disaster.

I incarnated as the Eternal Warrior, as always. It is always the way – the Eternal Warrior, in many different guises, has to be on incarnated into the world so that he might give battle to the forces of evil. Otherwise – were he not to appear in the world – evil would run unchecked, evil would proliferate, as is generally the way with evil. Ordinary mortals are far too easily hypnotised by the power of darkness – they are fascinated by it and all too often they wish only to serve it. ‘Our only wish is to serve you,” the hypnotised ones say, “just tell us what we have to do…” They then proceed to dress themselves in the garments of oppression, and serve the purposes of evil without ever questioning their actions. That’s the way it is with evil – ordinary folk just aren’t any good at fighting it. Most don’t recognise it (most are too afraid to recognise it and just act dumb) and of the ones that do, a significant proportion wish only to serve it. They somehow come to the conclusion that this is a good idea…

I persisted throughout the long dark millennia, coming off the worst at every encounter and then hiding until I had recovered my strength and sense of purpose. Camouflaging myself as best I could, lying low, licking my wounds, biding my time. Losing every round, coming off worse in every encounter. I don’t think that the Malignant One, who likes to call himself the Great Saviour of Mankind, even notices my stubborn opposition – he swats me away automatically, heedlessly, as one would swat a gnat. Then back into hiding I go, leading an ordinary life, trying to keep up the pretence that I’m no threat to the system, the pretence that I’m just the same as any other aimless Joe Soap drifting from day to day with no greater goal than to pass the time as pleasantly as possible. Or at least, with as little unpleasantness as might otherwise prove to be the case. In my darkest moments I wonder if perhaps I am no threat to the system. “What’s the point?” I ask myself. And then at other times I remember who I am and what my mission is and I ready myself for the next battle, the next encounter…