Chapter 41: The Katinet
Yet again Elliot woke up on cold hard ground from a nightmare. He had dreamt about his parents and the good life he had for such a short space of time. His parents voices haunted him, asking him to come back. Derren was their too, taunting him. The sight of Derren was enough to make him come back to the real gritty life he now inhabitated.
It must have been 4am of 5am in the morning. Edita was still asleep and Elisa had disappeared once again. Ackbar was sitting up. If it was any other individual, Elliot probably would have been startled by their presence. Ackbar however, was the personification of kindness. He never lost his temper and always tried to do the right thing.
Elliot sat up. He wanted to know more about his Kylot friend.
“Can’t sleep?” Ackbar asked him.
“Well, the sleeping conditions aren’t the best,” Elliot declared as he looked around at the hard and somewhat uneven ground. How much sleep do Kylot’s require?”
“A little less than you.”
“Why then do you stay awake.
“I’m haunted by my own demons and my own mistakes,” the Kylot replied.
Thank god, I don’t have a conscience like Ackbar’s, Elliot thought to himself, or else I’d never get any sleep. He looked at his comrade and tried to empathise with him.
“Sometimes I wonder if there is a god and why some people have wonderful happy lives and some have the opposite. After all that you’ve been through, Ackbar, do you believe in a god?” the young earthling asked.
“As a young boy I realised I was different. My parents tried to discourage me from being what I wanted to be. I am a Kylot and I wanted to be a Kylot. I wanted to learn about Kylot culture and Kylot religion. I strove to embrace what they wanted to suppress. Eventually they disowned me.
The Katinet is the equivalent of what your religion calls the bible. Kylots do not use their teachings to justify wars. They believe in equality of all peoples and fight for the rights of everyone. The Katinet is not very old. It is maybe five hundred years old. It was devised after Kylots left the planet Kyton. The elders on the council then got together and formulated the Katinet.
The Katinet is a book with thirty-two principles. Some of the principles have similarities with your Christianity except that they are broader. The bible has only ten commandments. Some Kylots break the principles but not to the extent that you humans do. You humans make your own rules. You have your own interpretations of religion, not just between different countries, but different followers of each religion have different versions of the same thing.”
“Does that mean that all Kylot’s are perfect, unlike humans?” Elliot asked as he recalled, Suki and her many Kylot lovers.
“No, but we strive to be,” the big lug responded.
“The Katinet is clear. It encourages us to stand up against injustice and to make our voice heard. Not all Kylot’s on earth are brave enough to stand up to the police or the Reapers and to reveal their true identity but that doesn’t mean that they stop trying. Where I come from we had an underground movement that opposed the government. If you were brave you would make your voice heard.”
“So why did you run away?” Elliot enquired.
“That’s a good point. I wanted to look like a Kylot and act like a Kylot and not hold my identity a secret.”
“So you did give up on your beliefs just like us weak humans?” Elliot responded. It was a thought that he regretted as soon as he posed it. He didn’t want to offend his friend and primary food source.
“All of my friends were either thrown in prison or tempered their ways. If I associated with any friends I had left, I would have only brought unwanted attention upon them. What about you. You seem to want to run away from the slightest sign of danger. If I was you. I would want to fight back. Your country is overrun with Reapers. Why don’t you go there and start fighting back?”
“We’ve had this conversation before. What is the point? One puny young man against the entire US Government, the army, the police, the Reapers. What chance have I got?”
“But you don’t even try,” the Kylot protested with the passion increasing in his voice. “Who wants to watch a football player who says “why try” If you don’t stand against the reapers who will. If you don’t try to inspire others to stand beside you, who will?
“As I said, I can’t but help believing that it’s all god’s fault. He made the world and the people in it. So many people have hard lives and the rich get richer and the poor poorer. It’s so unjust. And now we have the reapers who just round up anybody they don’t like. Sometimes I don’t really believe in god because it’s all his fault.”
“I find it strange that you Christians always blame god and not the devil. Don’t you think that it is possible that the devil in your religion is the one responsible for the evil in the world and God wants people to be happy and make the right choices in life. The reapers are just another example. You shouldn’t be afraid of them. You shouldn’t run from them.”
“How else am I going to survive?” Elliot objected in a way that suggested he was intimidated by the size of the task Ackbar was setting for him. “You’re crazy. Sometimes you have to give up and find another way to live, to get by. I wouldn’t last two seconds if I was to do what you preach. Anyone who stands against the Reapers is a fool.”
“There is a phrase that I like in your religion. It goes, “God likes a tryer.” Your religion is not all bad.”
Elliot didn’t quite understand Ackbar’s logic. He seemed to be asking the impossible. What could Elliot do in the fight against the Reapers? What skills and what resources did he have that would put any significant dent in the corrupt authorities? Part of him wanted to show Ackbar that he was a fighter, but how could he?