-Do you believe in fate, Neo?
-No
-Why not?
-Because I don’t like the idea that I’m
not in control of my life.
-I know exactly what you mean.
-The Matrix, 1999
There is some predominant idea that we are guided in life by some force that we like to loosely term as ‘fate’. We all like to remember those child-like times of disappointment and distress when our parents or our grannies used to say to us, ‘well, don’t worry about it – things will turn out all right. After all, everything happens for a purpose. Something better is bound to come along.’ We are all familiar with the ideas that ‘everything happens on time’, that ‘nothing happens that isn’t meant to’, that ‘everyone has a purpose in life.’
There are, inevitably, some of us who believe that it’s all a load of BS, and that life is what you make of it regardless. Ironically, perhaps, it is these kinds of people who tend to climb up the social ladder like a tank crushing through Tiananmen – while us poor believers in ‘something better’ sit around waiting for ‘the inevitable’ to happen. It was for this reason that the Chinese philosopher Mozi[1] said: ‘[Fatalists] keep the people from pursuing their tasks…Those who insist upon holding such views are the source of pernicious doctrines. Theirs is the way of evil men!’
Be that as it may, it still doesn't change the fact that while we long to have some freedom and control over our lives, we all secretly believe that we are in some way being ‘guided’ towards some natural, perhaps some might even say preordained, conclusion. It may or may not be true. Our entire universe may, of course, simply be a marble that the aliens/God/gods are playing with. We – humanity – may simply be parasitic non-entities. Who knows?
What I find interesting is that in the Matrix (and even though the Matrix is hardly representative of our society, who knows – we could actually be living in a matrix), Neo takes the red pill in order to exert some control over his life. To, in effect, no longer be controlled by the machines. It is the ultimate expression of the anarchic forces that lie dormant within (most) of us. It is Neo’s one big finger up to a world that he feels restrains and constrains him. It is sadly ironic then, that in doing so he becomes mired up to his knees in ‘Fate crap’; because he is ‘the One’, who is ‘prophesied’ to bring an end to the Matrix (at least, that’s what I think he was supposed to do).
Likewise, ‘fate’ permeates so much of our everyday lives. For instance, one morning I just happen to go into Uni despite my better judgement and the fact that I know I should be lying in. And miraculously, not only do I feel I’m actually learning something in my lecture, but the comic I was looking for actually happens to be in a day earlier than expected, which inadvertently reminds me that I actually have to return a CD in the shop next door before the expiry date on my receipt runs out (as it happens it is the last day I can send it back, otherwise I would’ve been stuck with a $40 special edition CD that my sister already had).
So maybe there is a fate. In what way it works and on what scale, no one really knows. It could simply be one of the machines running a ‘fate program’ for all we know.
There is a point to all this. Please bear with me.
*
‘What a beautiful collision/ Things that go bump in
the night/ With such beautiful precision/ Fate could create you and I.’
-Bic Runga, Beautiful Collision
I have never experienced fate in love. Actually, I tell a lie. I have, sort of. Before my first true love and I were together, we were playing a joke on one of our friends, and surreptitiously passed a note to one another under the table. I won’t go into all the details of this horrible joke we were playing. What happened was, as we passed the note under the table, our hands touched. It was incredible. Just from that touch, without even looking into his face, I knew how he felt about me.
Amazingly, until this very moment, for the past 6 years or so, I’d forgotten that that had even happened. I guess that’s because we made a go of it for 7 months, flogged the rocking horse a bit, got nowhere and ended up being incredibly disillusioned. True love, I suppose, isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. In fact, I found true love rather boring, but then I have been known to be a cynical old sod in my free time.
I’ve always had this love-hate relationship with the concept of fate. When I started writing about the Insurrection/Destiny universe, I knew immediately that it was going to start off on this ‘fate’ foot. The whole universe is – in a nutshell – about whether or not fate actually exists or whether we do have free will after all. It’s a theme that runs a lot through my work (q.v. The Legend of Elu). 24 Hours was special, because it takes place at a time when the resolution to all this Destiny thing was supposed to have been over and done with. It was also one of those things that was never meant to happen. It just sort of impinged upon my consciousness while I was bed one night (annoyingly, most of my ideas tend to come in the middle of the night, which means I have to keep on turning the damn light on and writing them down.) And I kept on thinking: ‘what would happen is Remy and Rogue met up again after being separated for several years?’
Oh, that my brain should even think such things!
In fact, the way I’d conceptualized the Insurrection/Destiny universe, Rogue and Remy were most definitely, undeniably going to stay together after Rogue Psychology. After that particular ficlet, I figured that they’d been around the block once too often, and that it was high time they matured into some semblance of a ‘normal’ couple. Now ,I’ve always had this thing that the two of them were never the settling-down type. There was no question that once they were committed they would remain faithful, it’s just that, IMHO[2], their wayward natures would never suit a settling-down scenario, and that essentially, their relationship transcended physical bonds (as in, ‘having-to-be-together-24-7’ kind-of-thing, not ‘going-at-it-like-rabbits-24-7’ kind-of-thing.). However, concerning the conception of the Insurrection universe, Rogue just had to be suitably traumatized by her final showdown with Destiny, and I wanted her to surgically detach herself from Remy and the X-Men, go out into the real world, get a life and damn well grow up. I wanted a ‘normal’ Rogue, one that wasn’t going to push away everyone that she met. In the end what happened was that I split the two of them up – perfectly amicably, of course – while rubbing my hands with glee as to what was to come next.
In my imperfect experience, if couples break up with the airy-fairy notion of one day maybe getting back together again, they run the age-old risk of changing. As it happens, Rogue and Remy had no set intention to get back together again – (you can take it for granted they still loved each other – you know you want to) – they just simply had to move on. The idea of them meeting again after a few years gave me super-licious leeway to deal with their relationship in a way the comics never had before, and that’s what made me enjoy writing it so much. Both are now leading normal lives, both have matured, and both are still helplessly drawn to one another. So what do they do when they meet up again? Of course they pretend to be friends, knowing full well the dangerous implications of their flirtations.
*
There is a song that goes: ‘What a difference a day makes/ Twenty-four little hours.’
I have a horrible tendency to torture the characters I write about. I wanted to pressurize this poor couple into finding out what their priorities were. What better way than to give them only 24 hours to decide? It’s just like in the movies. What’s more important to you? Love or duty? Naturally Remy has more to lose. He has his responsibility to the Guilds. And Rogue can just ask him to stay – that’s easy. She isn’t the one who has to move, change her lifestyle and get a new job; not to mention the rigmarole of getting a visa (I don’t know how good the English embassy is at sorting these things out; all I know is that the Chinese one was rather ‘unaccommodating’.) On this point, it’s easy to think of Rogue once more as being the heartless bitch.
Rogue motivation was interesting to write about. I kicked her out into the wide world with the express intention of forcing her to grow up. She spends the whole Insurrection debacle consumed by Destiny, and Destiny inadvertently guides all her choices – she continually dumps Remy despite her better judgment. And even now, she resists him because of Destiny. She is so helplessly dependent on this idea of fate, even though it scares her. One might even suppose that she is suffering from some sort of paranoia. She clings onto Destiny/destiny like a frightened child, because it’s the only thing she knows. Consequently, it’s a gamble for her to ask Remy to stay, because in doing so she’s throwing away what she perceives is their fate – that there should be nothing between them.
In the end, Rogue did the thing we’d all been rooting for and took the red pill. In the beginning of the love scene, both embrace fate by accepting that they have been thrown together again, and yet paradoxically they refute it, by ignoring the idea that logically they must part, and instead they spend the night together. Sex is the consummation not only of their love, but also that fate is what they make of it. But what the two of them never think is, was it fate that they happened to meet one another so fortuitously in the middle of Russell Square? Is it fate that they only had 24 hours to be brought together and to part again? And if so, does that make Remy’s final analysis – that fate is as yet unwritten – invalid? Or does it mean that there is a fate, and that we get to choose whether we follow it or not whenever we want to?
*
We all assume that time is linear. What if time isn’t? What if it’s like a rail network? (Hopefully not like the abysmal British one, which never happens to work on time anyway.) What if we can get off at one stop and hop onto another train that goes in a different direction? And what if fate works in the same way? What if it’s the choices we make that guides what train we catch next? (Sliding Doors[3] anyone?). What if sometimes, instead of waiting on the platform, one train comes along just as we get off another? And what if your one true love happens to get on the same train as you do? Does that classify as something happening ‘in the right place at the right time’?
Of course, it could all just be down to one of the machines running a ‘fate program’.
We just simply don’t know.
*
12-12-2003
[You can discuss any of the points raised here on the Message Board.]
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[1] An odious man from the 5th-4th century B.C., whose book reads like the dull plod-plodding of subliminal indoctrination, yet who promoted ideas of ‘universal love’, anti-aggressive-wars and meritocracies. Truly a man before his time.
[2] ‘In-my-humble-opinion’. (Because despite the fact that I do tend to mouth off sometimes, I’m not really as clever as I like to think I am.)
[3] A film about fate that I haven’t seen, primarily because it stars the odious Gwyneth Paltrow.