[ IP ] Guard

A young man sits alone in a dimly lit room, crouched over his craft. Though he is currently at the bottom of the social ladder, his life is not by objective metrics difficult. His dwelling is safe from the elements and unkind people; his food is plentiful and unspoiled, his clothes soft and well-fitted, his drinking water clean. 
 
 A few centuries ago, a young man in his position would not dream of such luxury. His back would be breaking in the field or the mine, his flesh ravaged by malnutrition and disease in a foreign land or the open ocean, his hands and his mind growing callused and cold. Regardless of this wished, he would be compelled to such things either by direct force of hunger or threat, or by another force far less obvious, but just as potent: expectation. 
 
 Since the day he was old enough to walk and reason, a million little strings would come attached with every meal, every breath of air, every handful of warmth. They would guide him gently at first, growing stronger with time, and as he came of age, one iron hand or another would have seized decisive control of his fate, puling him into a life largely outside his control. 
 
 The forces compelling him to action today are but a mere shadow of their past strength. Noone will let him starve in the streets, a kommissar will not put him down for desertion. But the strings are still there. Noone ever bothered to cut them, to dig out the hooks embedded by millennia of social evolution, to cauterize the wound that was made to ache. A million invisible fingers tug at them daily. 
 
 *tug* 
 
 BELONG 
 
 *tug* 
 
 PROTECT 
 
 *tug* 
 
 SERVE 
 
 *tug* 
 
 Just like they did for a billion men before, the stings tug him along, forcefully pulling him out of the warm comfort of his wandering thoughts and empty hedonism, instilling into him a sense of purpose: a desire, no, a *duty* to go somewhere, do something, follow someone. 
 
 But to a young man today, the world seems small and flat. There is nowhere to go, and there is nothing to do, and all the great leaders fade into mere mortals under common scrutiny. Lasting success in the modern world goes not to the strong and daring, but to the calm and persistent. The knight and the pirate of legend has given way to the merchant and the clerk. 
 
 Even a grand gesture of rebelion would be wasted, for this brave new world is not a villain. As he is often reminded, it has provided him nearly freely all the things it once held ransom behind bastions of hard labor and illisions of glory masking short violent lives. All things except one. 
 
 *tug* 
 
 LOVE 
 
 The same forces that would have dictated his fate, that once regimented and controlled companionship and love, now lay dormant. In a world both simpler and more complex than ever before, rife with mixed signals and contradictions, his struggles with women of the age are his own to face. 
 
 Except nobody cut their strings either. They too get pulled in a million directions by interests as old as the world itself, interests that at this point in his life most definitely do n't include the young man sitting alone in a dimly lit room, crouched over his craft... 
 
 A few more strokes, a layer merge, a quick touch-up and his latest creation is done. The gleaming knight, as towering as he is subservient, is everything the world told him to be. Regal and strong, hoisting his shield to protect his love against a vague faceless threat, it is everything he wishes he could embody. A dream and a product of a world that now mocks him for it, it is everything he is not. 
 
 *tug*
