No one remembers who fired the first shot, or when the first bomb fell.

But we do know one thing. In the moment when the war’s first scream was heard, there was no going back to the pretense of the peace that came before.

Most people nowadays like to say it was about the water. It’s the most obvious thing, to blame it all on the water. Too many mouths to quench and not enough water to drench us all, that sort of thing. At least, if potable water is your thing, and dying of dysentery and poisoning is not. A war of desperation, but at least one that has some semblance of logic, the kind that one might be able to understand.

It’s also the excuse with the easiest moral evasion. Its lofty idealism enables all the destruction that circled the water wagon (excuse the pun, dear friends), long before the wells and the rivers started drying up. But, it does at least soothe the palette, as much as a palette can be smoothed in the midst of broken bodies smeared with blood, right?

The water myth sure has its perks, yes? It comes with stories that there were glimpses of hope that could have satiated everyone. That there were contraptions in the works that would suck moisture from the clouds that were too enfeebled to yield rain, and mechanical monstrosities that would sever salt from the oceans that ate the roots of those crops that once were healthy enough to be called food.

These legends say that in almost the nick of time, technology nearly worked wonders for us all, the imaginations of geniuses temporarily on loan to practice an altruism that was incinerated in the first moments of civilization’s bloody slaughter. That magical feats of engineering almost replenished and healed the skies above, and the aquifers below, and the lakes and the distant seas that surround us, near and far.

Almost, but not quite! The water myth’s appeal is its sense of tragedy. For alas, despite all noble efforts to end all want forever, the bombs fell anyway. Which really defeated the whole purpose of fighting for the water, because the first thing that got destroyed beyond belief was the water that absorbed the lethal toxicity that was intended to kill the ‘enemy’. But in killing the water, everyone else was killed in the process!

So much for the pretense of to the victor, go the spoils!

Yes, these are nice ideas, all of these fables of grand gestures where humanity saves itself, it would seem. But they all are like the myths of those people who say that there was a time that people walked on the moon, that one time there was a missile that hit an asteroid to save us from cosmic death, that there had been a time where people convened together on a regular basis to talk about something called ‘God’.

Lots of people say lots of things, and there’s been no proof of any of it. At least if the reality of our everyday life is indicative of the true path of history’s narrative.

Too cynical a view of fellow humanity? All right, I will concede for a moment. It’s possible, though not probable, that before the war things were different. Most people are too young to know differently, and have only parroted the stuff that once was told to them by the generation who claims to have lived before it all.

That older generation who promulgated these stories of marvels and wonders? Who knows if they speak the truth of facts or that of wishes? For them, what they say is true for their souls in either event, giving them stories to nurse the despair of enfeeblement when battle is always awaiting to prey on those too exhausted to fight.

Have you heard some of the other stories that the older generations tell? They talk about fantasies of food popping out of those broken boxes of metal with buttons that they called ‘microwaves’, in a matter of minutes fully cooked. They talk of fresh produce on their plates from thousands of miles away, at a time now when to travel fifty miles in one lifetime is a near impossibility!

Besides the thing they call ‘God’, they talk about hearing voices telling them myths on other broken glass boxes, calling them ‘televisions’ and sometimes ‘TVs’. That they spent hours, sitting and looking at the glass screens! What a life that must have been, if only it were believable that these broken glass contraptions could do such magic!

One would have to imagine, if Logic Herself was even present for those past, that if the glory of gadgetry had been as magnificent as those who talk about their wonders claim, then why do we fight now for our very lives? If these imaginary magic toys were so wonderful, wouldn’t those who spent all this time looking at flat glass been able to know how to save the water, and for that matter everyone else, from certain death?

So no, my friend. I don’t believe the stories that people had magic toys to talk to strangers halfway around the planet while staying in one place. It is pure fancy that they dined on fruit that is only yielded on the rare occasion in the here and present by the remnant of weeping trees, flying in from far away for their convenience in those supposed good old days. It would seem that if they did have these things, would they not have secured the water first so that all could live? Is not the water the most important, and all things come later?

Have you seen the flying machines with falsetto wings that supposedly brought these luxuries from lands afar? I have myself, and when you look at them, I agree it is easy to get sidetracked. Seeing that awesomeness of what might be possible, it’s tempting to believe that once in life, machines such as these brought gifts and goodness to the people here down below on the planet’s surface. That there was a time when the civilization that now brought war to us actually was at one time, a marvel and a glory to all with promises and possibilities bursting like a death bomb over our heads before slicing into our bodies to gut us alive. It’s easy to feel that maybe at one time, these stories that are told actually were true. The premise is to be deluded into pretending mirages are paradise, and to be lulled into a submission that sweet tales that paint a wonderful picture are true.

However, we do know better, do we not? Consciousness is a mixed blessing that kills the dream, but one which wakes us up and calls us to attention.

We all know that the flying machines with falsetto wings are the ones who brought the war. We have seen the bombs themselves, but no fruit from far off lands that may or may not exist. I believe it is possible that the books that testify of these places may speak facts to truth. But only because I see the curve of the planet, and believe that if there are survivors here, there is no reason that survivors live elsewhere beyond the perimeter of what is possible.

Yet in the end, the books that claim testimony to these things are like the stories of those older generations. They remain unable to prove themselves besides fancy theories that let you believe something is true, if you tell yourself long enough that what they speak of actually exists. Such as, the soul of the water is why the battle eternally rages.

No, my friends. The water is scapegoat to the delusions of others, unable to speak facts to her truth when others do her bidding for her. More likely, the war’s inception is more primal yet more banal than any romantic notion such as the liquid that feeds and nourishes.

It is more likely that in order to have war outside one’s self, one must be at war within one’s self. We have seen for ourselves that true freedom does not lie with the delusional impulse to indulge our whims of bloodlust. That the greed to consume everything in front of us just because it is there renders the payment of our futures, and is a wolf’s disguise of freedom lurking as a vulture. That the war that came to us could only have existed because of one source.

It is this, and only this.

Those who were willing to slice their daggers were those who had first killed their souls with madness. Their insanity that they relished in was that those they disagreed with were nothing more than blemishes that needed extermination. This they died for, with rabid glee. Even as their blades rendered the same color blood as they possessed in their plunder of flesh, both of their perceived enemy and that of themselves.

For what is the purpose to kill a person in wasted blood, other than to suicide one’s own soul? That in the rabid desire for power by killing another, those afflicted now render themselves powerless and enslave themselves forever to violence? That freedom, if it does exist, asks each of us to allow those we pretend are above and those below are really mirrors of ourselves, those ones that require the very things we demand for ourselves?

My friends, in the end it doesn’t matter the excuses we yield for the genocide we now call home. The water? Well, we all know this that it is the best example of this pathetic reasoning, albeit the clearest one. We can always pretend that until the bombs fell, that peace ruled the earth. What a nice dream to hold onto to help one to live through life’s current weariness!

There is no way to know for sure who started the war, but it seems we are left to finish it. We have been caught in this net, my friend, you and me.

For the war started long before the bombs fell from flying machines with falsetto wings. It started the day when just enough of those who burned with murder outnumbered those who contained their internal war as a just war of true battles within their own impulses. Then the mirror held up to others was shattered, and the broken shards were used to bloodlet the scapegoat. All so the invaders could wipe the blood from their lips and from their hands, so they could manufacture their false innocence and say “All my actions are pure”.

We are war’s forever spawn, and the war never arrived. For it has always been here, burning a hole into our souls.