Corina, Silkat and the pirates

   She left all of her clothes by the shore and the slowly entered the water. The sunrays coming from both suns toasted her skin but it was not necessary because Corina already had the most beautiful skin, which she completely submerged into the ocean after a while. She felt the water cooling down her body and a certain peace of mind that she hadn’t felt in quite a while. She swam from one of the big rocks in the beach to the other. The water was not very deep and it was very clear, so much that you could perfectly see if anyone or anything was too close to you.

 Corina stopped swimming after a while and went back to the beach where she sat down on the sand, leaving her feet in the water. She had wanted to do that for so long. She had been very stressed lately and just needed to relax a while. She worked very far from there, as a nurse. Silkat was one more of the many new colonies, so she didn’t really have a lot of people to handle back in the infirmary, but Corina was ok with that too. Even with a few people coming in, she was glad to help and to learn.

 Her thoughts were interrupted when she saw something in the water. Instinctively, she stood up, stepping away from the water. The water moved again by one of the rocks and it was then she saw it: it was a medium sized creature, swimming very slowly, with not a lot of grace. Corina couldn’t tell if the creature was violent or not but she didn’t move any more than she had. She just waited to see if the creature came closer or if it was just passing by.

 The creature then jumped out of the water and landed almost in front of Corina. She almost screamed but covered in her mouth in time. She realized screaming to a creature that was double her size would not be a very smart thing. The creature looked like some old pictures Corina had seen as a little girl in storybooks. It resembled a lot to what her parents called a seal but this one was larger and its husks were smaller and its skin was light blue. And the end of its flippers, it had something like fingers.

 The creature walked towards Corina and she decided not to move. Even if she had wanted to, she wouldn’t have been able to do so because she was very scared. She even forgot for a while that she was stark naked in the middle of a beach she had just found. The creature slowly walk (maybe it had something like human feet, too) and then raised its “hands” and touched Corina.

She almost screamed but she was surprised to realize the creature was nice and warm and its skin had a nice thing about it, it felt good. It was like its skin had the power to make you feel better. Somehow, she saw the creature’s face form something like a smile and Corina responded with the same. So she had found a friend.

 Corina was about to touch the creature when something loud broke the peace of the beach. The creature apparently felt it just before because it moved quickly back into the water. Corina stumbled to the ground and saw how two men came out of the wilderness by the beach and started shooting something at the creature. It was obvious they weren’t trying to kill it but they were hurting him somehow. The men got near her and she tried to get to her clothes but another men, that she hadn’t seen, blocked her way. When she tried to run the other way, she found another men.

 The creature was caught inside a huge net that appeared to hum, like a bee. It was probably taking its energy in order to control the animal’s strength. The creature complained for a while, but then it stopped making sounds. It had died or maybe fallen asleep. As for Corina, one of the men was holding her and the other one was smelling her clothes and then threw it all to the water. They pushed her into the wilderness and made her walk for a while until they reached the water again but this time there was a boat and they made her go into it.

 Silkat was made of many islands, both big and small. They were no big continents like in other planets. The island on which Corina met the creature was next to a bigger one, where a small town called Pazu was located. The pirates, the men that took her with them, probably used another island as their hideout.

 They tied Corina’s hands with a thick rope and she was able to see that the creature was being transported on another boat, behind hers. She wondered what they were going to do with her. She looked at them and saw only men so she remembered the tales that some of the woman in Pazu had told her. They said that Silkat was not very advanced and that men ruled life in here. It wasn’t like in the rest of civilized planets. Silkat was still in the Stone Age, in that sense and also in many others.

 They reached another island when the sun was setting and they put Corina in a cage made of a strong wood. She would stay there for days, never to see the creature again. She wondered if it had been killed or if had another use for them besides food. It was very classic of her to worry about others when her own situation was not the best. She decided she wouldn’t fight unless she had a clear shot at escaping.

 But that opportunity didn’t present itself the first year. She remained on that cage for many months until they decided to put a collar on her and then make her work for them. They threatened her to activate the bomb on the collar if she ever did something wrong or if she tried to escape, so Corina had no choice but to bare with everything those men did to her. They touched her a lot, like an object of their property. They made her cook for them and also clean their boats and their clothes. She was a slave. They never gave her anything to put on her body except that collar but she didn’t really care because the weather had gotten somehow hotter.

 Every single night, when they stopped harassing her and she could just lay down on her cage, she looked up to the stars and wondered if someone was missing her at all. Maybe the people of Pazu were looking for her, although that was unlikely because she didn’t feel the town was too far. If they had been searching, they would have found her. And her family and friends abroad, they probably had no idea that she had vanished so long ago.

 Some days, most of the pirates left and left her to do her chores almost on her own, only one bodyguard with the activator on his belt. But even so she just couldn’t get herself to steal from him. She didn’t think she could win in a fight. Besides, every single day she felt less like a human been. It was as if they were draining her energy very slowly, second by second. She recalled the net they had thrown over the poor creature and how it made it weaker.

 The other thing was that she worked so hard, in so many ways, that when she was left alone she could only think about sleeping. Corina had stopped wanting real food after she realized the men treated her like a pet and just threw whatever they weren’t going to eat to her: some bones with very little meat on them, hard flat bread and some rotten fruits from the nearby trees. So she preferred to dream. And those dreams she asked, way to often, to be killed or to die fast.

 One day, after almost two years, she saw most of the pirates coming back as she was cleaning their clothes by the shore. Then, some of their boats exploded and she could hear gunfire. She tried to take a better look but her eyes weren’t what they were anymore. She could only see there were other boats there and that the fight was savage. Then, she felt someone stand behind her. It was a woman, fully clothed, with the activator on her hand. She pressed the button and Corina thought her death had come.

 But it didn’t. The activator was actually a deactivator. The pirates had never wanted to kill her. As the woman that rescued her told her some days later, “They need their slaves”. She was dragged into another boat and brought into civilization were she was cured and then asked if she wanted to remain on Silkat or if she wanted to be transferred. She thought about it for a whole day before realizing she wanted to stay to help build that society, to make those men realize they couldn’t do what they had done to her. She wanted the universe to be fair.

Men as monsters

   Inoctium was the name of the compound that they had invented in the lab. It had many properties that a normal human would have deemed incredible and many of those who had been involved in the project thought exactly that. Many had wanted to leave the project before it was finalized but that wasn’t possible, as no one wanted any leaks or stolen information. It was obvious that any foreign power, anyone to be honest, would love to have their hands on such a potentially disastrous little element. So very few knew about its existence and another handful thought it was just an urban legend and that no one would be so stupid to create something so incredibly dangerous, although good in every way too.

  Only a small amount had been created but what had amazed the creators was what that small quantity could do. It was an alchemist’s dream as it had the capacity of transforming anything into platinum, one of the most expensive metals in the world. It could also be used to manipulate magnetic fields so many objects had been created around it to transform the world, as we know it. But of course, all of those objects, like flying devices and many military weapons, had not come out to the world yet. The committee that had approved tests to create the compound, finally decided to cancel the whole thing altogether and ordered the inoctium to be destroyed in the act and not a single thread of evidence to be left around. The reactions were varied but it wasn’t like they could say anything to prevent it.

 Nevertheless, the destruction never took place. And that was simply because the inoctium behave almost as if it was a living creature, a very strong and resilient creature. It couldn’t be destroyed. They tried every single corrosive agent, viruses, alloys, even small bombs but nothing seemed to do anything to it. The only real difference they detected was that the amount of inoctium had somehow grown larger. The committee, after hearing the results of the attempts to kill the thing, decided to keep it away from every single human forever. It was sent to a nuclear waste disposal facility, where the deepest chamber had been redesigned to contain even the largest explosion. The inoctium was placed there, under several locks, security and around several amounts of nuclear waste.

 Its creators never forgot about it. They felt it was their baby, their proudest moment as scientists. But they knew it was dangerous so they never spoke about the inoctium, ever again. The files that had been created around it had all been destroyed and their lab was dismantled. Thirty years passed and no one dared to go back to those dark times. That was until the day Yucca mountain, the place were the inoctium rested, exploded in a massive way. A whole was opened in the desert and some small towns were in the way; the earthquake that was generated wiped them out. It was the biggest disaster involving anything nuclear and scientists couldn’t explain what happened.

But the creators of the inoctium, a group of only six people, knew exactly what had happened. They had warned the government against burying the compound in a place were other chemicals and elements were kept but no one heard then and no heard after the explosion, mainly because only a handful of government officials knew about inoctium and they were all close to retirement. The president didn’t believe a word that he heard, thinking that if such a powerful thing existed, the past governments would have used to finally impose the country on the world. Maybe that was what he would have done but it wasn’t what had happened. The team knew that the explosion had a cause but no one would believe them.

 Two of them, who had married and had children, decided to try and recreate the process that had created the inoctium but they failed horribly, dying in another explosion, less massive but also a tragedy. Only the two of them died, so the other four members of the team knew what had happened. They insisted on talking to the president, they wanted to explain to him how it all worked for him to understand but he just wouldn’t listen. Word had it that he was trying to blame the explosion on some terrorist group or another country, so he could get a hand on their resources. This president was not like the other who hid their intentions; he didn’t care for those who were ashamed of what had to be done, according to him.

  The team reunited with other experts and tried for them to understand what was going on and how they should prevent anyone from mishandling what was left of the compound on the site of the explosion. If the wrong person got there first or if someone mishandled the inoctium, something even more awful could happen. The scientific community was much more receptive than the government, mainly because the four remaining members of the team had time to explain how they had created the compound and what were its properties. By doing so they were going against the law and against every single paper they had to sign the day the inoctium project was shut down. But lives had been lost and they couldn’t afford to allow more to happen.

 Nevertheless, the scientific community was very divided. Some, like the government, thought the four scientists were insane old people that needed to be in a retirement home and not talking to anyone about science. Others believe some parts but the properties of the inoctium were the thing that put them in high doubt. And other believed them, mainly because they had worked on similar projects before that had ended in failure. Despite that, they felt it was possible to do what they had tried to do back then. So the team got some support and tried again to contact the government, with no more success than before. It was announced, a few days after, that the country had concluded the explosion to be a terrorist attack.

  For the members of the team, it was a tragedy when they saw the images of tanks and planes attacking some country on the other side of the world. The government had declared them guilty of harboring terrorists and claimed that they should be brought to justice. What was obvious after a few days though, was the fact that every suspect they found was killed. No one was apprehended. In a few days that nation had fallen and occupation began, like it had happened before elsewhere. Of course, every single company prepared their luggage and landed in the destroyed country to set up business, weather it was security related or minerals related. Anyway, the world had lost another piece and scientists weren’t closer to prove anything.

So they decided to disobey in the most visible way possible: they would get the proper equipment and then travel to Nevada, were the explosion had taken place, to illegally enter the site and see for themselves if the inoctium had been destroyed or not. Many fellow scientists helped them prepare and get the equipment and it took them only a week to be prepared and leave for the desert. They had brought weapons too because this time they weren’t going to be just scientist but also madmen, even if there was a women among them. When they got to Nevada, they started doing vigilance on the site, which was very heavily guarded. Fortunately, they were able to get a military drone from one of its makers and used it.

 The drone discovered that the site was not only a whole on the ground as it had been portrayed in the media. The truth was that they had built several building around the explosion site and the crater created had been covered by a white fabric, which looked like plastic, or something like it. They didn’t get to see or know more as the drone was shot down and by the military, who were the ones guarding the place. The scientists had controlled it remotely so no one knew it had been them watching but they decided to head for Las Vegas, to think about their next step. The news had changed their headlines from “Patriotic war” to “Our heroes triumphed” showing military man “guarding” the streets of a ravaged town.

 The team knew they just couldn’t get into the site as no one would allow them to and another drone would be even more dangerous, because then they would really be in the eye of the storm. They didn’t know what to do, what to think of it all. Because of them, because of what they had done so many years ago, people were dying every day. That fake war and the explosion were a symptoms of a cancer that had to be taken out. And although the government was also another disease, it was preferable to deal with the inoctium first. They planned to seek help from the opposition to the president and to the war and try to get international help from scientists around the world, willing to speak on their behalf.

   But when the war on the other side of the world expanded and spilled onto other countries, the scientists were rendered mute. Because on one morning in august, people around the world got to see the most incredible and most horrible thing in the world: the military had used the inoctium against other. They had seized it and created weaponry with it. Easily, the world started to crumble and people, for the first few seconds, were all without a voice. They couldn’t believe they were seeing the end of their world on their TV and computer screens. And many wouldn’t get to see the real end, further ahead.

Creatures of the Blast

   The place was dead silent, which made Lina smile. It was weird to be in such a building with that overwhelming silence. It was a bit scary but also kind of freeing. The place was enormous and it offered great possibilities to explore.

 She knew that the city had been vacated by its inhabitants many years ago and everything had been left just as it was back then, when they all stopped doing what they were doing, work or school, shopping or exercising, to leave the city they had been living for so many years.

 Lina checked her oxygen tank and saw everything was working according to plan. She had the impulse of checking it every few seconds, thinking she might be contaminated if she wasn’t careful. But the air, as she investigated with a rod-like apparatus, was not as polluted as they had thought. Of course, she couldn’t just remove the mask and start breathing. That would’ve been a very stupid thing to do.

 This city had been the victim of a nuclear attack. Well, not the city properly but a military base located about fifty kilometers to the south. The winds that day were gentle so the city was washed in chemical residue, but it was contaminated anyway. People had time to take shelter because, after all, it had been war and the government had installed an audio system to alert the population of an incoming attack.

 They were all certain it was going to come. They had no doubt of that. The military base, as everyone in the country knew by now, had been used to launch several drone attacks on several targets and it was obvious it was a prime target for their enemies. But they had also thought it would come in the form of a bombardment, setting the city and everything around it on fire.

 But that didn’t happen. Well, not like that anyway. The nuclear blast tore down every major building although some lower ones still stood, as if defying that act of war. Lina had entered one of them, against the wishes of the leader of her group. She felt she had to enter, as it had been the one were people had not been able to escape. It was a television studio building and they had stayed behind to report. So they died, doing their job.

 Lina gathered a few flowers and put them on top of a big rock, which seemed to have being part of something else. She said a short prayer and then left the place. It was probably not very safe to stand beneath a building that sounded like it would collapse in any second. But she had an impulse and had to attend to it.

 When walking through the streets, back to her ATV vehicle, she noticed something strange. She had already felt eyes on her during her stroll around the city, but now she was certain something had been lurking next to her, all the way from the building to her transport. She started to sweat, but tried to relaxed and attributed it to the sun, that was very bright and no clouds stopped it rays from reaching the ground.

 She got to the ATV but then she felt movement behind her. She ducked just in time to avoid being hit by what looked like a very big and hairy black dog. Or maybe it was a wolf. It seemed enraged; his eyes red and his teeth yellow and covered in white foam.  It looked at her and she tried not to move to suddenly. If maybe she was able to get on top of her ATV… But the creature looked at her, already in position to jump again.

 Just when Lina’s thought raced to have a solution for the problem, the wolf creature howled to the sun. That was very strange to see, as the throat and in general all the body of the creature, seemed to crack and move horribly as he howled to the skies. It was as if it was the last thing he would be able to do. Effectively, he dropped dead, or so it seemed, seconds later. Lina didn’t look at it for a second. She jumped into the ATV and raced through the streets back to the compound at the other side of the forest that was used as a natural border of the city.

 All the way back, she still felt she was being followed. But it didn’t matter. She just pressed harder for full throttle, sweating like crazy. The ATV jumped on branches and tree roots when arriving at the forest. She couldn’t stop there but then a large creature jump in front and, stupidly, she pressed the brakes. That action made her body flies several meters over the forest ground, landing loudly on mossy soil, which was very fortunate.

 Her back hurt a lot but she stood up fast, limping. She realized she had twisted her ankle but that was not important. The camp was too close to stop now. She walked for a few meters to a tree and looked around. Her ATV was apparently unharmed but she couldn’t see the creature that had crossed her path.

 It seemed to her that this one was larger that the wolf she had seen in the city. This shadow was larger, more ominous. She regretted pushing the brakes because it was clear she could have continued with no problem. The shadow had only crossed in front of her, clearly not trying to knock her down. It did it miss?

A growl. Lina was already leaning on the ATV when she heard it, if she could, she would have screamed. The creature came out from among some tall bushes, by two thick oaks that appeared kilometers high. This one wasn’t a wolf but, like that one, it was looking right at her. She moved because her injured foot was hurting too bad. This did not seem like a good idea as the creature growled louder, visibly annoyed.

 It was a horrible animal, if that was what that thing was. It walked on four legs but rather clumsily, as it had not yet learned to do it properly. Differently to a dog or a lion, its knees were thicker but its body was as covered in fur as much as any other creature of the woods. It moved towards Lina, who tried not to make a sound but that proved difficult as fear was making her move all her weight right on top of her injured foot.

 The creature moved closer and, oddly enough, seemed to clam more and more as it came into contact with the woman. It sniffed her and she felt her odor: it was disgusting. It reeked of blood and spit and dirt. She tried hard but her body shook like mad. She inevitably collapsed to the ground and thought the creature would know attack. But she was wrong.

 For some reason, the strange animal stood there, looking at her, as she was the most interesting thing it had ever seen. This relaxed Lina a bit who looked straight into the eyes of the animal. Somehow, she knew it was a male, something was clear about it. She couldn’t see her genitalia, to be honest it did not seemed to have any, but she just felt he was a male.

 Against anything she knew was sane, she stretch one of her arms forward, very slowly. The creature was not scared by this act. In fact, it almost ignored it. But that was until Lina moved her fingers, trying to reach his head to stroke it. The woman now had all its attention. The creature and her appeared to be blocked by an invisible filed, about to be broken by Lina’s hand.

 And then it happened. For a single second, she saw something in the creature. She actually saw it all, as a whole. And she understood. She pulled her hand back and the creature roared. Then, a whistling noise was heard and the creature dropped unconscious.

 It had been Robertson, the leader of Lina’s group. He stood by a tree, with two others, and a rifle on his hands. He had shot a tranquilizer to the creature. They walked towards her and Robertson rode her ATV with her. It was a short journey to the camp but she needed to tell him before anyone else knew.

-       Jay...

-       Yeah?

-       That creature…

-       He’ll be fine.

-       He’s a human, Jay.

 He couldn’t look at her as they were just arriving to the main tent but he was visibly unsettled by this discovery.

Wasteland

   They had been walking for at least two hours, without taking a break or dropping the rhythm of their movement. They were only four people, all dirty on the faces, their clothes a bit ragged, their shoes all broken. The group kept on walking until they reached a group of large rocks, enough for them to hide from anyone coming from any direction. Inside the rock group there was sort of a clearing and a soft surface. They finally stopped walking, dropping their bodies hard against the rock.

They were two men, both around thirty years old, a woman of the same age and a child about ten years old. They all rested, laying down like starfish on the hard surface. It was late in the afternoon, so the shadow made by the rocks was perfect to avoid being toasted by the sunlight. One the men opened a backpack he had being holding. He extracted a water bottle and took a sip. He gave it to the others, who drank hastily, as if thy knew they wouldn’t have the chance to drink any liquids again

No one spoke, maybe because they wanted to keep their few energies to use them on something more worth it or maybe because there was nothing to be talking about. The truth was both reasons were accurate. What could you say when you’ve seen so many people killed, when you’ve escaped death by nothing more than a few seconds? Nothing, that’s what. The group lay down and didn’t move until it was almost night. It was the two men who got out of the small clearing, into the terrain outside.

It was clear they were in a desert or at least near one. The rocky surface on which they stood was covered, in some parts, by a thin layer of sand and other bright particles. One of the men, the taller one, went to the edge of the rock formation and stared at the horizon: he couldn’t see any light except the first stars appearing on the sky. He sighed in relief as that meant no one had followed them. The reason was of no interest; as long as they were safe the reasons could wait to be known.

The other man, some centimeters shorter, climbed the rocks steadily but making a sort of a grin as he did it. It was clear he was in pain, as with each step he let some air out. When he reached the top of that smooth hill, he was suddenly victim of a cough attack, in part because of what he had seen. He hit his chest a bit to clear his throat as he raises his head and so a never-ending desert past the hill. It wasn’t far at all and seemed to be larger than any ocean that the man had ever seen. This was good and bad, as it was a safe escape route but only because they exchanged a few dangers for other ones.

He turned around and joined the taller man. As he neared him, he realized the other one was crying. He wasn’t bothering to swipe the tears out of his face. He just crouched in the spot and cried in silence, staring at the horizon, which was now pitch black. The shorter one kneeled besides him and hugged him and kissed him on the cheek. Again, they didn’t say a word. This time too it was highly unnecessary to talk as everything they had gone through was beyond any word invented by men.

Some time afterwards, they penetrated the big boulders and found the woman and child sleeping. They looked at each other once and decided to join the others in the floor for a sleep. It took them almost an hour to feel the drowsy and to finally fall asleep. When they woke up the next morning, it seemed to be early still, as a cold wind blew over them. The shorter man stepped out of the boulders and took another look at their surroundings. Then, the first words spoken in that place for many years were heard:

Hunter! TO THE DESERT!

It took them only a couple of seconds to wake up and run out. They all stared at the horizon, were a cloud of dust could be seen, nearing the rocky hill they were standing in. It was clear their pursuers were still after them, restless. The shorter man turned around and walked uphill. They all followed fast. When they reached the top, they had to run down the other side. This had to be careful as many small rocks covered the hill. The woman actually fell and was helped up fast.

Once they reached the sandy bottom of the hill, they started to run, straight to the heart of the desert. It was difficult to run on sand, as it didn’t allow them to progress a lot. Nevertheless, they did it as if their lives depended on it and, actually, that was precisely true. As they ran more and more into the desert, they were all thinking exactly the same: they knew the hunters had no intention of entering that place as they knew people always died in there, never coming out on any side of the gigantic sea of sand.

But that was precisely the advantage they thought they had over the hunters. They were too busy hunting easier targets and chasing someone through a desert was not really worth it if they thought the desert and its lack of everything could kill them faster than they could. So when an hour had passed and the small group was already exhausted, they looked back for a moment: the hunters were at the edge of the desert, on a jeep, and appeared to be thinking what to do. Then, they did something no one thought they would ever do: they got out a missile launcher and pointed in their direction. Now, it was the tall guy who yelled:

RUN! RUN!

And they did but the missile had already been launched. It hit the soft desert surface and blew sand everywhere, forming a small storm in the spot. They were all thrown forward, over some small dunes and hitting the sand hard. The jeep turned around and the hunters left, as the small group began to regroup. The short guy had been spared of any injury but as he ran to the tall one, he realized he had been lucky. The other man lied in the ground, panting. His right arm had been burned, from elbow to shoulder.

The kid was crying, not far. He looked good, not injured besides some scratches. But it was the woman that did not seem very well. She was panting too but wasn’t sitting or standing up. She coughed and the kid screamed. The short guy neared him and realized the woman was very badly injured: one arm and one leg were broken. Her face had been badly burned and, as they look at her, she stopped breathing. The kid had stopped his crying but resumed it once he realized what had happened. The thing here was she wasn’t his mother but had acted like one for many days.

The tall guy had crawled next to them, just as the other one had closed the woman’s eyes. Again, he spoke very softly, as if he didn’t want to disturb the woman’s peace.

We have to bury her beneath the sand. Vultures won’t be long.

And he was right because, as they excavated the sand and put the body in there, several shadows began to circle them from above. When they finished, the birds landed close by, as if they needed to verify if there was a dead body among them. They had covered her in a lot of sand and hoped no storm would uncover the body. They didn’t mind the birds as they started walking through the desert, now slower than before.

When night fell, they sat close from one another and tried to light a fire with a lighter and some paper they had on the backpack but they weren’t successful at all. The cold was awful and only the kid fell asleep fast, surely because he was so tired. The short man decided to clean the other’s wound with a bit of water and told him, whispering to his ear, that he would need to get the burnt skin scraped of to let new skin grow. He agreed and stood up instantly. The kid didn’t felt as they walked away, behind a dune. The short guy moistened the paper he had tried to set on fire and advised the tall guy to bite something. He took of a shoe and put it in his mouth.

The screams could have woken a whole town, or so it seemed. But no one was near to hear it. The kid woke up but didn’t move, deciding to stare at the stars and remembering his family and all that had happened before then. As he heard the disheartening screams, he realized he didn’t remember his mother nor is father or any other relatives. He felt he had been running for years but realized that couldn’t be true. He fell asleep realizing he heard nothing anymore and feeling alone and hopeless.

Behind the dune, the two men were hugging. The arm had been properly scraped and it bled a bit. The man held it high as he had his nose in the other man’s hair. Then, in a raspy and sad voice, he said:

What are we going to do? – He sighed. Tears filling his eyes – I’m tired…

The other one gave him a gentle kiss on the lips and cleaned his eyes of tears.

We’ll keep living. They won’t finish us. We’re not dead yet.

And then they hugged tighter and the pain on the man’s arm wasn’t as strong as the one in his heart and soul.