Metal Gear Solid: Guns of the Patriot (47 page)

“Does that mean,” Snake asked, “the mutant strain won’t cause an epidemic?”

“The mutant strain will only live as long as you do. But even then, the process will just repeat itself. One day, the new FOXDIE will start to mutate and become a new threat. That is … if you manage to live that long.”

Suddenly the strength left Big Boss’s legs. His sudden weight caught Snake by surprise, who let go. Big Boss fell to his hands and knees and let out a feeble groan. His right hand clawed at his chest as if to scrape out his heart.

The virus had recognized Big Boss and went to work on the cells that kept his heart going.
Apoptosis
. The swarm of molecular machines went from cell to cell, spreading their falsehoods:
It’s time for you to die now. Your work is over.

Feeling as if he were watching his own death, Snake said, “Am I going to die?”

This is my future
. Snake projected himself onto his original. Before his eyes, a man with his body and his face was dying. Snake felt as if he were having a near-death experience. Many who had been to death’s door reported the sensation of floating above themselves, watching their body die.

This man was Snake’s original, and a large and inescapable part of his life.

This man’s death was Snake’s death.

Possibly sensing Snake’s fear, Big Boss lifted his head and said, “Everyone dies. You can’t stop it. You can’t run away from it. This is your notice.”

Big Boss seemed to be telling him,
That’s right, this is your death, whether it will come like this or not. There’s nothing bad about seeing someone die who looks like you.

To attend the death of a loved one is to have a practice run at your own. Mental images avoided through normal life are shown to you inescapably. And you’re left to face the question:

How will you use the life you have left?

As if to drive home to Snake the significance of his own death, Big Boss put it in words.

“Don’t waste the time you have left fighting.”

Having somehow fought back the pain, Big Boss again borrowed Snake’s shoulder and began to walk. He felt heavier now, weaker than before.

“I’ve never thought of you as a son.”

Snake grinned, obviously thinking,
Yeah, and I’ve never thought of you as a father.
Until a short while ago, Snake had only regarded the man as the original source of his genes and as a longtime foe.

“But I’ve always respected you as a soldier … and as a man. If you’d been in my place back then, maybe you wouldn’t have made the same mistakes I did.”

And Big Boss accepted Snake—as the man who had surpassed him. As the man whom he, along with The Boss and Zero, had created, and who had overturned the world he had wrongly brought about. Though he might never have considered Snake his son, he respected Snake as a person. What could that be if not a father’s praise for his son?

The man who had set everything right—all his sins, all his unfinished duties—was a man of his own blood.

“On the day I killed The Boss with my own hands, my own life ended.”

Walking ever more slowly, the two men at last reached The Boss’s grave. Big Boss removed himself from Snake’s shoulder and slumped weakly to his knees. The words on the tombstone,
IN MEMORY OF A PATRIOT WHO SAVED THE WORLD
, struck deep into his regret.

“Boss … you were right,” Big Boss said, as if at confession, then spread out his elbows and gave a military salute. “It’s not about changing the world. It’s about doing our best to leave the world the way it is. It’s about respecting the will of others … and believing in your own. Isn’t that what you fought for?”

Big Boss’s heart was filled with regret, yet to have reached this place filled him with the greatest joy. This was the joy The Boss had understood; this was the joy she believed valuable enough to give her life for. Big Boss had taken a long road to get here, but finally, in the cemetery where he faced the end of his own life, he had been able to see.

“At last,” he said, “I understand the meaning behind what you did. At last, I understand the truth behind your courage.”

Using the last of his strength, Big Boss rose to his feet, still in salute—his proof to her that he understood. She had been a true patriot. She loved her country, but was never driven by present national interests. She had been intent on protecting her own identity, such as it was, and never looked down upon other countries or their peoples.

She loved not only the country of her birth, but the world as a whole.

That was something that Zero—and the Patriots—had never been able to accomplish. They were unable to believe in the wills of others, or themselves, and their fear manifested in the memes that expanded relentlessly, and in the narrative that used, exploited, and controlled.

But that had all ended. The country she wanted, the world she envisioned, could now be built by the next generation, and the last one wouldn’t be around to see it. The past might yet repeat itself. Chains might again be discovered to deny love and forgiveness.

But hope always remained. Sometimes where you least expected it.

“It’s almost time for me to go,” he said.

Big Boss lowered his salute and faced the warrior and last remaining Snake. For Big Boss, Snake had been that hope. Many times he had confronted Snake as an adversary, thinking him an agent of the Patriots. But in the end, Snake had freed the world from Zero’s curse. And not just Snake, but Liquid and Solidus; hadn’t each fought the Patriots in their quests for their own freedom?

Their wills had not perished. Their stories had not disappeared. Hadn’t the seeds of father and brothers taken root in Solid Snake? Hadn’t they ultimately achieved the freedom they staked their lives to grasp?

The only task that remained was for Big Boss to fade away.

A task only he could do.

“With me, the last ember of this fruitless war dies out. And at last those old evils will be gone. Once the source of evil returns to zero, a new one—a new future—will be born.”

Big Boss held out his hand, the gesture a farewell, an expression of gratitude, a declaration of peace to end a prolonged battle, and an order from a commanding officer.

“That new world is yours to live in. Not as a snake, but as a man.”

Snake recalled the day he first met this man. It was the initiation ceremony to FOXHOUND. As the unit’s commander, Big Boss walked down the line of new recruits and shook each soldier’s hand.
The battle you face
, he had said,
is a war unlike any before.
None will tell of your successes, or failures, or even deaths.

But know this. Whatever your battles, whether ordered by me or by country, each of you have been chosen. You who stand here today know no life but combat. In a way, you should be pitied. But these battles are not to be given to just anyone. You are not tools of the government or anyone. You fight for yourselves and to protect the things you hold dear.

Always fight by your own will.

Protect what you can’t bear to lose.

No one else can fight that battle for you.

Frank’s last message to Snake, pinned beneath REX’s foot, had been Big Boss’s words at the start of it all. Snake smiled scornfully at himself for not having made the connection sooner.

Snake hadn’t shaken Big Boss’s hand since that ceremony, and as he did so now, he felt a sense of completion. In the future, an unknown world awaited.

Suddenly, Big Boss collapsed. Snake, responding quickly, caught him mid-fall. For a brief moment, their faces brushed against one another. Big Boss’s cheek was terribly cold, and Snake reflexively recoiled. He had felt the life draining from Big Boss’s body.

The pain seemed to worsen with each new breath.

But he still had more to say. From the pit of his stomach, Big Boss struggled to squeeze out his voice. He couldn’t allow himself to die without saying it.

“Know this … Zero and I, Liquid and Solidus, we all fought a long, bloody war to be free. We fought to free ourselves from the limitations of nations, systems, norms, and ages. But no matter how hard we tried, the only liberty we found was on the inside … trapped within those limits. The Boss and I may have chosen different paths, but in the end, we were both trapped inside the same cage. But you … you have been given freedom. Freedom to be outside.”

Big Boss gasped painfully for air. Snake gently lowered him to the ground. Snake gently put his hand on Big Boss’s side and guided the dying man’s back to lean against The Boss’s gravestone.

“You are nobody’s tool now,” Big Boss said. “No one’s toy. You are no longer a prisoner of fate. You are no longer a seed of war.”

Big Boss fondly recalled the anger he’d felt, rising up from the pit of his stomach, when he learned that the Snakes had been born. He had reviled his children. He hated the clones born in defiance of his will and without his permission. That they were raised and used as agents of the Patriots to defile The Boss’s will made the hate only stronger.

But how about it? In the end, wasn’t it those clones who lifted the curse Big Boss placed upon himself? He owed this man much. If his death would repay any of those debts, then he would gladly go.

“It’s time for you to see the outside world with your own eyes. Your body … your soul … are your own. Forget about us. Live … for yourself. You need not be bound to me any longer, David.”

Big Boss’s words seemed an apology.
I’m sorry it took me so long. I’m sorry I shackled you so long. Yet few are able to live their own lives. Especially as the Patriots had people of the whole world within their grasp. Your future—that’s your real life. Though it may be short, you get to live, and I envy you.

“And find a new lease on life.”

Big Boss pulled a cigar from his pocket. His trembling hand delivered the tobacco to his lips, then found his lighter, only to fall slack on the way back up. He was slipping into unconsciousness. His deep, ragged breaths from when he leaned on Snake’s shoulder had become faint, and the slight rising and falling of chest and stomach could only be seen if searched for.

The cigar dropped from his mouth. His eyelids dropped, and he prepared himself to accept that which would soon come.

“Boss,” he said, “you only need one snake. No … you don’t need any snakes.”

A transparent tear formed at the corner of one closed eyelid, followed his cheek down, and fell to the white stars-of-Bethlehem. Snake retrieved the cigar, returned it to Big Boss’s lips, and lit it with the lighter. He caught a bit of the trailing smoke and coughed. Big Boss lifted his eyelids a tiny fraction and watched Snake softly cough.

Snake was his son, his brother, a soldier under his command, and an enemy.

To him, Snake’s presence was complex and multifaceted. But now the many sides of Snake converged into one. Whatever anyone thought, wasn’t that enough? Whether to dream of having a child. Whether to have another in the world who could take over his will. We are such stuff as dreams are made on, someone once said.

This dream, this hope, did not belong to the Patriots, and it did not belong to The Boss. This was his own. As was the coming death.

“This is good,” he said. “Isn’t it?”

The cigar fell.

As Big Boss’s last breaths faded, Snake remained at his side.

Snake watched the white petals dance through the air.
They’re like stars
, he thought. The Boss had been to space. How much like this view was what she saw beyond the earth?

When Sunny asked me to write you my story—to write about the feelings that came to me then, the despair I felt, and the hope—I hesitated a little.

I remembered everything, but I feared I couldn’t do a good job telling such a sweeping tale woven by so many people. I never was much at talking. Even when Sunny introduced me to you, I was at a loss.

But, Uncle Hal
, Sunny kept after me.
Tell Snake’s story. Tell your story. I want the person I chose to spend my life with to know everything about me. I want him to know how amazing were the people who raised me.