Rex Mundi and the stupid little bird

Well, this is nicer than I thought it would be, I thought to myself.
He smiles broadly, a friendly face, not too handsome, he's not trying to tempt me or awe me.
'Glad you like it, we've just had it done. You here about Gaza?'
He searches my face as I try to think of an answer. Truth to tell, I wasn't expecting the subject to be broached so early.
'Of course you are,' he answers himself, 'there's a fair few visiting about that. I open the doors you know, just as I did with Ukraine and so many others you don't know about. There are times when it's basically open house around here.'
'You mean war,' I say, fumbling, so many questions I haven't shaped because I didn't think access would be this easy, or indeed possible at all. 'But didn't C.S. Lewis point out the uses of war for Good as well as Evil?'
His smile flickers for a minute and we are in the throne room, gilded and brilliant, where he sits and I stand.
'No point coming here if you're going to quote the moral musings of a murderer,' he says.
'What, Screwtape?' I'm puzzled. I've read The Letters a few times, horrible though he is, Screwtape doesn't murder anyone.
'Clive,' a moment's amused impatience from the Prince. 'What do you think he did in the Great War? Run a burger van?'
Plenty of meat for it, whispers a voice round the now gloomy hall, dark but glittering with diamonds. The two of them laugh. Others join in. It doesn't surprise me, I know there are lots of him, but it is disturbing. I wait, trying to collect my thoughts, but all my questions have disappeared and all I know is that I really don't want to be here.
'Gaza,' he prompts. 'Don't get nervous now, little bird, you were very stupid to fly here in the first place, but now you're here, ask your questions.'
Thinking of anguished commentary from friends; 'Civilisation hasn't been a successful project...The monsters - so called world leaders who use weaponry to kill fellow beings in thousands...demons...killers...Please, a ceasefire, please a settlement, please...'
He holds up his hands. 'Nothing to do with me, this is all human, always was. I just committed the sin of seeing it and saying it. Maybe you're committing that sin too.' Something chuckles behind me. 'Anyway,' he cocks his head at me. 'These aren't your words, not your questions. What do you want to ask me?'

Realising I lost the thread, I struggle to look for it, on the floor, maybe a chalked line on the wall. It occurrs to me that I don't know my way out of here.
No stay here for the living, interrupts a voice, some kind of porter or maitre d. Are we in a hotel now? I note he never takes us anywhere frightening.
'Your fear's no use to anyone,' he smiles, 'we could talk about your anger though.' He watches me shake my head. 'Well then, shall I save you the trouble and finish the speech you heard from me, the speech that turned you round when you were chopping fruit in your kitchen, changed your shape, brought you to my door?'
Of course. Now I remember. I can't form the right question to be asked but I know he is answering something.
'All this,' he waves, 'is your own work. How do these creatures, every one of them your own kind, become powerful, become monstrous? Not infernal, always human. Apes with greater consciousness are just more dangerous apes. The strong takes, you know that. But even the strong grows old and wants to sleep sound. Lasting power is based on the balance between fear and sharing. Human physical strength fails, so ownership of resources, defended by those who share it, is the only peace on Earth any of you know how to create. Let me show you...'

The chess board, so trite an idea, pieces moving by themselves, buzzing and tumbling off the board, pawns smashed as they move, knights crashing against each other, rooks exploding, crumbling, queens destroyed long ago. The bishops and the kings remain. My head hurts to look at them, and his voice has the buzz of static on a radio. I turn to look at him and there he is staring back out of hollow eyesockets, a horned cattle skull where his head should be.
'I never made that board or its pieces, and I never moved any one of them. I never will. You will always do it.'

I am suddenly aware of a desert, hot and parched. I love sunlight but this oppresses me. There are joshua trees in the distance, and great jagged stones nearby, but everything is so bright and harsh on the eyes I can't even make out the direction of the sun. There's a diner across the road, we walk to it. It takes me minutes to realise that a road goes to and from somewhere, that it may well be a way out of here. I am slow and thirsty. He picks up a piece off the floor or the board - too quick for me to tell if he's lying - and drops it at the feet of a statue half buried in the sand. Two trunkless legs, Ozymandias, Rameses II. I am in Egypt, but the diner means America. Where the hell am I?

Doesn't Egypt+America equal Memphis? I swear, if he turns into Elvis now, I'm waking up.

He's gone, there's a pamphlet floating past like tumbleweed. It's torn. Turning to a page I read:

'The keener the need, the sharper the teeth. Only having forever can dull it. Which is your heaven.' I scrunch it up and throw it into the trashcan outside the diner before we go in.

He is back. If an artist could capture the smile of the prince, it would be a masterpiece to make one stare for the rest of one's life.. But before I can marvel at it, it's a portrait on the wall of some office like a study, and he has aged, a silver haired man of law, the prosecutor elegantly lean with dignity.

'The adversaries also seek survival and more resource, brutally, just as you all did long ago when you crouched and threw sticks at each other.'

'Well, if that's what we always did and always will do because that's our basic nature,' I finally thought myself clever enough to say, 'we can't be blamed for it can we?'

The strangest look came over his face.

'You really are a stupid little bird aren't you?' He replied.

And there I was, back in my kitchen.