The Volcano That Should Have Been Abrogated

Landing on the Tawdry Shore

The volcano rose out of the sea like a bad decision someone had refused to abrogate, smoking, muttering, and pretending it was only thinking about exploding.

I stood at the bow of our ridiculous ship – part Greek trireme, part seagull, part my old skateboard from back home, which I was pretty sure had not signed up for time travel. Seneca stood beside me, wrapped in his cloak as if the wind were just another unruly student. Alice clutched the Hatter’s hat so it wouldn’t fly away, and Sherlock the hamster‑robot was grooming his whiskers like a nervous professor before a lecture. Zuk, our alien with the appetite of three planets, was chewing something shiny and occasionally burping sparks into the air.

“Is that it?” I asked. “The volcano?”

“Any volcano is ‘the’ volcano if you stand close enough,” Seneca said. His voice had the calm of old stone. “In Rome, Marcus, the volcanoes walked on two legs and wore purple.”

The water around us had that murky look of a thought someone tried to obfuscate but left half‑finished. Black sand glimmered along the shore, trying much too hard, like cheap jewelry in a discount window – a little too tawdry to be taken seriously.

“This beach is a public blight,” Zuk announced. “On my planet, even our garbage dumps have more style.”

 

“A blight is anything that ruins the view,” Sherlock added dryly. “Like your burps, for example.”

We bumped onto the shore. The volcano loomed over the island, broken ridges and labyrinthine cracks running down its sides like bad handwriting across the sky.

“This place is an enigma,” Alice said, shading her eyes. “Like a riddle that didn’t get approved by quality control.”

“An enigma is healthy,” Seneca said. “What is dangerous is when you become an enigma to yourself. Then you no longer know where you end and your fear begins.”

A crooked palm tree leaned at the edge of the beach, looking like it wanted to abstain from participating in whatever came next. The volcano coughed a lazy puff of smoke, the way an emperor might clear his throat before saying something everyone would pretend to applaud.

“Sit,” Seneca said, as if inviting us to a quiet picnic and not the edge of geological disaster.

Seneca Begins His Story

We sat in the palm’s shade. The sand was warm under us, the kind of warmth that felt like a warning.

“You probably want to know why I brought you here,” Seneca said.

“Having a credible explanation would be nice,” Sherlock said. “Right now the most plausible hypothesis is that you are unreasonably fond of mortal peril.”

“Credible… plausible…” Seneca turned the words on his tongue like olives. “Words always sound brave until the mountain starts to argue back.”

“So how did you end up near your own volcanoes?” I asked.

“I wasn’t born near them,” Seneca replied. “I was born in Corduba, far from Rome, in a province you’d now call Spain. My father was a rhetorician, a man who collected words the way misers collect coins. In my family, words could be blessings or blasphemy; they could raise you up or burn you down.”

“And you immediately decided to become a philosopher?” Alice asked.

“Oh, no,” Seneca said. “First I decided to be tardy. I was late to life. I was sick, my lungs rattled like broken wind instruments, and I spent a good part of my youth standing in line at death’s door. My lungs were labyrinthine; doctors got lost in them the way tourists get lost in foreign subway systems. That is when I learned that time is not just something to waste; it is something that can be spent badly or well.”

He glanced up at the volcano. It sent out another thin banner of smoke, like a senator raising his hand to lie.

“In Rome I became a public speaker, then a senator,” he continued. “I received plaudits for speeches that sounded better than the truth they concealed. People said my career was creditable, that I had made a good name for myself in the early empire under emperors like Tiberius and Caligula.”

“Sounds impressive,” I said.

“Impressive,” Seneca agreed, “is not the same as good. I learned that slowly. Some lessons arrive like gentle rain, others like lava.”

Into the Lava Tunnel

We followed a narrow path up the volcano, one side dropping sharply into the sea, the other pressing a wall of scorched rock against our shoulders. The air grew hotter, thicker, and the smell of sulfur curled into our noses, trying to nuzzle its way into our lungs.

We entered a tunnel in the mountain, its walls damp and red, glistening like fresh laceration on the planet’s skin. Water dripped from above in an irregular rhythm that felt like the tedium of school lessons, only this time the lesson could actually kill you.

“Here,” Seneca said, “is a good place to talk about exile.”

“Sounds like the name of a rock band,” I muttered.

“When Emperor Claudius sent me into exile on the island of Corsica,” Seneca continued, “it was my first real volcano. Not of fire, but of disgrace. The court had decided to repudiate me – to push me away as if I were some awkward rumor they wanted to forget.”

“Repudiate is a useful word,” Sherlock said. “Sharp, economical, just the right amount of pain.”

“On Corsica there were no senators, no plaudits,” Seneca went on. “Only rocks, wind, and time. Exile can be a blight if you cling to the life you lost. It can be a harbinger of wisdom if you accept the new life you didn’t ask for.”

“So what did you do?” I asked.

“I wrote,” Seneca said simply. “I tried to abstain from the cravings that had tied me to the capital. When you have very little, you discover there was always a plethora of things you never needed. I asked myself whether virtue was possible without an audience, or whether I had been performing goodness like a play.”

Alice touched the wall of the tunnel, as if making sure it was solid.

“And then they brought you back?” she asked.

“They did,” Seneca said. “Power is tricky. It remembers you when it needs you. The imperial family wanted a tutor for a promising young prince named Nero. I, who had learned to live without the court, was dragged once more into its center.”

Tutor to a Living Volcano

We stepped out of the tunnel onto a ledge. From here we could see the upper slopes of the volcano, breathing slowly. Ash fell around us in small, proud flakes, each one descending with the attitude of the haughty.

“Nero…” Seneca said, and the word itself seemed to make the mountain stir. “Do you know, Marcus, the most dangerous volcanoes often begin as small fires?”

“Was he an enigma?” Alice asked.

“At first he was credible,” Seneca replied. “Young, talented, willing to listen. I believed he offered a plausible hope for Rome. Together with Burrus, the praetorian prefect, I tried to guide him. For a few years the empire was quieter, more reasonable. We even gave it some laws that looked almost kind.”

“That sounds… good,” I said.

“Good… in parts,” Seneca answered. “But when people praised our reforms with loud plaudits, they did not see the cracks in the mountain. Power does not like to stay mild. It wants to grow teeth.”

Zuk snorted.

“On Zeta‑9 we call such rulers ‘obdurate with foam on their lips,’” he said. “They never change their minds, even when the volcano is already sitting on their shoulders.”

“Obdurate,” Seneca repeated. “Yes. I was obdurate in my own way. I believed words could abrogate cruelty, that a speech could turn lava into water. But sometimes words do nothing more than dress the lava in a nice toga.”

The volcano answered with a low rumble, like an old cat too dignified to hiss. Ash thickened in the air.

Blatant Flames and Quiet Guilt

“I’ve heard stories,” Sherlock began carefully, his whiskers twitching. “About a young rival named Britannicus, about an ambitious mother called Agrippina, about an emperor who removed them, and about speeches that made the murders sound… acceptable.”

The silence that followed was labyrinthine; you could get lost in it.

“There are deeds so blatant,” Seneca said at last, “that even the best rhetoric cannot hide them. A boy dead. A mother ‘accidentally’ drowned. An empire instructed to pretend not to see. I may have helped arrange the words that wrapped these acts in reason.”

“That sounds…” I searched for the right word. “Reprehensible.”

“If you want a teacher without fault, Marcus,” Seneca said gently, “you must look for a statue. Yes. It was reprehensible. But a human life is rarely summed up by a single adjective, however accurate.”

Alice moved closer to him, almost like a child about to nuzzle a worried parent.

“And yet you’re trying to live well now,” she said.

“Trying is not absolution,” Seneca replied. “It does not erase the past. But it can keep the future from becoming equally tawdry.”

The mountain growled, scattering a new shower of ash.

“I don’t like where this plot is going,” Zuk muttered. “In your human stories, confessions like this usually come right before somebody dies.”

The Ritual at the Crater’s Edge

We climbed higher. At the very shoulder of the volcano, where the air was hot enough to cook a small breakfast, we found a ring of dark stones carved with ancient symbols. Some looked like Latin, some like something older that had slipped out of history’s pockets.

“What is this?” I asked.

Sherlock scurried forward, scanning.

“Oh, wonderful,” he said. “A ritual diagram. Classic. If activated, it gives the volcano a reprieve – a delay, a postponement of eruption. However…”

“However?” Alice and I said together.

“It demands that one of the present must willingly abstain from returning,” Sherlock explained. “Someone must stay here until the volcano cools. That may take… well, more years than any of you would find entertaining.”

“That’s pure blasphemy,” Zuk snapped. “Who writes these terms and conditions?”

“Ancient priests with a flair for drama and a high tolerance for other people’s suffering,” Sherlock said. “They probably viewed eternity as a minor scheduling issue, something to fill the tedium between goat sacrifices.”

All eyes turned to Seneca. He smiled a very small smile, the kind a man wears when a long‑awaited train finally appears on the horizon.

“In Rome,” he reminded us softly, “I have already been condemned to death in the story that waits for me. An emperor, frightened and obdurate, will order me to open my veins. I will receive a final reprieve only long enough to speak a few calm words and bleed in an orderly fashion.”

“That’s when you’re forced to die for the so‑called conspiracy of Piso?” I asked quietly. “The one you may not even have joined?”

“So the sources suggest,” Seneca said. “The accusation was credible enough for an emperor who needed someone to blame. History is sometimes written by the most frightened person in the room.”

“That’s not fair,” Alice whispered.

“Injustice does not require our approval,” Seneca replied. “Only our response.”

The volcano shuddered under our feet, impatient.

“So who stays?” Zuk demanded. “Because I am a natural hero, obviously, but my lawyer would advise against this.”

A Boy’s First Heroic Impulse

This was the sort of moment when it would have been fitting to be lachrymose, but there were no tears, just heat and the annoying reality of my own heartbeat.

“I can stay,” I blurted.

“No,” Seneca and Alice said in the same breath.

“Marcus, you are dangerously credulous,” Sherlock said. “Believing in heroism is admirable, but it must be paired with survival, or the long‑term results are disappointing.”

Alice grabbed my hand.

“Being a hero doesn’t always mean staying,” she said. “Sometimes it means going back. To tell the story. To change something later.”

Seneca looked at me as if trying to enshroud me in his gaze, to wrap me in something steadier than courage.

“The duty of a Stoic is not to seek death,” he said. “But neither is it to run from what has already arrived. I have an eruption scheduled in my own time, Marcus. This mountain is only a rehearsal.”

“But that’s… cheap and tawdry,” I protested. “For you, I mean.”

“Life is often written by a second‑rate playwright,” Seneca said. “We cannot rewrite the whole script. We can only try to play our part in a way that is at least somewhat creditable.”

Stoic Ritual and Three Lessons

Seneca stepped into the stone circle. The ash around him began to swirl, as if the volcano were trying to enshroud him, to claim him early.

“Before this begins,” he said, “remember three things.”

The volcano quieted, listening. Even the wind became strangely tardy, as if late to its next appointment.

“First,” Seneca said, “the tedium of life is not your enemy. There is great freedom in ordinary days if you are awake enough to notice them.

“Second: you do not need to love your fate to stop fearing it. You merely need to accept that it does not ask your permission.

“And third,” he smiled, “never trust completely those who seem too plausible. Especially when it is yourself. We humans are dangerously credulous about our own excuses.”

The stones glowed with a dull red light. The volcano’s growl turned into a low sigh. The column of smoke thinned, wavered, like an old man rethinking his temper. We felt the pressure in the air ease, as if the world had just been granted a reprieve it had not earned.

“I promise,” I said suddenly, my throat tight, “not to turn my life into something tawdry. Not on purpose, anyway.”

“I promise not to act so haughty,” Alice added, “even if I wear a cardboard crown and people clap.”

“I promise not to obfuscate the facts,” Sherlock said. “At least not more than the narrative strictly requires.”

“And I…” Zuk hesitated. “I promise to abstain from eating all the roasted inhabitants of this island, should they appear. That is a serious sacrifice, by the way.”

Seneca laughed then, a short but honest laugh.

“Your promises are imperfect,” he said. “That makes them human. That makes them real.”

The light from the stones flared, and the world folded.

After the Ash

When the spinning stopped, we were standing back on our familiar green meadow, where the grass did not smell like sulfur, and the only thing likely to erupt was a rabbit from its hole. The sky was clear, the horizon unburned.

“The volcano is quiet,” Sherlock said, checking a device that looked partially stolen, partially invented. “We received our reprieve. No global catastrophe today. You’re welcome.”

“What about you… there?” I asked Seneca. “In your own time?”

He smiled the way a man smiles who has already read the final chapter.

“There,” he said, “I will meet my emperor’s command. I will open my veins, drink a bit of poison when the blood is stubborn, and step into a warm bath, as the accounts say. I will try to go without being lachrymose, not because I lack fear, but because fear is only another layer meant to enshroud what is real.”

“That’s very brave,” Alice said quietly.

“It is only life, lived to the end,” Seneca replied. “When you no longer remain credulous about your own illusions. I have spoken and written that death is not to be feared; it would be reprehensible to whimper when my own moment comes.”

I looked at him and realized that the true volcano was not the mountain or even Nero’s Rome. The real volcano was inside every person – that urge to explode into something blatant and selfish, to let anger or fear overflow and burn others for convenience.

“I don’t want to be that volcano,” I said.

“Then start small,” Seneca answered. “Do not be tardy in important decisions, but do not hasten toward what your conscience cannot embrace. When you feel a plethora of emotions boiling, step back before they become molten rock.”

He turned toward the horizon, where the sun was thinking about evening.

“You will hear my name again,” he added. “In letters, in histories. They will call me a Stoic sage, a hypocrite, a moralist, an adviser to a monster. Some judgments will be credible, some simply obdurate. Do not believe any of them completely. No life fits neatly into one sentence.”

Alice plucked a blade of grass, twisting it between her fingers.

“Is that why you tell us all this?” she asked. “So we see history not as clear heroes and villains, but as a labyrinthine mess of choices?”

“It is already a labyrinthine mess,” Seneca said. “I merely wish you to walk it with your eyes open.”

Sherlock cleared his throat, which is impressive for a hamster.

“I will archive all this,” he said. “Future scholars will give me many plaudits for my work.”

“Future scholars will probably repudiate half of what you claim,” Zuk smirked. “As they always do.”

“Let them,” Seneca said. “Each generation must abrogate some part of the past to make room for its own mistakes.”

We started walking back toward our little camp under the trees. The air felt different, somehow clearer, as if someone had finally decided to enshroud the world in honesty instead of smoke.

“Where to next?” I asked.

“Oh, there are always more journeys,” Seneca said. “India with its wise men, Greece with its myths, perhaps even a stroll through the underworld. I hear they have excellent debates there.”

“As long as there are fewer lava‑related clauses in the fine print,” Zuk muttered.

Alice laughed. Sherlock adjusted his tiny spectacles and looked thoughtfully at the sky.

And I walked beside Seneca, thinking that perhaps the most creditable heroes are not the ones without fault, but the ones who look their faults in the eye and go on anyway.

Far away, beyond our time and this meadow, a man in Rome would one day open his veins with as much composure as anyone could manage, proving that his philosophy was not just words. History would debate him, obfuscate him, praise and condemn him in equal measure.

But for now he was just our guide – a tired, witty Roman with a past like cooled lava and a future already written – walking under a calm sky with a boy, a girl, a mechanical hamster, and an alien who thought everything tasted better roasted.

The world, I realized, was still an enigma, and maybe always would be. But at least now I had a few more words for it.