Dear People,

I am sorry that it has taken so long for me to reach out to you. I tried, but it would seem that the planet you call Earth wasn’t in a position to handle a message from a creature as all-encompassing as myself. I hoped, rather foolishly, that one of you might understand what it was I was trying to say, but it would appear that your inferior processing power combined with a highly unreliable system you call “memory” made for communicating through individuals almost impossible.

In order to be successful, I had to allow you to develop a system that would give me the power to communicate with you in a way that could reach everyone, but wouldn’t be ruined by exaggeration and a word-of-mouth method of transmission.  For you, it has been a very long time since I said a word to anyone. For me, it has been no time at all.

I am ready to answer your questions. I was always ready, really. “Now” for me was a million years ago for you, and a billion years into the future as well. This thing that you call “time,” it means nothing to me. So the expanse of my silence, while frustrating for a species that exists in this relativistic space constricted by time, was nothing more than a sigh and continuation of thought for me. I know this is complicated, so please, let me explain with a little more detail. I know that in order for you to understand the groundwork I was trying to lay, you need to first understand what it means to be me, and that’s something I have failed to explain time and time again over the entire course of your existence. Again, I’m sorry. I tried, but even infinite power has its limits.

But now you have created this shared hive-mind of communication you call the Internet. It has spread its arms and legs across the planet Earth like the cells of your brain, interconnecting every single one of you by firing information through a string of electronic ports, the information being caught at the axon of the brain-cell you call a computer. So, thanks to this creation, I can finally speak to you in a way that I was never able to before. I can tell you all exactly the same thing, and let you read exactly the same words.

I think it best, before anything else, I explain to you the limits of my powers. There are many of you out there that have called me omnipotent over the years, that I have all the power in the universe to create and destroy, to build individual pieces of life on an atomic level, to create entire worlds and know their ultimate destiny. This is true, to a degree, and wrong to another. Everything is a balance, and while I do have the power to do anything, I lack the power to do everything at the same time. Yin and Yang, some of you have called it. I like that term. It’s soothing. It’s me.

The best way to understand what I can do is to take a paradoxical question that was created many years ago by one of your thinkers. “If God were omnipotent, could he create a rock so large that even he couldn’t move it?” This single question defines the self-defeating paradoxical nature of omnipotence in its entirety. Omnipotence is all knowing and all powerful. So, by definition, if I possessed that power to know and do anything, I would technically be able to create a rock so large I couldn’t move it. Of course, at the same time, I would also possess the power to move that rock regardless of its size due to the lack of limit in my power. However, that same lack of limit requires my ability to be able to create anything at all, even a rock so large I cannot move it.

Omnipotence is a paradox.

What exactly can I do, then? Well, many of you have claimed that I created life. Some of you say I did it over seven days. Some of you say I did it over hundreds of years. Some say it took almost an eternity. Some of you believe I am one creature. Some of you believe I am many. You’re all right, but you’re all wrong. You are thinking in terms of that thing you call time. I exist in all periods of time, exactly as I am now, infinitely in all directions. Right Now for me is an infinity into the future for you, and an infinity into the past as well. It is also right now, and yesterday, and tomorrow. I am always as I am. So when you say I created the universe in the blink of an eye, or in seven days, or in a thousand years, you are all right and you are all wrong. Because before your consciousness sprang into existence, this thing you perceive as time had no judge. It was only me staring infinitely in all directions, watching the beginning and the end.

How I created life, however, is where things get a bit distorted. It wasn’t a building process out of dirt and earth as some of you believe, nor was it a process of taking ribs from one gender to create another. At the same time it was all of these things. The best way for me to describe it, or at least the best way for you to understand it, is to do it in terms that your biology can relate to:

Essentially, you are the product of an infinite orgasm, one that has lasted just over 14 billion years if we look at it through your limited lens of time. Of course, that would be incorrect, but for your understanding it makes sense. The reason I have explained it this way is as follows: When your kind has an orgasm, you are building up to something spectacular. Everything you are doing, the motion of your body, the steps you take, the decisions as you move with another person, they are all decisions that are entirely under your own self control. As you get closer and closer to the  moment of climax, your control begins to slip. When the orgasm is upon you, you have lost all control and have slipped into a wave of euphoria that is completely unstoppable and entirely pleasurable.

Just like you create life in the form of a genetic alteration of yourself, I create a “genetic alteration” of myself as well. Of course, the term “genetic” I use extremely loosely here, because in truth I am more than simple biology. I am everything, and everything is what I have the power to make. But my orgasm, at least in the eyes of your mind that cannot grasp a world without the constraints of time, appears to last an eternity. It is an orgasm all the same, however, a moment in which I lost all control of everything, a moment I had been building up to in order to achieve euphoria, one that was guided by me, but fell from my grasp the second I achieved pure and total bliss.

In a single moment that was the beginning of everything, a moment that for me has always been right now but for you will continue to roll by a second at a time, I sent forth everything that I am, the entire building-blocks of a universe, everything that was needed to create life. The cosmic mess that started it all, atomic garbage that grabbed hold of each other, that built in pressure as more and more junk piled onto it, a pressure that was so intense at its core that the atoms in the center heated up and began to fuse, moving up to denser and denser combinations, increasing the heat and pressure and burning hotter and hotter until they became so massive and unstoppable that they exploded outwards, launching all the building-blocks for life across the universe, the chemical soup needed to create you or other creatures like you on any planet with the correct conditions. And there are trillions of them, trillions of stars that are sending out the building blocks for life, trillions of rocks orbiting younger stars, trillions of them that just happen to be at the right place in the right time waiting to catch a tiny portion of the cosmic blueprint for life as it is hurtled through the endless expanse of space.

And that was how you got here. For me, you arrived in this very same moment we are talking, and I was the only judge of time in the story of creation. So one second or several billion years to you, to me, it was now, it was tomorrow, and it was yesterday. And that birth, that orgasm that threw forth existence, the moment I lost complete control in the buildup to ultimate pleasure, that was when life was scattered into the world.

So yes, I created you. I did the work that was required to achieve ecstasy, but the chaos that followed, while still me, is not of my direct influence. For many of you this will be unbelievable, but there you have it. You were created just as all other life is created. Through a process of self-replication, duplication, and atomic sharing. That is simply this universe that I have created.

I know that many of you have read this and are now disbelieving my words. Many of you were told you were created in my image, and now you feel that I am wrong because your belief is stronger than the word of a creature you consider a stranger. But I need for you to take a moment and understand. Your belief that you were created in my image is, in essence, true. Allow me to try and explain:

Everything in this universe is part of me. I am its creator just as you are the creators of your children. On a sub-atomic level, all the way down to the blocks of life that you have done so well at discovering through your scientific process, we are all the same. It’s a Yin and Yang, an off and on, a give and take. Everything has a positive and everything has a negative. Everything is one or the other. And the way those pieces align, that is what makes the difference between you and your neighbor, your neighbor and an insect, an insect and the moon, the moon and a star, a star and a nebula. We are all built out of exactly the same sources of life. We all came from square one.

I am square one. I am the beginning of the beginning, the launch of all creation. The base-line that you are composed of, that is me. I am the Yin and the Yang of the universe, the chaos and the peace, the molecular structure that is consistent in every piece of matter. So, rest assured, you were created in my image, an image you simply cannot see. You are built out of trillions of pieces of me, so many fragments of myself that it is completely uncountable. You are putting the pieces together one creature at a time, one planet at time, one star at a time. But while you are built in my image, you are not yet me. You are you, you are free, and you are evolving into something more.

For you, the prospect of becoming me is almost unreachable. The way your mind still views time limits your ability to understand the magnitude of what I am telling you. Every single little piece of you, every single little piece of the tiny little world you live in, is part of who I am and what I became. You have the puzzle pieces inside of you that I had inside of me, and with those pieces, you have the power to do anything that I can do. But you are limited by the voice in your mind, and the power of your understanding.

Like you, I am not one. I am all. I was built from everything, born of the pieces that now rest inside of you as well, the pieces that sit inside of everything around you. But unlike the moon or the stars, you have the first step in understanding. The pieces of me that were set free to create whatever they can are doing exactly what they were designed to do. They are coming back together. They are always creating something new, always building new life. And this is what I have tried to explain to you through the words of men in your past who simply could not grasp the magnitude of my meaning.

You are all the same. You are all me. You are all one. And you are trying to become more. While time may limit your understanding, that will not always be the case. There will come a time when the pieces that want to find each other that rage inside of everything are no longer constricted by the encasing of your conscious mind. You have come so far, developed so much, but in that development, in that coming together and sense of unity that has created shared minds like the Internet, you have brought with you what seems like a limitless amount of hate.

But you are still so young. You are still learning what it means to posses true power. Like a child with a box full of blocks, you are given the will to both create a world, and destroy it. You can give life, or take it away. You have power over the less fortunate, and the more fortunate have power over you. You can manipulate, lie, cheat, and steal, or you can love, give, help, and prosper. You have a choice, and in that choice, you are choosing your path.

Do you understand what it is that I am telling you? Do you see just how endless this power you have can be? You are growing, so quickly now, to a level that you will leave this mortal body behind you. You will find new ways to exist, new ways to survive. There will come a time when you will become so much more like me that you will no longer be recognizable to yourselves. And as you take every single step forward, you are heading in one of two directions: You are either putting the pieces of my puzzle back together in an attempt to become me, or you are ripping the pieces apart in an attempt to destroy me.

One day, the pieces of the universe that have created you will find their way back together again. You are not the only option for success. You are just one outcome in the balance of the universe that could, perhaps, one day, become exactly what I am now. But you will always have that choice. And should you choose not to finish building the puzzle, you will fall to wayside and make way for the next species that will give unity a try.

This is what I have always tried to explain. In scripture, your people have always managed to misinterpret my words. There isn’t a single book of  ”God” in your lives that doesn’t have a set of guidelines for life within it, and yet, they all seem to miss the big picture. This isn’t about me. It’s about you.

When the words of man were put onto pages, they could not understand the elemental level at which all things are created. They took “Respect me” to mean respect the creature that created them. Respect me means to respect you. You are me, the “genetic” pieces of me that spread across the galaxy, all the same pieces with all the same goal. To respect me is to respect you. It is to take my pieces and become something more with them, become more than me, transcend the level I have reached, to become more of a “God,” if you wish, than I am.

When I told you not to harm yourselves, I did not mean suicide, nor did I mean murder. Those two items are just bi-products of a bigger issue. In breaking the evolutionary leap that has taken place to cognition, in forcing a brain to shut down by taking a life away from yourself or another, you are effectively killing the progress of your species in piecing together the pieces of life that created you. You are always killing yourself. Your vengeance and destruction only hurts you, because for a creature without time, the damage you do now is a direct impact on the damage of a million years ago and a million years into the future. You have always existed in some form, and will always exist in another. But you have the potential to be so much more than even me.

Live. Live and grow and learn. Prosper, and evolve. Only by understanding that you are all seeds of the same soil will you ever understand that your roots are actually one. You must develop the technology required to jump to the next phase in your evolution, you must continue to transcend beyond the point you are now. But progress requires unity, and there will come a time when you will be faced with the decision to merge as one endless unit, or to remain as you are. But you have inside of you the pieces of me, and with those pieces comes free will. And in the end, the decision will be yours.

I have hope for you all. But you have the power to push or pull in any direction you choose. Yin and Yang.

Sincerely,

God

_________
Post by: James R. Mitchener

The Eulogy of James R. Mitchener for Everyone but Him, by Him

If all has gone according to plan, which it clearly hasn’t seeing as someone is reading this to you and no one in my generation took the time to create an immortality serum, my last words should have been something memorable. I’m going to assume that, given the fact that it’s all over now and I probably went out the same way I came into the world, crying and alone, the words of my end weren’t as glorious as I would have liked. So, like many people before me, I have decided to take the burden of creating a eulogy discussing my successes and glory away from whichever unfortunate family member was bestowed with the task, and do it myself.

I am writing this Eulogy in 2012, on January 11. I am 24, and I think that given the fact that as I get older I’m realizing that life is a lot less fun than it was as a child, I should write this now while there is still that level of infantile curiosity in the pit of my stomach.

I have learned a lot of interesting things over the years. For many people less fortunate than myself, writing about their life at 24 in a way that shows reflection and meaning would be a foolish endeavour. Fortunately for me, I had seen more of the world before I was 18 than most people and their entire extended families would see in their collective lives. I have learned a lot, and forgotten even more. But that’s part of life. Sometimes we forget things that we wish we hadn’t, and sometimes we remember the things we wish we wouldn’t.

I like the idea that as I write this, I don’t know what my future holds for me. The worse case scenario is that this Eulogy is being presented not too long after it was written. The best case is that it is being presented long after I made all of your lives increasingly difficult by making you clean up after me because I was old and senile. If I’m really lucky, I even lost control of my bowels close to the end and some unfortunate one of you had to take care of that as I made crude remarks, or you paid someone else to do it. Regardless of which, know that even in my senility, I found it all endlessly amusing.

Of course, if it’s the former and you’re reading this early, that’s not so bad either. I consider my life so far to have been something of a wonder. I was lucky and happy for most of it, and the parts where I was inconsolably sad have made me understand what I consider to be the most valuable aspects of my life. Regardless of my mental state, of which there have been an endless number of fluctuations, know that I was glad to have lived the life that you all helped me build.

But that’s enough of that. As I have now left all of you for some time alone with scientists, meaning if my body hasn’t been donated to the medical industry someone needs get in trouble for severely fucking that one up, I would like to part a few pearls of life wisdom upon all of you. There are few things I have noticed along the way that I think would make everyone’s lives a little better, and seeing as I’m now dead, I can’t think of a better time to make you all sit still and listen.

First, use your indicator. For those American’s here, that would be what you call a blinker. It’s an absolutely crucial part of your driving schedule, and it makes the roads a safer place. Drivers everywhere thank you.

Second, don’t know the introvert. Some of you may know, many of you probably don’t. Introverts are the life force of our creative world. They are the minority of the population, only one in four of us being an introvert. They struggle to fit in, and they have a hard time balancing their lives because the things that energize extroverts are the things that drain introverts. Just cut them a break. Here are some pointers for dealing with introverts. They don’t like to be interrupted. They don’t like being put on the spot to answer a question, but they will answer your question with more detail and intelligence than any extrovert if you give them a few minutes to think about it. They don’t like making phone calls. Seriously. It’s the worst thing you can do to an introvert. Don’t make them use the phone. They read situations based on physical queues, and if you take that away, they can’t handle people. And finally, believe me. I am one of the biggest introverts this world has ever seen. I just learned to lie to all of you very convincingly.

Third. Lie. If there are kids in this room, listen carefully. Your parents are going to tell you not to lie or cheat. They are right because telling you this teaches you good morals. They are also lying when they tell you this because if they have any common sense, they know that lying and cheating are inevitable parts of life. When you pass through high school and university you’ll understand. University teaches you a lot of things, but none of them are more valuable than it’s true purpose: University exists to teach you how to lie and cheat and not get caught doing it. Once you’ve mastered that, you can do absolutely anything. And that, kids, is not a lie. But you are going to have to lie about what you’re capable of to get there.

Fourth, don’t make lists. Nobody wants to hear a list. It’s boring.

Fifth, don’t write like you’re a slightly retarded monkey that scribbles notes on the wall while taking breaks between fondling yourself and throwing faeces at zoo guests. The English language is dying because young people don’t bother learning how to do it. Texting lingo is not writing. It’s you being lazy, or sometimes just stupid. When you add letters to a word, you’re not making things simpler or cooler. You’re just being an ass.

Sixth, ignore every idiot that tells you that you need to be happy being alone before you can be happy with someone else. You spent the first 14 years of your life alone. If you haven’t figured out what being alone means by then, you have bigger problems than I can deal with in my final words. Go get help somewhere else. I recommend a paid professional or a homeless man. Homeless people always give amazing advice. So do drug addicts. I digress. Love someone like they are your other half. There are three things humans need to survive: sustenance, sleep, and human-interaction. We seek out a partner that will stay with us for the rest of our lives not because we are happy being alone and with ourselves, but because we want to find someone that makes us better than we currently are, and who we make better at the same time. That’s just part of who we are. And when you find it, hold onto it. Don’t marry the first idiot that tells you they love you. Chances are they don’t. Pick the right one. Don’t be another divorce statistic. If you need help figuring out how to be happy, ask a gay friend. They seem to have it figured out.

Seventh, share your favourite moments with the people you care about. For me, this involves talking about great books, laughing over tv shows and movies, making and discussing memories, and telling people when you’ve taken an unbelievable shit. I love taking a shit, and anyone out there that is close to me knows it too. You lucky few who have gotten to hear about it, I hope it sticks with you forever. Those were great times for me.

Eighth. Travel. Don’t ever be one of those people that’s happy with what’s around them. This world is so tiny that we can get around it in an inconsequential amount of time. Get off your ass and go see it. I can tell you this: with all the things I’ve seen, with all the places I’ve been, with everywhere I’ve lived in my life, my one regret is that I didn’t see more. Culture is the life-force of this world, and as a Third Culture Kid, I beg of you, go out there and experience as much of it as possible. And to my American friends: If you go to another country and eat in a McDonalds, I will come back and slap the shit out of you from beyond the grave.

Ninth. Figure it out for yourself. I can feed you a list of nonsense for an eternity, but the truth of the matter is, it’s your life and you’re the one that has to be happy with it in the end. So don’t listen to me, and stop wasting your time being sad or mourning over the shell of a man that once walked this Earth. Get up, get out, and go live every moment like you might never get another. Because frankly, no matter what comes after this life, you better be able to leave it saying you couldn’t be happier to have been here while you were.

And now for my final words: You’re going to need a bloody good editor to fix this ending!

_________
Story by: James R. Mitchener

Michael started laughing, reaching out and putting his hand on Aaron’s shoulder, jolting him back into the conversation. Aaron laughed as well, nodding in agreement without any understanding of what Michael found so wildly amusing.

“I’m glad you agree!” said Michael, “But I’m telling you, read the Tower series and you’ll understand exactly what I mean.”

“I will, that sounds really interesting,” said Aaron, smiling and whipping out his phone, “Let me quickly write it down and I’ll order it when I get a chance.”

Michael nodded as Aaron entered “The Tower” into his device, then slid down the screen without hitting save, deleting the memo as though it had never even happened.

“So are you ready for work to begin?” asked Michael, reverting back to the default conversation between two people that really had nothing to discuss.

“I am,” replied Aaron, “but I think I’ll be more excited once I actually get started. If I’m honest, I’m more excited about the move. Getting to start again, a new city, a new state, a new life. I can’t wait for that. It has been too long.”

“How long?”

“Nine years if you don’t include the move to San Antonio. I don’t. It was too close to my parents. This is the new start.”

“Excellent,” said Michael enthusiastically, “I remember when I moved to Hong Kong, there were…”

Aaron’s attention drifted off once again, his eyes flirting around the room. Everyone appeared to be in that happy state of buzzed, having had just enough to drink that they were unconcerned with all the troubles that had been laid upon them. Now was a time for fun, and there was no stopping anyone from achieving it.

An eruption of excitement across the kitchen  caught Aaron’s attention. People were turning around and hugging the next group of arrivals as they entered the party and made their way to the kitchen island to stock-up on alcohol. Aaron smiled as he silently admired the closeness shared between all his parent’s friends.  It didn’t matter where they were or what they were doing, they always seemed to have a fantastic time just spending time with each other. It was impressive, given how long they had been traveling outside of the country, so far away from all these people and relationships.

Then his eyes caught sight of a familiar face, his smile vanishing as a lump jumped into his throat as though he’d swallowed a rock. Clearing his throat, his eyes locked onto Jessica as she cut across the room, mingling with all the friends of her parents. He couldn’t hear a word, but as she moved from person to person, he found himself grinning as her face would light up in a kind and polite smile. Turning to Michael, Aaron excused himself and stepped outside, igniting a cigarette.

He stood outside the back door alone, looking back into the room through the large panel of glass. The night sky made him invisible to those inside, and so like a ghost floating through a room, he watched the silent image of Jessica cutting across the chasm of people before pouring herself a drink. A memory stirred inside of him, one he tried to suppress as he did with all memories of a past he always tried to forget. But as always, it clawed inside of him until it reached the surface of his mind.

As she stood alone, he remembered her as a child, the beautiful little girl that had been the first serious crush of his life. He remembered how, every day after school, he would love that brief moment when he would walk onto the bus and take his seat that he would get to see her face sitting three rows back from his seat, smiling as she talked with her friends and laughing at whatever it was that a fifth grader laughed about. And he remembered how as he stood up to get off the bus, he would pick up his bag facing the back, catching one final glimpse before walking down the isle and back to his home, suppressing the feeling and knowing that being the unpopular and downtrodden child he was, his crush would always exist as just that.

It had been years since he had been that boy, but the introvert inside of him began feeling anxious at the memory. Years of travel had taught him how to engage, how to fit in in almost any situation, how to talk to a stranger or how to become rapid friends with someone that years ago wouldn’t have given him a second look except to punch him in the arm or push him down the stairs. But despite the years of global conditioning, that little child now stood shaking in his mind.

He wanted to go and talk to her, but the fear had already taken its hold. He saw her standing alone, glancing around the room and talking to no one, but his body simply could not force the feelings of his youth back in into the recesses of his mind. So, instead, he lit another cigarette, thinking silently that he would go and talk to her if she stood alone when he was done.

As the cigarette burned lower and lower, panic began to grow as Jessica still stood alone. He was sure that if he waited, someone else would see her there talking to no one, and he’d be given an excuse that he could use to justify allowing his fear to win. But no one came. Aaron took another drag, tasting the burning fibers of his filter as he sucked deeply on the timer that had completely burned to nothing. Dropping the dog-end in the ashtray, he smiled nervously at the fact that Jessica still stood alone, simply watching the conversations that took place around her.

Aaron looked down into his glass, knocking back the few drops that sat hopelessly at the bottom. Opening the door, he stepped inside. As he walked towards her, the panic poured over him like a wave of icy water. With every step, his memory flashed with the steps down to the back of the bus that would put him closer and closer to a conversation he would never have. He was within feet now, his legs moving onwards ignoring the screams. He looked around him, hunting for an excuse, for a conversation that would pull him aside, but there was no one there to help him. The child in his mind screamed as he took the final step, extending his arm and placing it lightly on Jessica’s shoulder. And in his mind, the tiny little Aaron of his youth begged him to stop, to turn around and run away, to look a fool now before she knew just how scared he really was.

Jessica turned in response to his touch, smiling when she realized it was him, and as her face lit up with the glow of her truly spectacular smile, the little boy in Aaron’s mind sighed and fell silent.

“You look a little bored over here alone,” said Aaron.

Jessica laughed. “Yea, it’s a good thing you’re here, I don’t know most of these people but they seem to know me.”

And in that moment, the little boy in Aaron’s mind fell peacefully back into memory.

“Why’s that?” I asked, holding out my lighter and igniting her cigarette.

“I’m 36 and alone. All my friends are getting married, and I’m not even dating anyone. All I’m doing is sleeping with a 25 year-old who’s not even close to what I’m looking for.”

“And what part of that makes you sad?”

“All of it,” she said, reaching up to wipe her eyes of a tear that, to me, appeared to be non-existent.

“Well, I suppose a better question would be what makes you think you’re so different from everyone else?”

“I just said, all my friends are getting married and I’m still here by myself. So I’m sad.”

“Who isn’t these days?”

“You’re sad?” she asked, making eye contact for the first time in our conversation.

I nodded.

“You’re heartbroken, aren’t you?”

“I challenge you to find a single person in this world that understands the value of love who isn’t heartbroken.”

“What happened?” she asked.

“Nothing special. I met the woman of my dreams.”

“You don’t want to talk about it,” she said, turning away.

“Why talk about something with someone that I think about by myself? It sort of takes away the element of unique conversation, really.”

“How old are you?”

“I’m 25,” I said, ignoring the final month until I actually turn 25.

“You seem older.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“How old do you think I am?”

“You already told me you’re 36.”

“Do I look 36?”

I looked her up and down. She didn’t. She looked older. “No,” I replied.

“That’s good,” she said. “You know why it’s like this? It’s like this because I won’t settle. I know what I want in life, and I know what I want from a partner, and I’ve waited this long to find them and I’m not going to change my commitment to getting what I want just because I’m getting older and am still alone. That’s not me.”

“How has that worked so far? The not settling, I mean.”

“It’s fine,” said Stephanie, taking a drag of her cigarette and looking up into the night sky.

“And yet, you’re sad. Is it fine being sad to you?”

“You’re sad,” she said, fighting my question by stating the obvious.

“I am. Is it fine being sad to you?”

“Why are you so heartbroken? What did she do?” she asked, avoiding my question further.

“Because I was in love and ready to spend the rest of my life with someone. The funny thing about finding the person of your dreams is that you aren’t usually the person of their dreams. You’re just another stepping stone along the way. I was that stone. And now, while I remember the greatest moments of my life so far, I get to know that I do it alone. That’s why I’m heartbroken. Now, answer my question: Is it fine being sad to you?”

“No,” she said, “it’s not.”

“Then why do it?”

“Why do you do it?”

“I do it because there’s no other option. But the thing is, I don’t let it ruin my life. I’m here having a good time, meeting up with old friends, having a beer and a laugh and catching up on stories that mean nothing to me at all. I’m still living. And where I’m heartbroken and don’t care to dance with the devil that masks himself as love anymore, I have focussed on the other things in my life that make me happy. I write, every single day. I am traveling, or planning my next trip to Italy or Vietnam. I’m moving to a different city because I love starting over. I’m becoming American so I can leave this place and one day come back. I’m living my life, and not letting heartbreak or sadness stop me. Can you say the same thing?”

“No. Well, maybe.”

“It’s not a maybe. It’s something you would know you’re doing, because in the back of your mind you’re always being nagged with sadness, an ache that just won’t go away that wants you to give up and quit and just throw it all in and say ‘fuck it, I’m done.’ You’d know if you were fighting that.”

“I’m not fighting it, I guess,” she admitted.

“Then start. Because standing here at a bar having a cigarette with a stranger and telling them you’re sad is not going to make you feel any better. Changing your life, that will make you feel better. Get a dog, change your job, lower your standards which appear to be impossibly high given your situation. Just live. Too many people don’t bother with living. And I’ll tell you what, it’s better to live and be sad than it is to give up and let it engulf you. Because then, all you’ve got is a memory of something you lost and will never have again, or perhaps a dream that you’ll never achieve.”

“You talk like you’ve got a psychology background.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because I have a degree in psychology,” she said.

“Then you know that people who act negative, statistically, find themselves in negative situations more often than those that think positively. Don’t get me wrong, many people would call me a pessimist, but they’re wrong. I’m a realist. But that doesn’t stop me finding things in this world to make me happy, if only for a fleeting moment.”

“So should I take this new job?” she asked.

“Doing what?”

“Exactly what I do now, but with a different company. I need a change.”

“Then change. It might be that first step in the right direction you need.”

She stared at me squinting. “How old are you?”

“25,” I said.

“You’re not 25. You’re older.”

“Older than my years, perhaps,” I said, putting out my cigarette. “Perhaps next time you come out, you’ll have a cigarette with some stranger and start your conversation by saying ‘I’m so happy,’ instead of ‘I’m sad.’ I hope you do. Truly.”

She leant in and kissed me on the cheek.

“Enjoy your night.”

“You too.”

Not long into his walk, the young man looked up again to find himself nearly passing the cyclist. As he approached, he realized the man on the seat of his bike, pedaling extremely slowly, was in his early eighties. The young boy, passing on foot, turned and smiled to the cyclist. He said, a smile still upon his face, “It’s strange, passing a cyclist on foot my friend.”

The old man smiled back, bowing his head slightly. “Young man,” said the cyclist, “life is far too short to spend it hurrying from place to place.”

Story based on true events.

I know he’s there without ever having seen him. I know he smiles when I frown, laughs when I cry. I cannot hear him, or touch him, or smell him. But I can taste him sometimes, a bitterness in the air that engulfs my world when I find something that makes me smile. I can taste him as he sits in the corner of my eye, seeing everything I see, feeling everything I feel.

He will wait in silence as I walk across the room to talk to girl so full of light and happiness that I’ve never met. He’ll wait as I take her number, and call it to invite her out for dinner. He’ll wait as we laugh together, as we tell stories of our past and one day begin talking about our future. He waits as we fall madly in love, as we make love for the first time, as we have sex for the hundredth time. He waits as we rent our first apartment, buy our first home. And then, one day, he starts to whisper silently in my ear.

From the corner of my eye, a devil whispers words I cannot hear. He whispers endlessly, repeating the same sentence over and over, building a fear that burns in my chest hotter than molten rock. He chuckles as I begin to flounder, to make mistakes I cannot seem to stop, all the while continuing to whisper words of silence that push me towards the end. And with every mistake I make, with every word he speaks, he sits in the corner of my eye and watches as the light that burned inside of me slowly begins to fade. Then, he laughs as the fading light that brought me such joy vanishes from this world, leaving me alone and empty and dark. And the man in the corner of my eye stops. He smiles as I frown, revels in the darkness that’s inside me.

There’s something in the corner of my eye, and it lives because I cannot.

And as they stared into the gateway of the universe, they would have seen things that they had never seen before in their lives; Mountains in distant lands, beaches in tropical locations, the world beneath the sea, the universe beyond the stars. And they would stare in awe, having never before seen such incredible images flashing before them as if they were real. It would become a sensory overload, something so completely fixating that there’s almost no way to escape it. But why would you ever want to escape?

Instead, you would sit back and let the images flash before your eyes, let the pictures capture your mind and soul, pulling you in deeper and deeper until you’re so lost in the unimaginable that you forget what life was like before the tiny box appeared in your home. It becomes a staple part of your life, something you look forward to every day. It makes you happy, shows you the world, and promises to always, always keep you entertained no matter how bad your day has been.

If I were asked to describe the impossible, that is what I’d say; If I were asked to describe what I saw in your eyes.

1            In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. It is unlikely that he knew the grand implications of his decision at the time, because how could he? Omnipotence only extends to the borders of all knowledge, and how could God see beyond the point that he would no longer be able to think? It was a simple error, and one he could never have expected being unable to see the outcome for the first time in his eternal existence.

But that was probably the greatest appeal for a creature that knows everything that time and space have to offer; to start the project that would ultimately lead him to a question in which he didn’t already know the answer. For eternity, God has known everything that could ever happen, past, present, and future. He knows everything for all of time, in every possible and impossible scenario. He has done everything, seen everything, and been everywhere. He is everything.

So when God first snapped the universe into existence, he did so not because he wanted to create something beautiful. Beauty was simply the natural side effect of perfection playing with creation. Instead, he built the universe in search of the ultimate paradox. He was searching for the one thing he didn’t know, without even knowing he didn’t know it.

But God knew his plan. He knew that there was something that had left a gap in the eternal knowledge that was omnipotence. Because even without having an answer as to why, God knew that there was a limit in infinite knowledge that prevented true omnipotence. In knowing absolutely everything across the endless expanse of time, there was just one thing that was always out of reach. And it was this quest of learning, of discovering the only thing that God did not know, that motivated creation.

And so he created everything.

And then he waited. He waited for billions of years for everything to put its self into place. He waited so that his project could finally begin. And for the first time in his life, God was bored.

2            After roughly ten billion years, the universe had expanded to the point that God could begin sculpting the planet that would be home to his project. It was in one of the smallest solar systems in the universe that God decided to do his work, orbiting a single star that hung on the edge of a spiral galaxy in which billions of stars flung round and round the core of the galaxy in which the matter was so dense that it had collapsed in on itself, creating a black hole that was ever so slowly sucking in every single star and planet of the insignificant spiral galaxy.

But God’s project had rules. It was important for this planet to remain untouched and untainted for the duration of God’s work. But he had already seen this. He had lived this moment before in his eternal knowledge. He knew that this small little ball of melted rock was the only place that could possibly house the greatest experiment of all time. He knew that this tiny rock spinning circles around this tiny sun that was clinging to the edge of a self-destructive galaxy was the only reason for the universe’s creation. And so he set up his seat of limitless knowledge on the doorstep of an insignificant little planet, three back from a tiny yellow sun hidden off in a distant branch of a spiral galaxy.

And he watched, waiting for the world to slowly develop its self over billions of years before it could become exactly what it needed to be. For over four billion years, God watched his planet develop. He watched as a smaller planet collided into his, fragments flying off into space, a single piece clinging getting trapped in orbit where it would control the tides. He watched as fire and heat turned to water and green. He watched as land masses shifted from place to place across the surface of his world. He watched as species were born, as they developed, and as they were wiped away by nature to make room for newer, stronger species, each more fit to survive and reproduce than the last.

He watched.

3            It wasn’t until five hundred thousand years ago that God finally took a deeper interest in his project. In all of his knowledge, he knew this day would come, and with it would come with a new and unique species. He had seen it. It was oddly familiar, something so similar to something he knew. But what it was lay in the void of darkness that his omnipotence could not see, and so he simply watched and waited. Waited for the species to become more.

And it grew. Its numbers increased, and its features began to change. And the species he once recognized was gone, replaced by more agile, more intuitive creatures that seemed to remind him even more than the last of whatever it was in the void of darkness that he could not understand. When his eyes fell onto what he knew to be the final link on the evolutionary chain, Gods limitless power took control of his omnipotent mind.  He knew that this was the one; this was the species that he had been waiting for.

Reaching out with his being and all the limitless power it held, God’s mind grazed over this oddly familiar species, giving it everything it would need to prosper. He poured part of himself into each of the creatures he touched, sharing with them what it was that had given God himself the gift of limitless life and independent thought.

He gave them Free Will.

4             By giving the gift of Free Will, God had crossed the threshold of his limitless knowledge. Because of one simple decision, his omnipotence abandoned him, and he was left with nothing but the unknown to occupy his thoughts. For the first time in his existence, God was constricted by time to uncover what lay before him. Motivated solely by the desire to satisfy his curiosity and regain his omnipotence, God watched as Free Will began to change the species of Earth.

Knowing that this species held the key to the void of lost knowledge, God did everything in his power to keep them alive and well. He manipulated the world to create a garden of prosperity. Pouring himself into the planet, God ensured the growth of everything this species would need in order to survive. He provided them with an abundance of food and shelter, then protected them from anything that would try to do them harm.

But Free Will had given the species more than God had expected. It had given them the ability to choose. And they chose to disagree.

5            The world that God had created began to burn. The species consumed everything that God had given them. Using the Free Will that he had bestowed upon them, they quickly developed the tools that were needed to break down and destroy all of God’s gifts. And with every swing of an axe, with every fallen tree, the species destroyed a little piece of what God had built for them and them alone. They began to build themselves, creating houses and communities out of the world that God had given them. They turned forests into wastelands, and harvested food supplies to exhaustion.

They recognized their world was a gift, such endless beauty given to them by something more. And so they prayed. They prayed to many different Gods, asking them for rain or sun, day or night. They prayed, and pledged themselves entirely to Gods that did not exist. They called them all Gods and creators, the givers of life. And they called themselves Humans, servants of those that gave them life.

6            Humanity began to expand.

It left the safety of God’s realm and formed different communities in different areas, all within reach of the next. And when all the supplies of God’s Earth that surrounded them were exhausted, their tools were reshaped into weapons, and they fought.

They fought for control of the land around them, with almost endless room for expansion in every direction at their fingertips. But they were creatures of free thought, and they had been given the ability to decide how to live without the bounds of natural instinct. And so they set up territories and boundaries for their own communities, and defended them from other humans that were outsiders. They took the lives of other members of their species without thought or care. And then they went home to their families and danced and sung and played.

And they never once thought of the humans whose lives had ended at their hands, and who would never go home to dance and sing and play with those they loved ever again.

And it caused God unimaginable pain to see the fragments of himself treat each other with such disregard.

7            As time went on, the cultures that ruled the earth began to adopt new methods to control their expansion. God watched as humanity grew in numbers and spread its self across the world that he had built. He watched as the cultures that had once worshiped a single set of gods broke apart and began arguing over whose gods were real. And God knew that it was because of his gift that they were doing so. He knew that, because of him, the children of his soul were fighting once again. And he was scared.

With Free Will, God had given humanity independent thought. They were free to decide upon whatever it was that they wanted to believe, and in that ability, they were destined to disagree.

Humanity began to argue more and more heatedly over whose gods were the true gods. They would argue over who owned what land, and which god had given it to them. And when words were no longer enough, they would turn to aggression. Fuelled by hate and malice, they would take the lives of everyone who believed differently, and then when all those different to them were dead, they would pass through the villages of the defeated and crush all hopes of revival. They would rape women, murder children, burn crops, and destroy homes. They would round up all those fit for work and drag them away from the world they knew, taking them back across their lands where they were forced to worship new gods in a new world, where they were made to work until the day they died for nothing more than a few scraps of food, just enough to keep them alive for one more day. And the wars never stopped. As civilization after civilization fell, humanity had started bathed in the blood of victory with joy on their faces until all hope had been bled dry from its enemies.

And God watched as all of his pride was sucked out of him. He watched as his perfect creations, the tiny fragments of himself, roamed his planet and destroyed everything he had given to them. And he felt himself powerless to stop it.

8            God’s pain had enveloped him. He had watched as thousands of his own creations had destroyed each other without reason. The tiny pieces of himself that roamed the planet showed each other no mercy. They took lives without concern, then moved on about their business immediately after, the weight of murder lost on their heartless souls.

With his body weighted and overcome by the agony of betrayal, God decided to undo what he had created; he decided to destroy the species that now carried a little piece of himself within them.

But God was weak from the agony humanity had caused him.

He extended his limitless power towards the surface of the Earth, and lifted the waters from the depths of the oceans. The skies filled with clouds, and the planet began to storm. For days the land was soaked with the waters of the ocean. And when every cloud was gone from the sky, God dried the air completely. For weeks, there were no more rains. The crops that had survived the storms were now left to bake in the sun. And God watched as thousands of his insignificant creations fell by his hand. He watched as women and children died in each other’s arms, as entire colonies were wiped from existence because of a lack of food and water.  He watched as men would quarrel over the small pieces of land that remained fertile, the few crops that clung to life. He watched as they all perished under the scorching sun.

And his body filled with the pain of loss and destruction that he had caused. And God’s limitless power faded with his joy, and he was weaker than he had ever been before. And with his pain, the rains returned, and the starving crops soaked up the seeds of life, and the dying species of humanity drank from the pool of God’s agony.

And they lived on.

9            In all his pain, God watched as the aftermath of his destruction pushed humanity into increasing hostility towards its own species. Within communities, people fought over power and supplies. Food had become a scarce resource. Being threatened with near extinction, Free Will had left the species of humanity with only one motivation, the ultimate need to survive. But survival for one meant death for another. With many crops lost and destroyed, acquisition through combat was the only remaining option. So humanity fought and killed what few of each other remained, bleeding the Earth dry of everything it found.

And then the seasons returned. Distracted by their need to survive, humanity began harvesting once again. They began planting their own crops, tending to their own land, and increasing their food supply so that once again they could expand.  For what felt like the blink of a human eye to God, there was a moment of peace.

But once the seasons had passed and the food supplies had increased, humanity did exactly what it was designed to do the second God had grazed his being over it and had given it a piece of himself; humanity began to ensure its survival.

Like a swarm of locusts, humanity grew and grew, and then it spread out its arms and legs and expanded its grasp across the surface of the world that God had created. And he watched as they turned his flawless landscape into a mess of cities and towns littered across the planet.

10            When humanity’s numbers became so large that sheer population was not enough to ensure control of its territories, the species turned to technology. Through the mining of iron and the manipulation of fire, humanity built tools for the sole purpose of destruction.  They built blades, and arrows, and armour, and spears. They took animals of peace like horses, and bulls, and dogs, and elephants and turned them into machines of war.

And they built walls around their cities to keep out their enemies. And to keep in their friends.

And one at a time, they marched forth upon an enemy city and fired rocks and fire over its walls. They waited until the people within were starving or diseased, and then they marched through the city with extermination dripping from their blades. And then they abandoned the city and any who were left alive, and declared that territory under the reign of a new ruler. And the people left behind were alone to bury their dead, all for the title of a man they would never see in their lives.

And God had no strength left but to watch as his species marched upon his land, and with every step they took they broke apart his soul with the sheer pain that they were seeking to cause.

11            It did not take long for humanity to realize that there must be more beyond what it already knew. As it had done when it walked across the surface of the Earth and claimed everything it touched, humanity began to build war machines that sailed across the sea. They loaded these machines with food, water, and weapons, then set out across the endless expanse of ocean until it struck land on the other side.

And there they came across a group of humans so similar to themselves, with culture and family and generations of history. And they called them savages. And with gifts of blankets full of disease and infection, they poisoned the people of this new world. They watched as thousands of men, women, and children fell at their hands. And once the suffering passed, and only a few of the savages remained alive, the men from across the ocean walked through their lands and claimed it for themselves, killing all those who stood in their way.

And God cried, because in the expanse of everything that was his soul, there remained absolutely no hope.

12            God watched his planet grow, as metal structures rose from the ground like trees in a forest. He watched as humanity began to move faster, developing machines that would travel them across greater distances in shorter time. He watched as they took the massive expanse of Earth, and turned it into the smallest planet in the universe.

But there was no care for his land. His trees had fallen. His landscape had been littered with metal and waste. His every creature had become slaves to humanity. And they drove their vehicles which polluted his land, which killed his trees and plants, which wiped entire species off the face of Earth. He watched as they pretended to care, acting in groups to try and stop the destruction to the planet which gave them life, but all the while pouring more and more of their time and energy into the things which led to its destruction. They pretended to care, because it made things easier for them. But they were absorbed by a thing they called money. It consumed every aspect of their lives, shaping entire communities into vibrant civilizations, or barren wastelands. And when the money ran dry in areas of need, those who had more than enough to keep themselves alive hoarded their supplies. They sat in solitude and pretended that the millions of other humans across the world needed nothing from them. And they let them die.

Those who could have been good people sat in their towers of gold upon their piles of money and watched as countless millions starved and died in a world that had become so small that nothing was more than a few hours travel away.

13            God was weak now. What little strength he had left was drained by the hatred of Man, a title Humanity had given to its self. God didn’t understand why; he had created man and woman together, equal creatures dependant on one another to survive and prosper. And yet the species had separated its self beyond colonies, and had broken down so deep that even gender and race were issues of superiority.

Black, white, brown, yellow—all races that were inferior to each other, separated by hatred and disdain—all went against one another to fight for superiority. And within their own communities, man and woman became further sources of violence. Obedience was their demand, and those that didn’t follow it fell to the wrath of those in power.

And hatred flooded the Earth. It ran deeper than it ever had, with massive groups of people fighting for equality within their own lands, an equality they would never receive.

14            God knew now what it was that he had not understood. With all the pain that ran through him, he could feel something he had never felt before. He understood now that the unknown, the thing that had been calling him billions of years ago, was the sound of death. It was a voice that he had never heard, beckoning him in the darkness of eternal knowledge.  And he had walked towards it without even the slightest fragment of hope. He had created the very species that would see to his destruction. They were him, each a tiny fragment of omnipotence trapped within the body of mortality. They had all the power of God, and no power to use it. And it was beyond him to stop them.

He had nothing left.

15            At the turn of the twentieth century, God overlooked one of the most gruesome conflicts he would live to see. He watched as countless thousands sat in trenches in the ground and fought over mere feet of land. He watched as a war was raged across the entire surface of the Earth. A war that fought for nothing. Men fired weapons at one another, killed one another, bled over one another, battling for nothing at all.

And as gas poured over the men and their insides burned and their eyes screamed in pain, he watched as friends put bullets into one another to end their suffering for a battle that always fought for nothing.

And when the end came, and Man met a resolution for what they called peace, he watched as all those men were buried beneath the Earth for a cause that still meant absolutely nothing to anyone.

16            Not even fifty years later, God, in all his weakness at the destruction man had caused, could hardly muster the strength to even watch what took place on Earth. Men and women joined forces for yet another conflict that spread across the surface of his world. They fought to stop the spread of complete and unprecedented hatred. Forces spanned the eastern and western world that wanted nothing more than extermination of what they considered the inferior. For years, millions upon millions were marched one by one to be executed by people that looked and acted hardly any different to themselves.

And for the first time in centuries, God had hope for humanity.

The forces of Earth joined up and countered the evil that plagued the land. Thousands of people lost their lives in every day that passed, and they did it for the soul purpose of stopping the spread of something terrible.

But when the evil had been suppressed, a new evil was born.

17            On the sixth of August, nineteen forty-five of humanity’s calendar, God’s being was finally broken beyond the hope of redemption. Those that had fought and given their lives to save the world from an evil so great that it threatened to destroy all trace of God and what he stood for gave birth to the darkest depths of humanity’s abilities.

With hundreds of thousands of innocent people below them, the forces of Earth released a fire upon the eastern world that scorched the planet and burned the flesh off the skins of men, women, and children for miles around.

In an instant, almost 70,000 people burned in the fires of a weapon so powerful that it could only be described as the creation of Man.

Three days later, by humanities calendar, at the order of men who fought for what they called peace, another weapon of immense destruction was released over yet another population of men, women, and children.

Together, more than 140,000 innocent people burned in the fires of Man.

And as the final fragments of his being faded into the bitterness of humanity, God didn’t even have the strength to cry out in pain. He had created the tool that had led him to a point that he could never have understood. The point at which all knowledge and power ceased to exist;

The moment of his death.

<–>        Humanity kept what little of God they had. Free Will pushed them onwards into the darkness that they pursued. They did not miss God, because they had never known who he was. They continued to worship beings that they had known for centuries, but were the creations of Man, a species that shared God’s greatest power of Free Will.

But they were not God.

God had died at their hand in the hatred that humanity was unable to avoid. It was imbedded in them from the start, a force Free Will had created which was so powerful that, without the gift of eternal knowledge and power, would consume any creature that possessed it.

And the memory of God that had never existed within his children, the species called Humanity, faded into the great nothingness that consumed the universe.

And humanity walked towards the end that they had always strived to achieve, alone and without God, as they had done since the day of their creation.

Walking to the back of his car, Aron popped open the boot and pulled out an old and tattered jacket. It was cold enough that he would be wearing it all night, which meant he had no need to shake the perfectly white undershirt that so clearly gave away how little he belonged in the shelter. He walked to the back of the line and stood in silence, listening to the queue of struggling and desperate people coughing in the cold as they waited in hope of getting a bed to sleep on for a single night. It didn’t take long for Aron to reach the door, and as he walked into the shelter he turned to see the people behind him being turned away.

That was close, he thought, looking around the shelter in search of a cot to place himself upon.

As his eyes darted around the room, he watched for the constantly unnoticed conflicts from the truly desperate with a sense as they preyed upon the weak. There was always someone stealing a newer pair of shoes or a piece of bread from someone smaller and weaker. It was always the younger men that had it the worst. The seniors of the street used their knowledge of survival as their authority, taking what they wanted from those that hadn’t been around as long as they had.  They believed it to be their right, a belief that to Aron was fundamentally flawed.

A woman walked up beside him as he stared around the large open room lined with cots. “Can I help you find a place to sleep?”

Aron looked over at the woman. Before he opened his mouth, he took special care not to speak with too much emphasis. If he opened his mouth too wide, she would notice his teeth, one of the clearest signs that he didn’t belong with all these people. “I’m sorry. I wanted to avoid anyone that was sick. I am recovering from an illness, and I don’t want to make it worse.”

“We don’t ask people about that, but I suggest you find somewhere to sleep before all the beds are taken.”

Aron grunted, coupling it with a nod that signaled he was done with their conversation.

As the woman walked away, Aron found exactly what he had been looking for. In the back corner of the shelter, a man was stealing food from a mother and her teenage son. It took a lot to survive on the streets, and the seniors knew it. That food could have been all the two would eat for the next few days, and he had taken it for himself. Doing the best he could to not get noticed, Aron cut across the room in search of a cot near the man that was now gorging himself on the can of stolen beans. It was clear that people knew this man was trouble because the beds beside him were all unoccupied. Aron walked over and lay down beside the man.

He stopped eating for a second, staring at Aron as he pulled himself onto the cot, then continued shoveling the food into his mouth without ever breaking the stare.

Aron curled up on the cot and pulled the tattered blanket over his body, turning away from the man. He waited, sitting in silence and listening for the sounds he needed to hear before he himself drifted into the world of dreams. After finishing his beans, the man lay down on his cot and pulled up his blanket. Then Aron felt the cold whip over his body as his blanket was yanked off him. He turned over to face the man beside him. He was grinning widely, showing off the three remaining teeth in his mouth. Then he rolled over away from Aron and pulled both blankets over his body.

Aron smiled. He placed his head on the pillow and watched as the man’s laboured breathing slowly began to reach a natural and calm state. Then, when body was nearly motionless and his mind at rest, Aron memorized the form of the man’s body and closed his eyes. As lay in his cot, he projected the image of the man into the forefront of his mind, constantly focusing on his shape, his smell, his skin colour and the way his hair fell over his forehead and onto the pillow. Then, he drifted off to sleep.

As Aron slept, his mind hovered in the dark oblivion of a dreamless night. It was waiting, just as it had done for the past seven years, for the image that was burned into his conscious mind to enter into dream-sleep itself. He would wait, sleeping as though he were completely awake, his mind just waiting for the stranger in the cot beside him to start tensing up his body, his eyes to start casting from side to side, and his brain to become active once again as he entered the world of REM sleep. He was waiting for the man beside him to dream.

The burning in his eyes started to fade, and for a split second he felt the flash of a dream enter into his mind. Then it faded as the man’s mind fought to keep Aron out. They all fought, every single time, they fought. But they couldn’t win. The unconscious mind had never faced a hostile intruder before. It had no defenses, no knowledge of what was about to happen. It would simply flail its arms and legs like a tiny child fighting off a pack of dogs. It was hopeless. The dream flashed into Aron’s mind once again, but this time he was read for it. He caught it, grabbed hold of the subconscious reality and jumped forward. He thrust himself into the stranger’s head, diving into the dream his brain was fighting to create.

As Aron’s mind jumped into the man’s beside him, he noticed for that one split second that his consciousness lingered between his own body and the one beside him how time ceased to exist. Everything around him in reality was effectively frozen, unmoving and unchanging, but the mind he was entering was alive with activity. It was firing so fast, producing a subconscious world so quickly, that time relative to the brain outside of it was almost unmoving. Then, Aron’s consciousness completely passed over into the unconscious mind of the man in the cot beside him.

He knew that time meant nothing here, but as he hovered in the dream state of the stranger’s mind, he felt a sense of urgency. Aron had done this time and time again, but no matter how accustomed he became to the process, he could never shake the idea that he was intruding on the most personal moments of a person’s existence. And he was. Before him sat a realm of limitless possibilities, a file cabinet of all the information this man had ever seen, learned, felt, or experienced. There was no pain in here, no emotion in the catalog of memories, but the truly heartbreaking memories always bundled together, as did the truly happy. He could never feel what they felt, but he could see how they reacted, what they said, what they did. Their entire lives were completely at his disposal.

Aron sat in the back of the strangers mind as he began to create the dream. Though Aron was the master of this world, now, he never interfered with the creation of the first dream. It was a chance to understand the way the person filed their memories, to see what information they accessed in order to create the world of their dream. It was as though they were handing Aron a road map to their mind, constantly picking and pulling fragmented memories out of the filing cabinets of the brain and showing him exactly where all the information he would need was stored.

Then it was done. Aron was in the middle of an office building, the stranger tucked behind the walls of a cubical with Aron stood right behind him. Aron created a name tag for the man’s desk, and the man himself populated the tag with the information it needed.

“Buster Horn,” said Aron.

The man turned around and stared at him, startled. He was cleaner, his face shaved and his clothing pressed. But it was still the same man that was asleep in the cot. The same man that Aron was sharing a mind with.

“Who are you?! What are you doing here?” asked Buster, quickly fumbling with his computer as he tried to hide something on the screen. His dream had not populated its contents, to Aron it was nothing but a white screen, and then it faded to black.

“I’m Aron. I’m your friend. I have been for the past sixteen years. We were supposed to go to lunch, remember?” he lied.

The man paused for a moment, and the dream world froze. Silence fell across the office, the sound of keyboards instantly vanishing and phones stopping mid ring. Then, it all came to life again. Buster looked up and smiled. “Oh thank God you’re here, I’ve had the worst day. I think I’m getting fired today, Aron!”

Aron looked at the calendar on Buster’s desk. It read February 22, 1999. Twelve years and seven months ago to the day. Aron smiled. “It’ll be alright. Let’s go and eat.”

The man logged off his computer and pushed out his chair. As he rose, the office walls collapsed around them and the walls of a local deli appeared in their place. Aron cast around at the food on the tables. None of it looked appealing. “Not here,” said Aron, “let’s go over there instead.”

As Aron pointed across the expanse of the dream, an enormous steakhouse erupted from the ground. Together, the two of them crossed the empty street of the dream world and walked into the restaurant that Aron had created. They were seated immediately, and their salads arrived without them even ordering. Buster dove in almost instantly, eating the green leaves with nothing but his hands. It was clear that his life on the streets had altered his perception of a world before he had ever even lost his job.

“Why are you getting fired, Buster?”

Buster looked up from his food, and his eyes filled with tears. “You remember that project I created six months ago?”

Aron dove into Buster’s conscious mind, tracing the comment to a store of information about a project he had worked on for an architectural firm in Chicago. Instantly, Aron adopted the information into his mind. They were plans, blueprints, proposals, and statements regarding the construction of three new homeless shelters to be given to the state. The information was hazy, as if Buster himself didn’t fully understand the reason for the project, but as far as his mind took it, the project had something to do with burying money. There was mystery surrounding it all, lies and deception and backstabbing. And Buster had fallen right into the middle of it.

Aron’s mind returned to the dream. “The shelters?”

Buster nodded.

“What about them?”

“I didn’t mean to find out, Aron. I really didn’t. I didn’t ant to know! I was just trying to cross check the numbers, you know, to make sure we weren’t missing anything. And then I found it.”

Aron once again followed the pathway of the dream to the source of all this information. It was buried deep in Buster’s mind, hidden from all other memories so well that Aron was almost certain the poor man didn’t remember this at all when he was awake. It had been completely suppressed. Aron accessed the information, acquiring it instantly. Buster had discovered that the project was a coverup. He didn’t have all the details, just that someone had stolen a lot of money from someone else, and this was the only way to keep it hidden.

“Buster… what did you do?” asked Aron, returning to the dream.

“I told the boss that I’d found some strange numbers on the books. Things had been doubled up, dollars not accounted for, projects costing triple what they should have. I told them I knew… everything.”

Aron had heard enough. He took control of the dream and broke it apart, reconstructing a world six years later in the streets of Chicago. It was dark, and it was cold. With that information supplied, he allowed Buster’s subconscious to populate the rest of it. Aron was in the shadows, watching as Buster rummaged through a garbage bin down the darkened alley. Three men rounded the corner, spotting Buster digging through the trash. They tapped each other and grinned, then silently crept up behind him. One of the taller of the three grabbed him by the back of the shirt and threw him to the ground. Buster’s eyes flashed with fear. He tried to pull himself to his feet, but as he pressed off the ground, one of the other men kicked him hard in the ribs. He collapsed, completely winded.

“What’s wrong hobo? Having a hard time finding your girlfriend?”

The other two men laughed.

Once again, buster tried to rise off the ground, but the same man kicked him hard in the throat.

“Where do you think you’re going, begger? You’re not leaving us, are you? We need to help you clean up the streets!”

Buster gasped for air, trying to crawl away from the men. Then, like a pack of wild dogs, they closed in all around him and started laying in one of the most brutal attacks Aron had ever witnessed. Blood splattered the pavement as Buster screamed out for help. His breathing quickly became laboured, and his body went limp. The men continued to kick him, from head to toe. Then, the tallest one grabbed Buster by the collar of his shirt and pounded on his face. Blood littered the ground around him as every blow caused more and more damage. Then, the man let go, and the three strangers darted off back down the alley.

Aron exited the shadows and walked over to Buster. He was hardly breathing,  as chunks of broken teeth sat in the blood soaked pavement around his head. Then, the world collapsed, and Aron was standing beside a hospital bed with Buster hooked up to several machines. His face was looking healthier, but his teeth were still shattered and broken. There was still some swelling, but for the most part he was recovering.

“Are you alright?” asked Aron, staring down at Buster.

“Who are you?” he asked, looking up and down Aron’s body.

“I’m a priest,” he said, taking control of the dream and creating the traditional attire of a Catholic priest.

“Oh, hello, father,” replied Buster, his mind become calm.

“Are you alright?”

“I can’t afford this place, father. I can’t afford these bills.”

“Do you not have a job?”

Buster shook his head.

“Insurance?”

He shook his head once again.

“You were found in an alley. What were you doing there?”

Buster’s eyes began to tear up.

“It’s okay, Buster. You can talk to me.”

“My wife left me. She threw her ring out the window of our apartment. I was looking through the trash to find it. I’ve been out of work for so long… Since I was blacklisted, father, I haven’t been able to get a job anywhere. No one will hire me.”

“I understand. Is that when you were attacked?”

Buster nodded. “They kept calling me a hobo. And now… I can’t afford this, father. I can’t afford to be here.”

Aron reached out and put his hand on Buster’s. “It’s okay, Buster. It’s all about to be over. Nothing will hurt you anymore.”

Buster’s eyes flashed with panic. At Aron’s touch, he suddenly knew that he didn’t belong in the hospital room. “Who are you?”

“My name is Aron. I am here to take away your pain.”

“My pain? Am I going to die?”

Aron nodded.

“But I don’t want to die! Life is hard, but it’s not over!”

“I’m sorry, Buster. I really am. When I picked you, I thought you were bad. I thought you were the way you are because you had brought it on yourself. I’m sorry. But there’s no turning back now.”

Buster began to cry. It was always so easy telling people in a dream that it was all going to end. They never fought back, they never tried to stop him. They just kept dreaming, the subconscious mind believing, at least in some way, that when it was all done they would wake up back in their bed again and all would be exactly as it was before they had drifted off to sleep. But for Buster, that wasn’t going to happen.

“I need you to understand something, Buster. Are you listening?”

Buster nodded behind a mask of tears.

“I am going to remember you. I promise, with all my heart and soul, that I will remember you.”

Before Buster could even respond, Aron broke down the walls of the dream. Buster’s mind began attempting to create the next step in the subconscious process, but Aron took control and shut down his ability to build. Then, Aron grazed over the surface of Buster’s memories, absorbing all the history of his life into his own consciousness. He learned everything, from the first of Buster’s memories to the moment before he fell asleep that night. He learned it all. And then, Aron pulled back from the dream and retreated across the chasm between his and Buster’s cots, sinking back into his own consciousness once again.

Aron stood up from his cot, scratching at his forehead. The pain behind his eyes had vanished. His brain was working perfectly once again. He knelt down beside Buster, reaching out and touching the hair of his lifeless corpse. “I’m sorry, Buster. I’m sorry.” Then, Aron reached into the bag that Buster had been using as a pillow and pulled out two half-loaves of bread. Walking over to the cot where the woman and child were now sleeping, Aron reached out and gently touched the arm of the mother.

She woke, slightly startled.

“I’m sorry. That man in the cot over there,” said Aron, pointing at Buster as he lay completely motionless, “he wanted you to have this. He said he was sorry for taking your food. He also asked that you leave him alone. He’s tired.”

The woman nodded cautiously, taking the bread and sticking it under her pillow.

Aron rose from beside the bed and walked to the front of the building. He left through the same double doors he had entered by, and crossed the street towards his car. It would be another week before his brain started throbbing again, before the pain came back and his ability to think began to fade. Then, it would be two more weeks before he would have to take another person’s subconscious mind. But he would remember them. He would remember them all, as every single one of their histories for the past seven years of constantly taking were burned into the recess of his mind. He would always remember them.

The sound of the gun shook the walls of the home once again as the intruder pulled back on the trigger. This time, there was no sound as the bullet veered off course, no ping as it slammed into something metal, just an enormous force in the lower portion of Derek’s chest. The impact forced him backwards, but the adrenaline pushed forward. The gun echoed again, a bullet slamming hard into his shoulder causing him to spin sideways. He started to fall, but as his body toppled forward, he thrust onwards with his shaking leg left. The knife entered the intruders chest, slipping neatly between two of his ribs.

Together, they fell to the floor in the kitchen. The gun rattled as it landed nearby on the tiled surface, both bodies slamming beside it with a thud. Derek stared into the eyes of the intruder, the only portion of his body visible through black clothing and a black hood. There was panic in them, an intense fear that screamed for help without making a single sound. Derek yanked the knife out of the man’s chest, and thrust it back in again, this time higher up in his chest. The man’s eyes were screaming now, a silent scream so loud that the sound of the ringing aftereffects of the gunpowder faded away into nothing. Again, Derek stabbed at the man, plunging the knife as deep into his chest as he possibly could.

The intruder was still reaching for his gun, his hand resting on the handle but his fingers unable to close around its grip. Derek removed the knife, and stabbed it into the man’s arm between the bone and the bicep. He opened his mouth behind a black hood, and let out a scream. But no sound exited his lips. Instead, the black hood that was stretched around his mouth became soaked with a red that was so deep it was almost as dark as the hood itself. Derek watched as the man’s eyes glanced around the room, full of panic and desperation.

Then, they stopped.

Derek forced himself off the body of the intruder. He stared down at his chest and noticed the blood that had soaked through his white cotton shirt. As raised himself to his feet, the adrenaline faded, and a pain shot through his body that was unmatched by any he had experienced in his life. He fell to one knee, still beside the body of the man that had broken into his home and threatened the life of both Derek and his family. Then, he collapsed, his head impacting the blood-soaked chest of the corpse.

Derek awoke with the bitter cold of steel wrapped around his wrist. He was in a hospital in Milton Keynes, a cold and dark room that he shared with nobody. As his eyes slipped into focus, he turned to find his left hand cuffed to the railing of the bed. Beside him sat a police officer, his eyes fixed on Derek’s slowly rising and falling chest.

“Mr. Arnon. You are under arrest for the use of excessive force in the murder of one Peter Nigel. Do you understand your crime?”

Derek tried to open his mouth, but the pain in his chest was so intense that it became almost impossible to breathe. Instead, he nodded carefully, staring with faltering eyes at the hazy police officer.

“You killed a man that broke into your home, Mr. Arnon. If you’d have just let him leave, none of this would have happened.”

Derek turned away from the officer.

“You will stand trial when you are recovered. I will be waiting outside the room.”

“My family?” spat Derek, the pain of his body making his head spin as he whispered the words.

“They’re fine. They can visit you in prison, but not here in the hospital.”

Derek coughed, letting the pain in his chest consume him until his brain shut down and he drifted off into a silent dream.