Tower of Brahma. 62G. God's Not Home

"So, now you know why I've got to end it. All of it. Before it goes any further."

I was convincing. Years of running a mass(multi)media empire refined my charisma to a fine edge, capable of stabbing right into your brain like a needle.

But his success has made him weak, out of practice, having bent the remaining humans to his will, their very survival dependent on his vision.

And I'm not him.

Not yet. But I know how he thinks. I know it's not an act of altruism, a heroic deed, like he's trying to pitch it to me. This is a way out. A way not to deal with the consequences of his actions. Even at sixty I still can't own up to responsibility.

"Bullshit. It's all about you. Just tell me the truth."

What does it matter? At this point, the last scene between two living human beings, dialogue zipping between our neurons like electronic telepathy. Our chat room simulation was that of the villain's lair, complete with viewscreen, dome, and throne. A place he could think. Somewhere this desperate future version of myself could hide and scheme to save his soul.

"You know the deal then. It's what landed you here. Forced to handle me. Yourself." His shoulders went slack, he tried to let go, be himself once again, but I saw the tension cling to his muscles.

"You're the one who brought me here, to the future, to the end of all things." I fought to muster up righteous anger, where was wrath when I needed it?

"Yes. At great expense." Turning towards the background, he produced a thumbcontrol from his pocket.

Click. The walls flickered and vanished. The secret headquarters of the man who kept the devil at bay just ceased to be. In the dark of imagined space, we stood there, not looking at each other.

"Then why do it if you knew I'd come here to stop you? You must have done this when you were me...", my voice was oddly confident, a rumble in my chest like a proud lion.

He spun around, pivot on heeled boots, a whip-crack of an arm, extended finger pointed at me, aimed directly at my brain. He held it as the spotlight popped on, then slid his shadows at me as the beam dropped. Glancing upwards in a snap, sunglasses popped on his face.

"I never succeeded when I was young..." the stabbing tip of his piercing obsidian fingertips darted into my peripheral vision.

My hand whipped up, slapping aside his shadow, spinning his body sideways, he was ready with a cocked back southpaw. I finally make eye contact, and take a good long look at who I really am, what I eventually become.

An old man with a sack full of theatrics. Playing the streetfighting action hero, past his prime, shades of supercool wannabe in every step. Afraid of people so finds a way to be alone. Afraid of not being the most important person in history.

So secure in the idea that he's Jesus, unwilling to believe himself to be Judas. Fame makes strange bedfellows with faith. Not a young man, but still a kid. Damaged goods. He tried and failed to stop the end of all that ever was. I will try and fail.

Therefore I will destroy the universe.

His fist slaps into my palm. FWAPP! I pause the scene just long enough to crack him into pieces. The crinkled bits littered the floor. The burning embers of his remains howled as the digital dirt digested him.

"See you in Hell."

Tower of Brahma. 62f. Over & Over

I dove deeper into the system. The web of illusion that these overgrown unborn babies all pretended was reality. They changed the channels on each other, watching private lives that were lies, wish-fulfillment imaginings of personal experience...no more than dramatic reenactments.

There was a heirarchy. A tower to climb. Each flabby sleeping slob brought me closer to the reason this humanity holdout was able to even exist. How could it keep going? What held it together? Solar powered panels, interconnectivity, hive mindless entertainment machine.

Why not just let go?

There were scientists, mixed among philosophers, those of us that had answers, or at least a study guide, a rulebook, that made sense of the chaotic cauldron we were birthed in. A step by step reason formula that formed structure around the formless void. They were plugged in a meditative state, pumping knowledge into recording devices, free to ponder and pontificate.

There were theologians. No actual men or women of faith, but historians and scholars, briefed on the great beyond. They too processed bits of data, translated from ancient alphabets, the musings of early mankind. The bold truths that came over told them everything that they already felt.

Fictioneers, fictionauts, falsehood mythmakers, the greatest living writers, story structure specialists, all hammering out a plot that was so precise, they believed it could puncture the essence of all dimensions. This was the armory, letters lined in rows, grouped in paragraphs, given power and purpose.

Destroy the entire thing. Everything. The reality of Earth. The concept of reality. The idea of Heaven and Hell, the Devil, and God itself: these would all die, stuck and bleeding across the higher realm. And if we were lucky, that too would burst apart and be obliterated, and beyond.

Devout disciples drilling into the ether, whipping together adventures, played out before them, for them by them. Self-satisfying action, the dramas each sprouting a new direction, inspiring each creator to fine tune and edit. There had to be one last story to tell. A final epic where each word died as you read it, a book that evaporates upon asorbtion of even just one reader.

It must be at the end of this race. For infinity was merely a word for the endless unknown, a word and idea created by man, so therefore irrevocably flawed. There was a cliff, know reality was flat, an edge to carry what was left towards, to jump off of. The bliss of non-existence.

Surely that was better than suffering eternally.

Tower of Brahma. 62e. White Lie Like the Devil pt.1

I got inside. Networked my self into one of the oval coccoons sitting in post-apocalyptic Prospect Park. Connected with one of the last sixty four people left alive, if you could call this living.

Naked, encased in gelatinous electrolyte rich ectoplasm, asleep and surfing the world wide web (now no more than a sad server no larger than a message board). They lived digital dreams, recharging and recycling their energies, feeding their personal re-wombs. Safe from Satan.

Or so they thought. I psychically slipped into one, a developer for the wonder material that comprised the skin of these lifesaving eggs. He was granted passage as one of the creators of their salvation. In return for his genius, he plugged in and tuned out. I patched into his video feed.

Brushing his teeth. Shower scene masturbation. Dress for success and off to work. A coffee and bagel as he passes thousands of artificial simulations of the rush hour masses. None of them real, but for the illusion of a real life, a mundane routine, boring living 9 to 5 workweek humdrum. This is what he wanted.

I rode his signal to the next pasty person floating in goop. This one wired the globules for audio/video, was integral to the development of the interface, and was otherwise completely and utterly a drone. His feed fed him sex in a non-stop loop, penetrating and pontificating upon every manner of persona.

I skipped along a few more technicians and mechanical misanthropes. They all sought some singular simulcra of happiness. Drugs, endless streams of pixellated heroin seeping up into veins. Pain, straps of leather slapping and cracking against electrical inputs that served as skin. There was nothing but self-destruction spread among the saved.

Until I came to a poet. A garden. A gifted lad, living renaissance simplicity, dining in decadent halls, gliding along in suits with maidens at balls, lounging with feather quill pen and parchment, scribbling along for days on end. He sought to uncover the mystery of love eternal, while alone in a bubble.

Next to the poet was the artist, swiping across landscapes, thinking outside the canvass, breaking physics down and reshaping all that was around him. The cosmos came into being as he tipped his finger into the dark infinite, rasterized edges sawing into the endless monitor display. He swapped paintbrushes, hit the airbush tool, added a gradient.

I thought about what art would be with only the artist to gaze upon it, what poetry would sound like with only your own voice to speak it. There would be no audience, no outside force to create meaning or be communicated to. No one there to place a label upon your creation, no pressure to please anyone but yourself.

Most likely a Hell disguised as Heaven.

Tower of Brahma. 62 D. This is a novel.

Art does not exist in a vacuum. That was the last lucid thought I had running through my brain as I scrambled to put down the information that was growing in my mind.

This book is something important. I'm thinking of something, devising a plan, scoping the pattern of everything that is and ever will be. The meaning of life, if possible, but exploring every mystery between here and there.

It doesn't matter if this work matters in any way with any piece of writing that has ever been created. Whatever came before was of its time, crafted by its influences, bending an idea through a symbolic pattern of letters from something called an alphabet.

And in English no less. By an American. From a historical aspect, what could be more removed from anything ancient and physcial, a battle of survival, wits and strength, tempered with wisdom and experience. The language was new, the country was new, it's people such a diverse genetic, culturally and socially enmeshed mankind, the likes the Earth had never seen.

We dwelled mired in the daily occurences of pop stars, celebrity corpses, and mad branded icons of fame. We hungered for reality, senses sharpening, pulsrate quickening, visceral moments. Some of us wrote those down, painted them, screamed them out with notes. We made Art. Abstract thought brought humans out of the darkness of their being.

Stumbling towards the bright light, the pretty flame, rationalizing with logic our hearts desires. We wanted more of whatever was beyond our grasp. Were two opposing forces spun into motion, still spiraling outwards from the Big Bang? An atomic birth, a quantum fusion, energy reacting, exploding into infinity.

Everything gets bigger as things get smaller. The possibilites are greater as our souls and bodies are battered and run down, kept occupied with a weekday task that allows us just enough life left in us to drink our cares away. Our gadgets shrink in our very hands, digital landscapes opening up in our palms. You gaze down into the app that will become your personality.

A metal/plastic all-purpose personality storage device. Digital images, handheld video, mp3 soundtrack to score our descent. We simulataneously drop into Hell as our consciousness transcends to Nirvana. Our bodies rot, our awareness expands. Those left alive live comfortably, gelantenous sacks filled with nutrient goo, wired for Blue-Ray, Plasma HD, 3D, stereo surround-sound, Hi-Def, Bluetooth Wireless Connectivity to the Central Router.

The last bastion of humanity. The 64 blobs that lie on the horizon, sitting in bunches sometimes, swatted into a ditch of scorched earth by some wandering demonic beast, I counted them out and checked them off. The devil wanted an exact count. Who's left?

And I was the errand boy. A younger self of one of these sad sack, re-wombed, pathetic examples of the last people on earth. In one of these bobbing water balloon eggs was me at sixty years old. Having become successful enough to afford my very own Armaggedon-life rafts, I apparently somehow pluck my 33 year old self, me, and plop him here after God's Reckoning.

A New York City picked clean by rotted, gnarled bits of bone that these monsters call teeth. Large stabbing, piercing, eviscerating tusks of mustard colored fangs. Bits of human carnage wedged in its gums, a discernable body part popping from a back molar as it screeches the deadening shriek of eternal damnation.

This moment is your last.

But its not. The devil has a deal. Live. Walk. Experience what's left of my race. Then sign the contract, get whatever I want, do a favor for him, and eternal bliss. Wait, what's the favor? I don't remember offering up my services in any sort of post-apocalyptic janitor, sweeping torsos and limbs into bins, clearing streets of bodies.

"That's not what I want." It really wasn't a big deal.

"Alright, well I signed...", I said. "What now?"

That's when he left me in decayed Brooklyn, shattered brownstones, a ring of rubble circling Prospect Park. The temple that was the Brooklyn Museum still stood, despite savage anger delivered to its columns by all manner of mishapen beasts. I had a free pass. All but invisible to their animalistic senses, their bloodlust.

It was here, besides a lake of hellfire, I found a stash of the orbs. Giant old pantyhose containers, the oversized Easter eggs, and inside every one was a blob of white chocolate. A rich executive of a company, the designer of the orb technology, the president perhaps. But each one had something in there that I needed.

I tapped one with my foot to watch it warble like a water snake, but it held firm, not quite the kiddie pool inflatable I imagined. Flexible but secure. It looked like something found in nature from another planet or dimension, totally acceptable sitting like a giant nest as massive leathery wings flapped all about me, their shadows dipping over me, as if to keep me on task.

From my pocket I pull out the handheld that the devil gave me. It was clunky, old school, had heft and weight to it. Dark wood panelling, vinyl grooves, and a chrome finish. The screen came to life, flickering from Apple IIe green dot matrix, to 16-bit, NTSC to PAL, VCR quality. It snapped with my brain and I began to interface.

I went inside myself first. Realizing that the lump of plastic and metal was just a formality. Something that resembles what I knew in my life, the tech of my era, to represent an idea. Connecting electronically, which triggered the psychic link. And from there, I took aim, dead center of the oval before me, and fired.

9600k baud modem squelch.

Tower of Brahma - Christ, This is Easy - 62.c (of 64)

Buy a drink, blend in, slip between the cracks. You're a normal human being enjoying an alcoholic beverage. At a bar where people gather to consume and forget, a place where your past and hand shakes should be forgotten.

Confidence is hard, carrying a deflated ego across the world, hefting the bloated carcass of my entire life along the powerlines of my life. After Jesus was ressurected he assumed a false identity, scouring the land for all that he could fix and realign.

Now it's my time. I'm here, in his name, reborn in his image, sweeping over all that I see to enlighten and brighten against all odds. I know you hate me, envy me, and it's quite alright. I really don't mind.

I have a job to do. I am hefting the weight of everything else with me. So display your discomfort, explain your dilemmas, and know that I'm listening. I may not seem like I care, but I totally do. I want us all to be happy and fulfilled.

A few drinks makes it better. A smoke outside, a beverage in hand, the night's coolness set upon us all. Abuse of alcohol makes it easier to interact. Makes our fallible human nature that much easier to consume. It's better than being revealed stark sober.

I don't judge you, even though I do, but I love you all nonetheless. I know how hard it is. I've experienced it first hand as one of you. Talk about it all like it matters, dancing among the discourse, taking in the pain and beauty of every day living.

I will swallow it all and make of it what I can, I promise you that. It's my pleasure to be of service, my disrupted youth, my flock of helpless servants to oblivion. I put words down and make this all a bit easier to consume. It may not be to your liking but it's all I can do to take in and digest the everything that surrounds me.

I creep out of the crypt, dancing before your eyes, breathing in the dischord in your discourse. I shave my beard into a fierce goatee and slide into society. You don't see me here but I know that you appreciate my efforts.

You're welcome.