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You are a man of God, and you are a man of faith.
Faith is a difficult commodity to come across these days, especially in the company you’ve found yourself among for the past few decades.
...Crazy people. It’s crazy people that you’ve found yourself among, but you can’t deny that they’re right, and you can’t deny that you’re one of them.
You’re surrounded by existential incarnations of madness, violence, and terror—and yet you’re the crazy one for believing in God.
—————
Gertrude believes in sacrificing one life for many more, for the greater good, perpetuation of the human race. You think that she’s terribly nihilistic. After all, if there’s no value in a single human life, how is there value in any of the others?
What makes Michael Shelley worth less than the world? Especially when his loss was that unnecessary. Gertrude had so, so many other options, yet she still chose to send him into the corridors, armed with nothing but a map and trust. And what has she done? She temporarily staved off a ritual, and created an immeasurably powerful enemy.
Give and take. Luck. The greater good. These are the things that Gertrude believes in. She looks at the world and sees a series of random chances that happened to occur in just the right sequence. She calls you naive.
Gertrude fundamentally misunderstands the concept of religion.
You‘re fairly certain that you’ve made it extremely clear you are a practical man. You are not an idealistic, thoughtless, mindless worshipper. Every single question, every single doubt she’s ever had, that made her what she is? You’ve thought the same. If God created humanity from dust and bone, why are there Neanderthals? Why were there these great, prehistoric creatures of might and terror, before any sign of humans?
(The creation myth is not meant to be taken literally.)
The truth is this: No matter how the universe came about—whether a collection of dust became the Big Bang, whether life began from single-celled archaebacteria—whether everything is a series of random, uninformed chances and decisions and consequences—something had to knock down that first domino.
Something had to begin the universe.
Because what it a universe, compared to an empty, depthless, eternity of nothing at all? Time is a human concept, and eternity stretches both ways.
Something had to begin the universe.
Gravity. Something had to create gravity.
Morality. Something had to create morality.
Who else, if not God? No one can give you an alternate answer to this. Many have tried.
What kind of merciful God would create such a world? Gertrude always, always asks.
One that has granted us free will, you always answer, and because of that, we are afraid. The Fears are creatures of our own design.
My God is merciful because in death, we are free.
...Despite this unending disagreement, Gertrude Robinson is your best friend. (You don’t think the feeling is mutual, but you wouldn’t expect any less.)
Nonetheless, it’s... difficult, to know that your best friend would feed you to the wolves without a second thought, if it was to save humanity.
Save it from what, you want to cry. The apocalypse is inevitable whether it comes from the Fears or the Lord Himself! What matters is how we survive, not that we do!
But you know that she can’t understand, so you say nothing at all.
—————
There’s a man with eight eyes and cobwebs for a brain, and he’s smiling. He holds out a hand, one of many.
You don’t want this. You don’t. But the Mother of Puppets does as she pleases, and as you shake the man’s hand, there are gossamer threads wrapped around your wrists.
And yet... there’s a table under the ashes of a house on a hill, and maybe...
Well. Wring every advantage you can out of every situation, Gertrude always says, and you’re never opposed to ridding the world of another monster.
(Acquaintances, friends, cousins, mothers, this is a thing that has murdered and will murder again. You pray for their forgotten souls, and go to work.)
—————
The Desolation killed my cat, Gertrude laughs, low and dry and harsh. Most people think she’s joking—and she is, kind of, but there’s a kernel of truth there. You wonder what else the Desolation took from her.
Wondering.
That’s what you do best, honestly. You’ve been told you’re striking, intimidating, stern—but it’s nothing compared to Gertrude, although that’s because Gertrude has a tendency to see everyone for exactly who they are and then discard them. You can’t quite bring yourself to do that, you can’t help seeing the possibility of value in every human life.
In another world, you’re a preacher, a teacher, a professor. A life where you change lives for the better and fulfill your thirst for information, research, your esoteric questions on the metaphysical.
That is not this world, unfortunately, but ultimately you don’t think you’d want to change the life you’ve found yourself in.
Gertrude thinks you’re caught up in your own head too much. She’s right, of course—but then again, she doesn’t think enough. It’s a balancing act between the two of you.
It’s probably how you’ve gotten yourself caught up in all of this, though. Threads strung round your wrists, a lifetime of knowledge that means nothing to the majority of humanity shoved into your head.
When you were a young man, madness itself tried to convince you that you weren’t real, that nothing was real, that life after death is empty and hopeless, and the world is a series of random chances and nothing more. And maybe, just maybe, the strings and threads of fate and choices were impressed when you managed to hold on tight to both your sanity and your faith.
But that might just be another one of your meaningless wonderings, again.
—————
The Extinction. That’s what you name it. It seems appropriate.
You were never one to care much for the environment, admittedly. You probably should, but you’re kind of busy.
Other people care. Other people care enough that they’re terrified. They shout that the world will end in seventeen years, and after seventeen years pass without an apocalypse, they’re sure it will end in twelve. To them, the world is in a constant state of ending and it’s all humanity’s fault.
This is an extremely specific fear. Gertrude thinks it’s an offshoot of the End, but it’s not a fear of death for these people. Far from it. It’s the fear of humanity’s hubris causing the slow deterioration or blinding-flash obliteration of the world to such an extent that life as we know it to be is impossible. Whether it is via nuclear war, or drowning in the rising ocean, or burning to ashes in the heat of a sun gone supernova—its the utter terror of wiping out everything that this planet has ever known.
And, of course, what might come after.
Whether it’s a realistic fear, you don’t have the necessary education to say—but it’s a fear nonetheless. Preferably, of course, you could stop it—but you can’t possibly think of a way, outside of convincing every doomsday theorist you can that the world is not, in fact, ending soon—a task which would be both fruitless and impossible.
After all, you don’t actually know that. For all you know, the world will end tomorrow, or next week, or in seventeen years, or twelve, or a billion. There’s no possible way for you to be certain.
—————
There is an apocalypse in Klanxbüll.
Oh, sure, it’s not a manifestation of the Extinction as you’d hoped. But it certainly doesn’t matter now, and looking at the utter mind-numbing horror around you—
Yes, you can call it an apocalypse.
Also, concrete works wonderfully against avatars of Filth. You hope Gertrude will remember that, will take at least that much from your last letter.
She won’t be sad that you’re gone. Disappointed, maybe—you’ve been a valuable asset over the years, despite how delusional she tends to think you are—but never sad.
It’s much, much better that way. You don’t want to be mourned.
There is a pile of corpses with still-beating hearts at the foot of a decomposing throne. You are one of those corpses, and you have poured them with petrol and sat among them, match held in your trembling fingers.
You are a modern martyr, a saint hung upside-down on the crucifix, tied to the stake with flames licking at your skin, and you will burn for your beliefs.
You never wanted to die in your sleep, anyway.