"How can I…?
"Who are these people? Why did they end up with this as their fate?"
"Like I said before. There is no option." It responds rather snobbishly, its inflection implies my stupidity, which infuriates me.
"I fuckin get that, I know what fate means." I clap back at it.
"You either believe or you do not. Those who believe do so in order to feel connected. They want to get in touch with a higher power. They instinctually get a warm fuzzy feeling and cling to it for the whole of their pitifully short existence. Can't you see it now? It works! Through Theol they connect!"
"And, this is what that looks like? Count me out."
"I wouldn't be so hasty. These are some of the most devout friars, monks, men and women through the ages. The most pious of your species. They are here, receiving their just rewards. I cannot stress this enough, they are literally connected to a higher power. That warm fuzzy feeling singing the fibrous ends of their nerves and neurons, raising the hair on their arms and necks, jolting their insides - is eighty percent spiritual energy and a tiny little bit of magic called electricity. A little impulse, ha ha" - his laugh is jeering and it literally grates every nerve-
"I've always loved that one. Neurons. You have them but they are so small. The joke is Yves, that impulse is more or less forbidden by your churches. Impulse leads to actions that can get you into trouble. It leads to questions better left unasked. But here, they get to indulge every literal and figurative
impulse -" it pauses for emphasis, as if that is all it needs to prove its repulsive point.
"They don't 'GET' to indulge, they are forced. This is torture and you've got to stop it! It's madness!"
"Excuse me, these people prayed for this. Begged for it. This IS divinity. They are literally inspired! Hahaha." He guffaws and then continues his tirade. "They can see, hear, taste, and smell the entirety of the cosmos. Sure it doesn't look like what you would expect. But trust me, from their perspective, the brightest shade of green or the bluest rolling wave is least of the experience. This is the Web, as you say. The interconnected network that wraps around the worlds connecting everything. Even dreams. Once again, let me repeat, these people have literally connected to a, nay, THE, higher power."
"There is no dream of mine in there. This whole thing has been a goddamned nightmare since it began. I want the nothing that was pretty much promised me before I apparently died. This is just hateful."
"It most certainly is not. Amusing perhaps, but not hateful. First of all, you are yourself isolated from this holiness because you chose not to believe, casting faith and transcendence away like unwanted trash while you were alive. We do not look at humanity with any sort of contempt. You are just food. Some of the agents even have soft spots for you. They can't bear to watch your slaughter, so choose to remain ignorant themselves. The funny thing is that, they still need to eat. And there is a great number of us. Some choose to use your names or rename you and keep you as pets from a rescue. Alas, it only serves to soften them up more to your eventual deaths. But you live such short lives anyway. I would think you would rather crawl around on all fours for your measly existence in a fugue of freedom than to be so blatantly leashed and controlled. Besides, you do that enough to yourselves."
"If I'm not mistaken, it was religion that gave us the tools of control."
"You think it started there huh? You don't think you had slaves and power struggles long before you decided to build houses of worship and gave the worst of you the power to oppress?"
"I suppose so. I do know this; uncle Ben had it right, 'With great power comes great responsibility.' You have all the power in the world, literally, and you only use it to corrupt and to eat… Deceitful and disgusting. I actually think this Theol figure is the devil and you are all demons."
"Such limited perception. Hypocritical foolishness, relying on what you hate because it is the only source for any understanding. You know nothing. Definitely nothing of power. You are looking at it from your own confused perspective. Minimal scope at a maximum distance. You don't realize what it's really like out there. You live your lives ignorant of all the other possibilities. All the other realities. You are even so ignorant that you don't know how you've ruined the perfect opportunity you've been given. You destroy the garden and everything in it for your own power and gain. For what you ask? Control. The very same control you accuse us of wielding. But you don't realize that once you've all died out Theol and all of us agents will glut ourselves and move on to the next thing; the next planet, the next species. Do you know the word, nihilism?"
"Yes."
"Embrace it. Your end is coming."
"I don't believe you. El will stop Theol and I'll help!"
"Ha! A little hero eh? What do you propose that you and that feeble creature can do? If he had the power to alter reality, why not do something eons ago? -"
"We'll figure something out, you'll see!"
"You tiny minded thing, how do you expect to leave the 'Storm' let alone put an end to our lord?"
"I don't have a clue. But I'll find a way. I found this body didn't I? I bet you didn't expect that? You probably thought I would get pulled into your Shit Station and you'd be sucking on my prick draining me of all my juice, but I surprised you. That's one thing I know for sure, Theol doesn't know everything."
"I do not think that I would put any of that to the test Yves. Now if you are finished with your little drama, Theol is still waiting."
"Why didn't he come and get me himself?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well if he wants to talk to me so badly, why didn't he just come to me himself. Why send you to bring me to him like this? It all just seems so, mafia movie. I am sure he could have just taken two minutes out of his day to come and get me."
"Theol knows nothing of days, time is irrelevant to a being such as he. Soon you will see his majesty, and know."
"Know what?"
"Hold your tongue, the time will come."
The punctuation falls heavily at the end of Af's statement and I realize we are no longer in the Internet room. We've been traversing obsidian corridors etched with glyphs and runes for some time. The pulsing ghost white moon light lulls me back into complacency. I'm a baby with mood lighting and ocean sounds. God, I make myself sick. Why am I so weak?
Energy resonates through the floor tiny painful shocks of static coming shoot off the floors and walls. My hair is floating up around my head. The body responds like a car battery, it hums with all the crackling electricity and it feels calm, it feels good. The circumference of the corridor arches and rolls, I have to throw my hands out to keep my balance as wave after wave roll peristaltically through the structure. We keep moving, and I feel a Charlie horse coming pounding along one thigh with the tightening of the body's hamstrings and gluts . We've been going up hill. I don't know when the landscape changed. Looking back we've been angling up for some time.
Subtle shifts in the aether start happening beginning with the light. Everything is dimming and the terrain is getting rougher.
And then,
{{ECHOES}}
{ECHOES}
SCREAMS AND SHRIEKS.
{{{{'YEEOOOOOOOOOOOW!!'}}}}
{{{'YEEOOOOOOOOOW!!'}}}
{{'YEOOOOOOO!!'}}
{{{!'K-KCUUUFFFFFF'}}}
{{'!!KKCC-UUFFFFF'}}
{'!!KCCUFFF' }
Tripped up by the horror movie ambience of the screams I misstep and stumble reaching out for a wall to steady myself, and grabbing Af by mistake as the noise comes slamming and rebounding out of the darkness. My hands sink into the folding, cascading light. It gives me a frostbite burn. Angrily it grabs the hand accosting it and whips me around with it flinging me against a wall. All the air is driven from my lungs upon impact. Gasping, struggling to breathe, my lungs burn in solidarity with my hand that encountered the light of Af. It storms over like a WWE wrestler and grabs the back of my neck lifting me off the floor, slamming me down on my feet so hard that I almost go over a second time.
"Don't ever touch me again," It says with utter repugnance brushing itself off.
Blasts of pain pierce my ears coming again and again, trailing off as fresh screams slice through the still ambience, filling the air around the previous screams in the hall like displaced water filling space around an object. The layered noises take on substance creating a thick barrier through the corridor as if someone were filling it with static insulation. I have to put my shoulder forward to push through it.
AWWAAAARRRRRRRGGGHHHH~!
"What the hell is that?"