Let’s Kill Evil

“We can never go home again.”

What if destiny doesn’t exist? What if evil isn’t supposed to be, and it’s actually just an unnatural anomaly? What if a single, random bolt of quantum lightning tore a hole in the fabric of reality, a single fluctuation ripping its way through time and space at trillions of points all at once? What if countless catastrophes and tragedies throughout human history could all be traced back to a rogue flash of chaotic energy that had just as much of a chance to never have come into existence?

And what if you knew where that fluctuation began? What if you discovered the origin point of every disaster and war and unimaginable horror to ever have occurred? What if you could travel to the advent of all that is unholy and see it with your own eyes? What if you knew how to stop darkness from ever coming to be? What if you could kill evil?

There are so many questions and so few answers, overwhelming uncertainty and also confidence in the minutes before launch when I pray to a God I’ve never believed in because everything science taught me might be a lie. When I was a child, I wanted to believe in something greater, a benevolent force watching over mankind that nonetheless let us make our own mistakes and hopefully learn from them. What a fool I was, thinking there was an easy way out – existence is chaos, and it’s arrogant to believe something as simple as God could design something so erratic and expansive, as though omnipotence would ever be so wise. I understand truth is subjective, that the universe is infinite and also ever-expanding – this is my opportunity to prove it, that reality is nothing more than random chance, that everything evil is just the result of an unbalanced equation waiting to be solved before it becomes a problem in the first place.

I want to kill evil, cut its head off before it learns to speak, end every nightmare before they had the chance to be born, ignite shadows in their infancy, and erase the very idea of war before it came to pass.

It started with the frequency, the one we found hiding throughout human history with the same signature wherever we looked. For how vast the cosmos truly are, there is order to the dissonance, patterns and rhythms we can forecast like the weather – but this frequency was erratic, like a song with no melody or tempo or beat that burned our ears whenever we heard it. Keepers of the old faiths believed it divine, an immaculate signal broadcast through all of history to call the faithful home again – they were wrong. Astrophysicists and cosmic etymologists claimed it was a upper-dimensional message from the distant future, an indecipherable beacon hurtling backwards through space-time – they were also wrong.

The frequency is a splintering singularity, a quantum fluxuation affecting everything all the time as an amorphous, semi-sentient conduit that both is and isn’t – and we found where it all began, the moment when evil came into existence and spread forth like the virulent plague it would eventually grow to become. We all know what we signed up for, that what we are doing means forcing the universe to bend to our will, and that no one will ever know the sacrifice we are about to make. But it doesn’t matter, now, because none of us could walk away knowing we could save everything – what’s five lives weighed against the corruption of an entire universe? I’ve been to space before, but it never felt like this, never so freeing and absolute.

We see thing we shouldn’t, things no one was meant to witness. We passed by the advent of society and law and goodwill, glimpsed the first fire built on a cold night with death waiting to pounce and the great beasts that roamed our planet millennia before man ever came to be. We watched prehistoric amoeba seed life on Earth – and then we keep going. We witness the cycle of life amongst the stars, alien species achieving advanced utopian societies, then back further to their earliest days, back through eons and epochs and all matter of inconceivable wonders, each worthy of a lifetime of study but that we only see for a single moment before they disappear into history.

Metrics of time are meaningless now, and not just philosophically. Some days, my hair is thin and grey, my skin old and weathered, and I can feel the pain coursing through every inch of my body. Other days I feel decades younger, stronger and more awake than I’ve been in years. I try to hold onto those feelings; one I thought I’d forgotten after so much heartache and pain, the other I never thought I’d be lucky enough to feel. But every time I wake up, it’s like everything that came before didn’t happen, as though my memories are just stories and I have to learn how to be me all over again. I wish I could blame the mission, but what good would that do?

It started to feel like we’d never get there, that the ship would just keep going and going until we all died, one by one. I wondered if something was missing, if there was a component we weren’t aware of or a variation we couldn’t compensate for; the farther back we went the more we slowed down, like some invisible force was keeping us from making it over the last horizon that just kept moving further and further away.

Then we saw stars, swimming in the air around us – just tiny pops of energy in all different colors, buzzing and flitting around one moment then gone the next. No one said anything; we just stare in silence, listening to the song even though there’s no music playing. Then it was too much, and I reached out to touch what must be providence at the end, the light to show us the way because it has been so dark for so very long.

Ryder holds wife one last time and reminds her that even when she doesn’t remember him, he’ll still love her. Freya plays a final show at the Met, arrangements that bring the entire house to tears, knowing that what they are hearing is beyond anything anyone has ever heard or will ever hear again – it’s perfection, and she feels it. Francis asks the question weighing on her soul her entire life, faithful now that the answer will be true – it scares her more than she could have possibly imagine. Rustin admits the truth, holds his breath in a that moment stretching forever in a microsecond, and he finds what he is looking for. It’s a moment where anything is possible and nothing is, too, because I don’t see anything – just the void for as long as I can remember and no time at all.

And now we’re here, at the advent of all things.

Dawn of the first day when existence becomes in the blink of an eye, time slows down and each nanosecond is an epoch. In the first, the stars are born in fiery forges of light and wonder. In the second, gravity forms and bends and splinters and folds. And in the third, the essence of sentience snaps into existence, aimless and without form floating through a virgin ether, nothing more than the will to live. Within this moment, the very first moment to ever be, all of reality comes into being; it is nothing less than sublime. And in the next moment, we thought we saw the singularity, the nearly-imperceptible thing that grows and mutates and festers and will one day birth all that is wrong in this existence. It is the spark of eventual darkness, primordial terror writhing in the abyss so far from anything warm and understanding, the purest form of evil we have come to slay.

“We were wrong – you could spend ten thousand lifetimes doing this, and you wouldn’t come even remotely close to affecting anything. We were wrong.”

We always knew it was a quantum frequency of an erratic and unstable nature, so we compensated and made adjustments for the variables of its quasi-compositional state. And that was the joke – we understood how the universe worked until we forced our own ignorance. Time isn’t real, but effect is everything, and our cause smashed its meaning to dust. We wanted a foe, something we could hit and strangle and beat into submission through sheer force of will – how foolish we must have seemed, so desperately foolish.

Just being there changed everything. From the distribution of the first cosmic dusts and the angle of this reality’s first physics, to the bending of matter and the life altered because of it – our presence was the effect, the only effect. We were the singularity we thought we’d executed.

I started laughing. It was reflexive – such a dark joke, so intensely Baroque, I couldn’t stop myself. It was just so damn funny how sure we all were, how confident we must have seemed – all of us, just staring at the universe like it owed us something after we tore it apart and tried to murder a cosmic force of nature only to see the shape of ourselves in the evil we wanted to kill.

And it’s funny because it’s true – we let go of everything human about us except our contempt for evil, stripped away anything but blind hatred for a concept we inadvertently created because we are flawed. Stuck here at the moment of conception, we let our anger and fear and hate and everything else dark inside us come forth, and we called it righteousness without a hint of irony.

Super Sampson! (Overture)

Super Sampson! A mighty American hero dedicated to truth, justice, and goodwill amongst all! From humble beginnings as a lowly dock worker, Stan Sampson inherits an ancient and cosmic power! – and with it super-strength and incredible agility! Super Stan Sampson: The Champion of Golden Gate City! Leader of the Mighty Protectors! Shining example for all mankind!

When they come of age, Sampson’s two sons follow in their father’s footsteps! Steve “Sensational” Sampson, and Sal “Stupendous” Sampson! The Super Sampsons: a heroic dynasty in the heart of America! Fighting in the name of all that is good when longstanding ethos and subjective hierarchy come under scrutiny! Founding the first superhero union in the midst of heavy socio-political turmoil! Beacons of justice in an unjust world!

And lo! Tragedy strikes! The aging Stan Sampson watches his sons fall at the hands of the nefarious Doctor Lawless, whose Mandroid malfunctions and murders the two young heroes! Unhinged in despair, Super Sampson murders Lawless with his bare hands! The Trial of Super Sampson captures a nation as its greatest hero falls further than they ever thought possible! The Super Sampsons are no more – Steve and Sal are dead, Stan is in prison for the murder of their killer, and only one person can save the Sampson name! – Stella Sampson, Stan’s only daughter!

Everyone wants to know what my Dad was like when I was a kid. They don’t want to think about who he really is, just how they remember what it felt like to look up in the sky and see salvation waving back. They want me to tell them he was a perfect dad, the epitome of fatherhood because anything less would sully their fragile nostalgia.

Stan Sampson was never a saint; he was angry, drank too much, and suffered from a depression he could never admit to himself let alone anyone else. My dad never hit us, but there’s more than one way to hurt the ones closest to you, and Stan seemed to find every way possible to make us feel like we didn’t matter. He didn’t have to say it, but I knew he resented us for being his weakness – I don’t think he ever wanted a family.

My mother’s the only reason I don’t hate my father. She truly was a saint, a woman who raised three kids with a husband who wasn’t there even when he was. Yet, she still managed to make us believe she was alright when really, she was dying inside. It took years for her to finally say it out loud and tell me what it was like back then, how she constantly feared my dad wouldn’t get out alive, that one of his enemies would enter our home and kill us all in our sleep, or that he would leave us for something better.

But my mom’s worst fear came true the day Steve and Sal got their powers; they were wrestling and slammed through the walls, destroyed the upstairs bathroom before realizing what they’d done. That afternoon, they were already flying and then sprinting around the block in seconds. I saw the tears in Mom’s eyes when Dad said it was the greatest day of his life; I was only twelve, but even I knew how much that hurt her. Because it was just another example of how much more she loved him than he loved her; she never said anything. Mom started drinking earlier and earlier in the day. I didn’t try and stop her.

I’ll never excuse it, but there was a silver lining to Dad’s shitty behavior – Mom and I grew closer. My brothers went off to fight the good fight with Dad, so it was just me and Mom in the house – the two ordinary members of an extraordinarily dysfunctional family left behind to wait. We spent afternoons watching talk shows, then Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! in the evening before the wine went to her head and she had to lay down. My mom wasn’t an angry drunk like my dad; she melted into the couch and her glass, because the world sometimes felt too heavy. I had to be the voice of optimism, the one who saw the bright side because she couldn’t anymore and my dad and brothers were too busy saving everyone else to recognize that we were losing her. The fleeting moments when I could get her to smile – those are some of the best memories I have.

And here’s the fucking rub – as shitty as Dad could be, but I could never shake this need for him to be proud of me, like his approval would somehow give me the strength to finally admit how I really feel, and at the moment when he loves me the most, tell him I don’t care so the truth will be just that much more devastating. But then I tell myself that’s petty and small, that wanting to kick someone when they’re down is what my Dad does, and I don’t want to be anything like him.

When we were younger, before Steve and Sal got powers, the three of us would dream about who we could be, all the different possibilities that could take us away, out from under his shadow where we could build our own lives that had nothing to do with capes or masks or super powers. But I think the truth was always there, at the back of our minds; knowing that if the day came for any of us, we’d follow him in a heartbeat. And then, they did – just like I knew they would. I could never fault my brothers for wanting Dad to love them, just like I know they didn’t hold it against me when I stopped calling because it hurt too much to hear them say how great things were. They were jerks, but they were still my brothers, and part of why they followed Dad into his world was to prove themselves to him, to show him they weren’t as worthless as we’d spent our childhoods feeling.

They didn’t deserve to die like that. The android was stronger, faster, more cunning; and Doctor Lawless let that mechanical monstrosity rip them apart, limb by limb, until there was nothing left. It took years of therapy to get over watching my brothers die in a gruesome massacre streaming live on every network while I couldn’t say a word to anyone. Dad snapped and nearly gave himself a heart attack tearing the android apart and throwing the pieces into the sun before beating the life out of Lawless. Mom went blank; she didn’t sob or scream or even lose composure. She simply sipped her wine as tears streamed down her cheek and she took a deep breath before finishing the entire glass and pouring another.

I’ve spent the past two years doing everything I can to stay positive, to keep my spirits high even though my father grew increasingly distant and my brothers left to follow in his undeserved footsteps while my mother slipped further into a black hole of despair. And there is no one to talk to, no one I can tell the truth to because no one knows my name is Stella Sampson.

After the War

Inspired by Jonathan Hickman, Esad Ribić, and Ive Svorcina’s epic 2015 Marvel Comics crossover event, Secret Wars, in which Doctor Victor Von Doom and Doctor Stephen Strange play god, well. Yet, their fall from grace is frustratingly brushed aside once the event ends and reality restarts. Their sins are great and many, yet the metanarrative is never confronted or questioned – this aims to.

Two desperate men, a scientist and a sorcerer, try to avert the end of all things.

When failure is the only option, they break the rules.

Harnessing power beyond reckoning, they save what little they can

One becomes a god, the other his prophet.

There was chaos, then there was order, and it was good.

But that was then…

Before god let petty emotion strangle his pale benevolence.

When his insecurity poisoned all that still was, and fear became law.

Ere god’s greatest enemy returned to end the charade and bring back infinite everything.

And in the twilight of his glory, god wept as something better grew from the ashes.

In the beginning, everything was born anew.

Yet, the scientist remembers, and so does the sorcerer.

They cannot forget what they did when all was lost.

One was corrupted by absolute power, the other murdered for making it plain.

Infinity does not know how close it came to ending.

Only the scientist and the sorcerer know.

And this is now…

When one staves off psychological demons by fighting ones in the flesh.

As the other disconnects from himself, bereft of meaning after losing divinity.

And one struggles to maintain composure, obsessed with how pointless he feels.

While the other falls apart because he cannot comprehend what he has lost.

No one knows what they carry, the pain and anger and overwhelming guilt.

No one can ever know that they did.

Yet, one cannot sleep knowing they will not answer for their sins.

While the other makes a choice: die a man, or rise again.

When they meet again, a strange doom will fall.

The closure necessary to break the cycle of in spite of itself.

A final reconciliation that one will not survive.

Redemption will come, but the cost will be too high.

Fate and destiny will die at their feet.

And their war will decide what everything means.

From Stellaris: Binary

I didn’t know what hate was until I was thirteen. It’s one of the only saving graces of living down here – kids get to be kids without the weight of knowing who they really are. But did I appreciate being kept in the dark? – of course not. I hated my parents for lying to me and pretending they were happy, for letting me believe I had a chance in hell of ever getting out when the truth is none of us do, because there’s no one who remembers when we could. All that’s left are just stories now, memories of a time when things were good. The truth could never set me free, so I decided to do it myself.

Under smoke-filled skies, walking down dirty streets littered with last week’s trash and stinking of piss and sweat as twin suns set behind too many factories, I realized none of it was normal because we’d grown up believing this was the way of things without asking why, and that when we learned the truth, we simply resigned ourselves to a life un-lived. The only hope we still had was in each other, and even that was starting to fade.

It made me angry. I walked for hours, out to the middle of the barren desert that was left behind when all the mineral deposits went dry and where nothing would ever grow again because the land was poisoned and wouldn’t heal. I screamed at the other, binary moon hanging in the sky as loud as I could until I lost my voice and nothing came out when I tried to curse them up above just one more time. Because this is just how it is. We are inferior, menial, less than – and it is wrong. They bend towards the sun the same as us, know the same gods, and bleed just like we do. We are their dirty secret, their unending sin kept hidden from the rest of the universe so they can keep living in bliss as we suffer in the shadows where we just exist. We cannot wait for another inversion that may never come, and I wouldn’t let the cosmos decide my fate, anyway.

It starts slow; just a feeling, at first. But the feeling grows into acceptance, and then into anger and rage when you realize acceptance means giving up on everything else just to hold onto something familiar – what you know isn’t worth anything without understanding what you don’t know, and understanding sacrifice is easier said than done. We gave up on wanting to more, and generations paid the price through subjugation, oppression, and hate. No one is going to help us; we must deliver ourselves from this life.

My husband left me when I told him I wanted to go. Through tears in both our eyes and those nights knowing what was coming on the dawn of the final day, I tried to hold onto what we had and not what we had become; divided and distressed because neither of us realized the home we had made was emptier than we thought. He saw hope between the cracks of this dingy moon, happiness in what was there instead of working for something better, and he saw a life growing old in this place I cannot be anymore. I think I loved him, and I like to believe he loved me, too; but I won’t ever really know, and that’s okay because this was never enough for me and it’s all he will ever want. When a good man and a good woman can’t find the good in each other, love dies; the others stole our potential and robbed us of our pride, and then I stood alone when they took my husband, too.

I have nothing to lose, and it is good. I hold onto the pain and sadness and frustration because it’s what gets me through each day and helps me remember that everything I left behind will still be there even though I won’t. The trek across the desert is cruel, and few are ready to make the journey, but those who join me see this place for the prison it truly is, and they will no longer be defined by being born on the wrong moon. I let them say their last goodbyes to families begging them to stay and reconsider such a fool’s errand. I don’t know how their mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters cannot see the desperation in their eyes, that staying means dying without living — because it’s all I can see. At the edge of everything we’ve ever known, twelve set off with me across the barren wasteland towards the promise of anything else.

Ours was a baptism of fire, a crucible we brought upon ourselves that stripped us of pretense and forced us to survive with faith as our only guiding light. Through storms of thick dust and sharp sleet, days of unending heat that claimed one of us and drove another insane, nights so cold I often wondered if I would even wake up the next morning – through it all, we marched. Weeks felt like months in the summer expanse as the days stretched out and beasts hunted us in the pitch-black darkness of even longer nights. Comfort became little more than a memory, just a fading idea we used to know but could no longer recognize. I questioned myself more times than I can count, wondering if I what I was doing was right, or if I was leading us all to our deaths on the other side of the world where no one would hear us scream. But I would rather die knowing I tried than live wondering what could have happened.

After what felt like a lifetime, we reached the top of the ten-thousandth mountain and I saw the Moment; a small quantum singularity locking two moons together yet separating us so much more, the unstable point in space and time that I could see with my own eyes yet isn’t supposed to be real. But we stood on the summit of the mountain and looked upon the moment we’d been taught was a fairy tale for children too old to deny the lies but too young to accept the truth – it was magnificent. It was unlike anything we’d ever seen or would see again in our lifetimes; the nebulous, vague something pulsating with energy that crackled and spit and flared out from the center and across the crater’s face that meant freedom.

When the Moment first came into view, it felt like there couldn’t be anything else like it across all of Stellaris, that it was wholly unique in its lucid, breathtaking beauty. I wanted that moment to go on forever; just let me sit there and imagine what’s on the other side until I grow old and die with a smile on my face. But I stopped myself; that temptation wasn’t enough to keep me from moving forward. Two more stayed behind who were happy to watch the universe invert within itself in a shard of existentiality, content enough to accept they would die out there while the rest of us kept going.

It was the end of the world and the beginning of everything else, the only chance we had to get out, and every step was another towards deliverance. It felt right, struggling down the cliff face into the valley below where the Moment’s sheer force pushed a hole into the ground like a goblet spilling over with potential. I wanted to rip my clothes off and dance naked in the field of glowing flowers and vibrating trees warped by the Moment, so astonishing and extraordinary and uncanny and new. I couldn’t stop laughing the closer we got, like none of what I was seeing could possibly make sense yet it was there, and I could nearly touch it.

Reality swung like a boxer in a title fight when it’s fist connected with my mind as bullets from nowhere barely miss me. On the far side of the valley, they sent warning shots and moved to intercept. When they cut us off from the Moment, I panicked; sheer terror of never experiencing what laid within it’s shimmering perfection gripped me by the throat, and I couldn’t breathe. I ran faster than I’ve ever run before, as one by one the others fell behind me. I did hear them follow me when I took off, but I couldn’t look away from the Moment, and the closer I got the more I knew I made the right decision. Nothing I did on this world could make a difference, so my last hope was wanting to survive more than their guns could hurt me.

I jumped into the moment with a smile on my face when three of their shots found their mark and blood started streaming down my back. I cried with joy in the moment before I landed on the other side surrounded by strangers who nearly let me die on a busy intersection in a golden city. Before I lost consciousness, an old woman took my hand and told me everything was going to be alright. Somehow, I knew she wasn’t lying – I guess there’s a first time for everything.

I woke up two days later in a hospital, scared and confused; I didn’t know where I was or what had happened. I threw up over the side of my bed and a kind nurse came in to clean it up. I asked her where I was, and she told me I would know in due time. Even though I wanted to scream, my body wouldn’t let me and I fell asleep again.

It took hours, but someone finally arrived in my room to give me the talk, the same talk every one of us who’s ever made it through gets when they wake up and don’t know where they are or what to think. That was his job; to tell us the truth without a hint of despair, to admit he and his kind oppressed people like me, to explain how I lived a lie for twenty-nine years based on an arbitrary cosmic design. I never imagined the truth would set me free, and here it was to prove freedom was never really an option to begin with. I was born on the wrong moon, and nothing could change that. No matter how much I wanted to forget them both and just leave, all my hopes and dreams disappeared as quickly as the Moment. That feeling of pure ecstasy I felt jumping in was inverted completely, and the dread pushed me over the edge.

Because everyone knows – the whole universe, all of it. They all know what’s was happening, and they don’t care because they don’t want to lose what our suffering produces. They’re more worried about the refined minerals we thought only those above us used in their vain glory, but instead sell for next-to-nothing for political favors and financial clout while the rest of the galaxy lets them keep us like animals. We are not a dirty secret or a shameful sin – we are the result of their necessary evil, the means to justify their ends, the terrible truth they don’t deny because everyone’s hands are dirty. The man went on about refugee rights while I tuned him out completely because I realized they were going to send me back. Everything I went through, all the heartache and disappointment and fear, the pain and sacrifice and broken promises – none of it meant anything because the only possible outcome was always going to be regret.

Of course, I would be the exception, the one who made headlines when my case defied all precedent and I was allowed to stay as a citizen of their glorious and shining city that stretched across the entire moon even though I couldn’t bear the sight without thinking of everything I once loved and gave up to live amongst those who treat us worse than the dirt they’ve never even seen. I thought it would be amazing to be someone else, to find my way to a new life and a new me in a new home because that’s all I’ve wanted since I was thirteen years old. But the air here stings, and what smells beautiful to them reeks like death to me.

I am a pariah, a child of neither world because mine is a trap and theirs will never truly accept me. There are those sympathetic to us lowly drifters – more often in some perverse obsession with our dirty world – and others like me, but when we see one another in the streets, guilt stops us from ever speaking – guilt from leaving behind those we claimed to love, guilt for surviving when others fell, and guilt for wanting to not feel guilty anymore. Mostly, they hate me and anyone like me. They hate me because seeing me is a reminder of the dirt they can’t wash away, the bloodstains that won’t come out, the tears seared into their minds every time they degrade and insult me because they don’t want to be reminded that I’m just like them.

My husband and I used to sing songs about dreams, melodies our parents taught us that helped make life a little easier when it felt like nothing would ever be okay. Those funny little songs got me through the first weeks on the higher moon; I would sing under my breath when they passed by, staring at me, the blight on their perfect little world, without thinking about how their sneers and upturned chins made me feel…like they would care even if they knew. I often thought about my husband back home, wondering if he still thought about me or if he found a nice girl to settle down with and have the children I never gave him. I asked myself every day if it wouldn’t be better to just pretend like none of this ever happened and jump off tallest building I could find. I wanted to do it so many times, and each time I didn’t, I cried myself to sleep knowing I was just that much more of a failure.

But I’m also a coward, and even though I dread waking up each morning, I still get out of bed and go to work at the printing press where they keep me in a windowless room processing paperwork from the moment I arrive until I leave at the end of each day. They don’t care that my home is never clean of hateful slurs and broken glass, or that each moment I endure their hate, I hate myself even more. This is a dark place full of shadows masquerading as light, just a shiny veneer hiding such a terrible truth that no one dares challenge it, lest they upset the profit margins and miss quotas.

On my deathbed, as cancer ravaged my body, I watched the inversion through my window, the anomaly I never thought would come in my lifetime; the world I once called home rose up from below, out from under the horrible, shadowy nightmare it had known for three-hundred years and bathed in the golden glow of a radiant and welcome sun — and it was good.

I knew we would soon descend back into the darkness I fought so hard to escape, that this golden world would soon fall like mine did centuries before, but I was finally happy. Because as the acidic, putrid smoke I recognized from my youth filled the air outside the hospital, it felt right – karma is a bitch, and this ‘higher’ moon would finally know what it’s like to be down below. Part of me wished I could have been there with my family and friends, but I gave up that right a long time ago. And so, I took comfort in knowing the ones I loved the most were finally in the light, and went to sleep accepting that I would never wake up.

Reverie Man

(or This Last Life I Shall Live)

I still remember the first time I died. My loving wife and beautiful daughters stood by me when the doctor told us it was cancer; through them I found strength to accept what was coming, and faced it knowing they would not leave me until I left them. They held a funeral, grieved for a time, then eventually moved on with their lives. Just like it was meant to be.

The second time I died, I was scared. They finally caught up after I’d successfully subverted them for months, and they put three bullets in my chest before I even had a chance to explain my side of things. There was a bright, warm light while I was bleeding out in the street praying to a god that wasn’t going to answer no matter how loud I screamed. No one cared that I was gone, my goldfish Ramsey died when no one fed him, and life went on. Just like it should.

Death found me again when barbarians broke through the outer perimeter, slaughtering any who stood in their way as they stormed the city an embodiment of violence – unstoppable, unrepentant, insatiable instinct to destroy and conquer come to lay waste to our society. I held my husband close and he told me he loved me as they broke down the door and fell an axe onto his head and I screamed in horror. They chased me down, left my body to rot in the fields with the rest, and burned the empire to the ground. Just like it needed to be.

I was an underdog boxer in Washington, an agent of change when the world rejected reason, a skilled paralegal in Essex, a gambler with delusions of grandeur, a child soldier in Aleppo, a charismatic orator for misguided masses, a celebrated artist in Venice, a feared and ruthless smuggler in Bogota, a schizophrenic who believed he was the Second Coming (or third or fourth or…?) and inspired faith in others, a reluctant sociopath in Duluth, a degenerate father, a loving husband, a willing partner, and a victim of something much larger and more complex than anyone will ever know. After I lived and died those ten more times, the memories began to survive.

At the height of prohibition on New Year’s Eve in a Burnham Park speakeasy as I drank myself blind with friends of the Family, I suddenly remembered a wife I did not have, a conspiracy I did not recognize, an heirloom I’d never seen, and a novel I never wrote. I was there for all of it even though the memories felt so far away, each instance just a faded tracing of the actual experience I once had but could never truly understand. The Family thought I’d lost my mind and sent me to sleep with the fish.

Ten dozen more deaths, ten dozen more lives; each time I remembered more. Sometimes, I lived long and happy doing what I loved and surrounded by good, honest people that I cared for until I died a satisfied and content old man. Other times, cruel twists of fate led me down dark and dangerous paths filled with heartache and struggle and injustice and pain.

Sometimes, the memories resurface earlier, when there is still potential to affect change. Usually, I don’t remember until the end is near, with only days or hours or minutes before my time is up. I’ve taken my own lives when the existential dread becomes unbearable and I obsess over all the ‘me’s I used to be, each different but also the same. I’ve fought fate more times than I can count and done everything I can to reject that which can’t be denied.

I am a reverie of myself, abstract memories from hundreds of lives compounded into one that just repeats over and over again. I have worn a cape and mask as a champion of goodwill and justice in a world full of heroic angels and villainous demons. I have given blood and sweat and tears to vile prejudice and putrid hate with symbols of discrimination and bigotry seared onto my skin for all to see. I have marched against the horrors of war and fought in them just as often. I have been a king, a pauper, a slave, and a saint. I have watched this world exist in more ways than I know, and seen it go down so many different paths that none feel more or less real than any other.

My self is a diamond where each new life is a new facet scored, a rock of eternity carved and shaved each time I die. Now, the memories are just pieces, fragments and shards of what once was because every new existence leaves less room for what came before. I try to hold onto some, the achievements and failures that still speak to who I want to be, but that means letting so many others disappear into the back of my mind where I can’t see or hear them. I’ve spent whole lifetimes deciding what’s important, meditating on which memories mean the most to what I mean in a vain and fruitless attempt to quantify a soul.

Hundreds and thousands of chances to fail and in the end, it’s always the same because there will always have another me waiting just around the bend. There’s more in these veins that blood, more in this mind than thoughts and memories, more to what I am than what should be possible. I used to compartmentalize the grief and store the doubt away to live my best lives without contempt or regret or resentment or fear.

But it’s not enough to remember, anymore. I’ve loved so much and lost even more, held faith in pure gods and false prophets alike, found myself more times than I can count – it is no longer a blessing but a curse I cannot escape, a constant barrage of memories that are no longer mine but will always be there, the unending crucible through lives I miss and the ones that won’t let me sleep.

Because not knowing why I am haunts me no matter who I am. In this last life I shall live, I will find answers. I am chaotic neutral, in service to no one but my own ends. Just the way I need it to be.

The clerics deem me heretic, the doctors think me mad, the learned call me instigator, and only the fools have my back. I found enlightenment in a life of unbound instability, an existence pocked by societal irrelevance but insightful to a truth I want to forget but never can. They want to grow and prosper and learn and love, but they are held back by shame still unchecked over actions that can never be undone and words that can never be unsaid.

Legends and myths and fantasies and fables are memories that bleed through when realities grind against one another and vestiges of a dying existence drip into the next – no less real, simply less realistic. They are incursions from what’s no longer there, anachronisms that persist as stories of fiction because accepting their truth means letting go of what everything means, and it is terrifying. Yet, when it becomes clear that a human soul is simply a collection of tales stitched together by conviction and hope, it is so much more beautiful to behold – anything of consequence is a moment of testimony, another gospel of the unknown when certainty is valued more than life itself.

Belief is a thin layer of unfettered faith forever trapped beneath miles of unbreakable doubt, a place of unrepentant confidence in possibility hidden by dependence on actuality. I followed myths and listened to legends, stoked rumors and spoke of many truths. More than a mantra, beyond mere credo, above earthly gains, I believe in untempered, incalculable anything.

Call it the eye of god or delusions of a madman, spiritual awakening or nervous breakdown – a truth is a truth when it suits to be true, an opinion when it threatens faith, and a lie when it offends perception. Words will always be inconsequential. And when a single glance reveals Destiny and Fate and Prophecy and Omen at odds with their own machinations, belief is no longer an idea, but now the last truth worth fighting for and the only universality in an existential maelstrom of relative nothing. The first time I saw, I wept with joy – I jumped higher than ever before only to fall back down below the warm glow of everlasting light. Instead of bitter, I was driven. Instead of spiteful, I grew focused. Instead of vengeful thoughts, my faith blossomed. I shouted fire at the sky, sang tempest to the heavens, cried havoc in their name, all in belief I would see them once more.

Then, it happened again. Through the eyes of what we call gods they saw an insignificance, a speck of microscopic permanence on an otherwise fluid tapestry that was me. Perhaps for the first time in how they exist, they deigned to look upon what lies beneath like curious and ignorant children would a colony of ants. And then I wept with fear when they didn’t care.

Something changed, though, and each time I blink it is a new me; a film reeling too slow or a flipbook with sticky fingers, every life only as long as a thought that becomes something else entirely before I can process anything. Experiences and personalities stacked then serrated until all that’s left is lifeless confetti where I once stood. And still I persist, a pile of shredded humanity without hope of repair, through a listless night into a new dawn, because they cannot break me no matter how much my existences offend them.

To be or not to be; that is not the right question. For it infers there is something that isn’t, and that can’t possibly be true. There must be a reason, some grander schemata devised and executed with purpose and meaning. I beg them for clarity, plead for insight I never knew, and believe they will answer because there is nowhere else to go and I am tired of fighting ghosts of myself.

But the truth hurts more than it should, the sinking sensation that none of it meant anything at all, that all my lives and all my deaths are just side effects of negligent archetypes slowly staving off omnipotent insanity by playing with the whole of all realities like soft putty in a vacuum. I am nothing more than a forgotten idea, a story meant to be told but left on the shelf to gather dust and linger in narrative limbo.

If a tale goes untold before the pages go up in flames, does it cease to exist? Is a character just the sum of her parts or a larger idea that can never die? I smile and let my life end one more time, the last time because they promised it will be. And then I come to my senses and weep because they lied; I still remember the first time I died.

The Agent & The General

“Do you know why you’re here?”

“I can guess.”

The room is dark with only a single lamp shedding light on the situation.

“Humor me.”

“…You think I’m responsible for the Centennial.”

There is no emotion between the agent and the man sitting across from her.

“You’re not?”

“You would just assume, wouldn’t you?”

A weak interrogator loses focus under pressure.

“Militia fatigues were found in the wreckage; your men were there.”

“You’re still so ignorant, aren’t you?”

The agent lets the silence sit for two minutes exactly as she flips through her papers.

“What’s your name?”

“The General.”

“I didn’t ask your former rank, soldier – what’s your name?”

“I told you: I am the General.”

There is a moment when tension begins to build between the agent and the general.

“Who are you, then?”

“Please, Agent – what’s the point in saying it out loud?”

The agent stares back at the general without flinching.

“Pretend I’m ignorant.”

“Very well. I am the General of the Militia, once of the United States Marine Corps, now leader of the free people of Earth.”

The agent realizes the extent of the general’s delusions.

“You really believe that, don’t you?”

“And you believe you have some control over human destiny; I suppose we all have our vices, don’t we Agent?”

There is a folder on the table with reports covering five years of militia incidents.

“The Centennial; why?”

“Was I not clear enough – I had nothing to do with that.”

“I thought you were the leader of the free people of Earth, General.”

“Don’t condescend to me, Agent – it’s not very becoming.”

Time is of the essence and lives are on the line.

“They were children, General; why?”

“Why anything, Agent? You’re all so worried about singular events that we’ve lost sight of the bigger picture.”

The agent notices the general says ‘we’ as if she and him share some common enemy to which she is ignorant.

“You really don’t know, do you?”

“No, I don’t. And I would have condemned their actions if I did.”

There is sincerity in the general’s voice, candor in conviction of his own ignorance.

“So if not you then, whose doing this? This can’t just be an isolated event – something is coming and I want to know what that is.”

“You fear death, don’t you Madam Agent? I can see it in your eyes.”

“What’s coming?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

The general slams his hands on the table and the agent can see he has no reason to lie.

“Yes…I’m afraid to die.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m not done.”

They lock eyes and do not stop for sixty-seven seconds.

“Well said, Agent.”

“What’s coming, General?”

The general sits back and changes his tone.

“You know, man was meant to create his own destiny, not have to ripped out from under him. Do you understand, Agent?”

“Destiny is a lie, little more than a comforting idea in a hurricane that eventually means nothing and only causes pain.”

“I’ve underestimated you, Agent Raphael; you know more than you’ve let on.”

“Enough to know how much I don’t, General.”

Agent Raphael has spent her life dealing with men who underestimate her ability, and the general is simply the most recent one to make the mistake.

“Pretending the world isn’t falling apart simply isn’t enough anymore, Agent – there’s too much at stake and your governments are far too happy to simply sit back and let someone else deal with their problems, to rely on – as you might say – a fleeting moment in a tempest instead of taking the initiative as human fucking beings to better ourselves.”

“And your solution is to shift the blame, it seems – to forget that they’re not just power-sets and flashy names but rather people under those masks.”

“But they aren’t anymore, Agent. They’re simply ideas now, and what happens when one of them decides the idea should be faith?”

“You assume the worst in man, General.”

“I assume human nature! I know existential dread comes for us all, and I know we work together to overcome and persevere. But what happens when one of them asks “why?” and none of our answers make sense? What then, Agent?”

“None of us know, General. What you seem to lack is the ability to accept that relativity.”

“Acceptance of injustice is the foundation of tyranny, Agent.”

“And obfuscation of reality is the basis for insanity, General. You’re advocating for their internment based on your fears and that sentiment has turned your followers toxic.”

“What I see is a world that sets aside fear because children with the power of gods say they’re our friends. Fear is a tool, Agent, and as that blade is dulled by false security, we will all shoulder the blame at the reckoning.”

“Tell me what’s coming and I may be able to reduce your sentence.”

“There’s nothing left for me to gain, Agent. Don’t you understand?”

“You have two choices. You can be responsible for the deaths of a few dozen of your radical, insane followers who even you seem to disavow. Or, you can be responsible for the death of millions because you know what they are planning.”

“There is value in saying what others won’t, Agent. For that, I will tell you what I know, the secret you’ll wish I hadn’t.”

Agent Raphael stays her hand and concentrates on not sweating.

“What’s coming – you’re the General, right?”

“That’s just it – your question is flawed, Agent Raphael.”

“What does that mean?”

“There’s more than one General.”

Agent Raphael’s earpiece suddenly jumps to life with overlapping reports and emergency signals like a storm of panic.

“And what’s coming isn’t just one melody, but rather the whole orchestra brought together for the first time, you see.”

“What’s happening?”

“The General is not a person, Agent Raphael. It is the movement and the mantra: we are all the General. All of us are the leaders of this world because we will not be left to die.”

Each new report brings new horrors of death and murder across the globe, simultaneous acts of terror and destruction raining across civilization.

“You…you’re insane.”

“No, Agent Raphael. I finally understood that the truth doesn’t matter when it’s wrong, and telling yourself it’s right doesn’t change anything.”

(Original Formatted Draft: November 2, 2016)

Legacy Is Dead

The first age began during the second world war when men and women with incredible powers came to save us from ourselves. The second age came during a time of optimistic peace overshadowed by violent tendencies when high tensions brought new mutiny. The third age is when it all fell apart, when sins of the past came to rest on the shoulders of children.

I wish I’d never met my father. I wish the Legacy would’ve stayed buried instead of crawling into my life like a zombie – what I thought was dead come back to life. And then I realized that the truth meant my memories betrayed me, all those times I watched my father shoot through the sky and defeat yet another no-name hell bent on ruling the world or taking down capitalism or ransoming a city or whatever. They say you should never meet your heroes, that you’ll only be disappointed – I killed two birds with one stone. My father was the greatest of them all, yet all I could see was the man who abandoned me.

When you admire something or someone, it can be difficult to separate yourself from confirmation bias, from finding the truths that support what you already believe and filter out any objection. Digging into my father’s life meant differentiating the man from the mask for the first time in my life, and what I found was not pretty.

On the surface, the man was a hero amongst heroes, a shining beacon of true justice and genuine equality at times when those ideals were up to interpretation. Even when all the odds were stacked against the capes and masks, my father stood strong as the voice of reason in the most chaotic of times. My father was a good man, unless you knew him.

Under the glitz and glamor and press releases waits a quagmire of darkness, hundreds of accounts of lewd and lascivious conduct, hateful speech, and junkie clichés. I found the stories no one likes to remember, the terribleness now stuffed away in the cracks between leading the Allied forces to victory or saving the planet at least a dozen times or being a flawless icon. His good justified the bad more times than I could count, his vices swept under the rug because we needed him more than meting out real justice.

I had brothers and sisters, too – at least ten that I knew of, probably more. Some were already dead, like his first daughter who spent her entire 63 years defending herself against nepotism and racist tendencies, or first his son who overdosed on heroin at twenty-seven. Some wanted nothing to do with their Legacy, so they disappeared or they rejected him. Some he never acknowledged him at all. In 1984, one followed in his father’s footsteps, to this day still waiting for approval that will likely never come. The one thread that connected them all, though, was their contempt for their father in name only, a man who separated himself from his mistakes and resented being reminded of his failures, who needed approval yet rarely gave his own.

Then tragedy struck – the entire League of Heroes stood at my father’s side in the hospital at the end of his life. The best of them to watch him become a shell of himself, a pale ghost of the hero he once was reduced down to a frail facsimile of greatness. The Legacy was dying, and he – not unlike many at the gates of hell or heaven – took deep account of his life, the moments he treasured and the ones he couldn’t face until the end loomed so close. The world mourns the fallen, the individuals who sacrifice their lives to defend and protect us against insurmountable odds. And here laid a Legacy knowing his time was up, so he was made to watch while the world grieved before he had gone.

His friends took to their laboratories and ancient texts looking for a solution that didn’t exist. His allies worked harder to make up for the dynamo they’d lost, channeling their grief into action. His enemies even laid down arms for a short time, a gesture of rare contrition in a world so twisted within its own drama. His fans wept standing vigil in parks and plazas and churches across the globe, hoping and praying the Legacy would survive. I waited for a call, maybe a letter or email or even a text – anything that showed he cared about me for even just one second.

One of my father’s children spoke at the funeral – just the one. I thought I could make out a few familiar faces when the camera panned over the attendants inside – at least two I recognized from researching my half-siblings. The unending parade of masks and capes stood in earnest, most of them attempting to be stoic and failing miserably when cameras are pointed anywhere near them. The Legacy was old and affected the lives of countless individuals over his career – most of them were made to stand outside the small church in Brooklyn to pay their respects to a man they didn’t know while a circus ensued within.

I didn’t cry when the Legacy died because I had nothing to be sad about. It had only been six months since my mother told me the truth, and the one time I met my father, he disappointed me more than I could have possibly imagined. I tried to remember how I saw the man before I learned who he was, to find that emotional connection to the hero that inspired me as a kid and made growing up without a father just a bit easier. For weeks after his death, all I did was try to feel something for the Legacy I never truly knew or understood, the Legacy that made me what I am today, however inadvertently…the Legacy that never cared enough to tell me I mattered to him.

That was the beginning of the end for the League, the first heroes who flew over Korea and debated over Vietnam, the team ready to defuse the missile crisis and help NASA get to the moon, the protectors who lost their leader and found it harder to justify the draining work as the years took more and more away. The death of their Legacy was the end of an era, the retirement of tradition for its own sake and splintered clarity through divisive values. And it was long overdue, an entire generation desperately staving off obsolescence even though their children were ready to take the mantle finally throwing in the towel far past when was appropriate.

The Legacy was gone, and with him any chance at redemption or closure. No one would answer for his sins or give credence to truth behind the veil of fame. The world would always remember the Legacy as a hero and savior, more than just a man, a shining beacon of hope in a world growing darker each and every day. The death of the Legacy was just the birth of his legacy, the advent of sainthood he did not deserve in a time when we needed that ideal of good the most.

I wish I never met my father, because then I could feel something.

(Original Draft: April 19, 2017)

Author’s Note: Though originally intended as a stand-alone short story, “Legacy is Dead” has been retconned as an alternate timeline narrative in the C-List universe. Legacy – the first, strongest, and most benevolent hero of them all – is here reinterpreted through a darker lens, as a vindictive, pedantic chauvinist who hides behind his glory and power to undermine and abuse others.

CR∑∑KS That We Are (Part 3 of 3)

Juliet loses her mind the further she ventures into the woods. She’s lost in this world, without direction or path or way. She hears the sound but cannot feel the music as she becomes it. Juliet falls back through herself once again. She falls in love with a handsome young woman. There is an irrefutable, brilliant, surreal light coming over her. But convictions of her father won’t let her reach far enough. Juliet tells lies that have no meaning. So, she enters a maze where they promised to meet so they cannot be found. And they become waves that don’t die. Believing isn’t easy – Juliet has faith to embrace letting go.

~~Woods~~
~~Lost in the World~~
~~Fall Creek Boys Choir~~
~~Retrograde~~
~~Instant Crush~~
~~Father Stretch My Hands, Pt. 1~~
~~Pt. 2~~
~~Yeah! Oh, Yeah!~~
Meet You in the Maze
Waves
CR∑∑KS

Meet You in the Maze

I made a promise.
I wanted you to see.
I met you in the maze.
I said I’d be here.

We met in the maze.
We found each other again.
We made a promise.
We kept it, too.

All those songs that came before you.
All these songs that come when you’re gone.
All sound better with you with me.
All feel better because you know me.

They won’t find us.
They don’t know what this is.
They can’t see the maze.
They want what they can’t have.

Waves

Waves don’t die, baby.
(let me crash here for a moment)

The sun can’t shine in the shade.
Everyone knows the cross is there.
Taking too much space.

A bird can’t fly in a cage.
Truth is just as real in a jail.
But not that great.

Even when someone goes away.
And they fall into the shade.
With their memory lost in the haze.

The feelings never really go away.
It’s part of us now.
Through all of time and space.

Because now we’re just waves.
And waves don’t die.

We set the night on fire.
But I won’t be here in the morning
I’m going to die.

CR∑∑KS

Down, on the streets.
When first I breached the light’s Sunday.
I remembered something.
The leaves in the trees.
The heaving in my vines.
The trees in mind.

Woods, and I had you in my grasp.
Oh, but how I went and crashed.
Because I remember who I am.
Oh, please understand.
How I have been left out in the cold on the peak.
In a storm, I never saw coming.
From a tempest beyond the seas.

Turn around, I’m here.
But she can’t hear me anymore.
Goddamn turn around, I’m right here.
She can’t ever hear me again.
Because I remember who I am.

Oh, I wish she could understand.
I heard the feeling hurried away;
The one that breached the night that day.
But it’s gone because now’s not the time.

Juliet was her name.
It’s mine again too.
Oh, this second sun.
It’s harsh on my leaves.
These woods are old.
My branches frail and tired.

I’m lost; I’m the woods.

CR∑∑KS That We Are (Part 2 of 3)

~~Woods~~
~~Lost in the World~~
~~Fall Creek Boys Choir~~
~~Retrograde~~
Instant Crush
Father Stretch My Hands, Pt. 1
Pt. 2
Yeah! Oh, Yeah!

Instant Crush

But then she turns around.
Because what she sees is beautiful.
I thought of everything I’d never regret.
But all I hear is the last words you said.

I chained myself to a feeling.
When I saw you, hiding in the cold.
When you watched me, noticing you.
Because it doesn’t happen every day.
And she wanted her to be a friend.

Lightning-fucking-bolts,
Don’t listen to me;
I just want to feel you anymore.

We should never be alone again.
I thought about what I want to say.
Because there’s nowhere else I can go.

This doesn’t happen every day.
Have you thought about what you want to say?
I’ve given up on giving away.
I don’t know what else to do.

I’m in love with you.

Father Stretch My Hands, Pt. 1

Beautiful morning, nothing in the water.
She’s the sun, my shining wonder.
The stars and the moon, what I want to see;
And everything else.

You’re the only power.

Sun rises over her smile.
Day falls to sleep with her grey eyes.
If I ever instigated, I’m sorry.
Everybody’s going to say something.

But I want to wake up with her.
Something about her is farther.
Beyond what I’ve ever known.

She’s the sun, my morning babe.
Never do I wonder.
Will I always be recognized?

Pt. 2

It starts and it doesn’t stop.
Clapping, again and again.
Until their hands bleed or I give in.

All he had, all he dreamed.
Mama passed, lost control.
Gone today, lost tomorrow.
Forgot yesterday, broken now.

How can I find you?
Behind this disease.
Underneath these teeth.
Across the blinding chasm.
Within my father’s reach.

Up in the morning.
Shaking, same problem my father had.
All he lost and now he’s mad.
Angry now, fuck parole.
He shot a man.
It just felt good.

But I can’t love her.
Not like this.
Not with his weight.
Not without what’s missed.

Yeah! Oh, Yeah!

Is it true you just don’t care?
Are you having an affair?

Can you not take my incessant whining?
Do you always hate it when I sing?

Does this face make you ill?
Do I mean nothing to you still?

Are you out of love with me?
Are you longing to be free?

Will this all just fall apart?
Can’t we make a brand-new start?

Do you want to end us now?
Did I lose you somewhere, somehow?

Do you love me anymore?
As much as you did before?

Can’t we not turn off the light?
Do you really feel alright?

Is there nothing left holding tight?
When it’s done, will you feel right?

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

NEXT: CR∑∑KS That We Are, Part 3 (9-11)

CR∑∑KS That We Are (Part 1 of 3)

Woods
Lost in the World
Fall Creek Boys Choir
Retrograde

Woods

Darkness at the edge of terror.
The woods another prison.
Less constrictive, but colder.
Winds whip the branches.
Leaves shake and fall.

I’m up in the woods.
Can’t remember who I am.
The moon is so bright.
Everything else is so dark.

I’m down on my life.
I can’t find my way out.
There is no way out.
Slow down time.

On my knees in the dirt.
Begging for forgiveness.
I don’t know what I did.
I don’t know where I am.

I’m lost in the woods.

Lost in the World

I’m lost in the woods.
Snow and ice as autumn dies.
Sheds the green into grey.
Shakes off the woods into the streets.

I’m down for the night.
Because I’m lost in the world.
No direction, no cause.
Then the bass drops, and I wish it hadn’t.
I can’t hear anymore.

You’re my heaven.
You’re my hell.
You’re my god.
And the devil herself.

Fall Creek Boys Choir

I’ve been down to the open road.
Wider than I thought.
Longer, with less travelers.
Desolate, almost.
A static, tense vibration.
Daring on the peak.

I will be love befallen.
If I knew what that meant.
Should we both end up alone.
I would tell her one day.
I’ll wait for you, you know.
Is what I want to say.

All went up in the fire.
Drowning in the sea.
That’s how I hope,
She might feel about me.

Retrograde

Ignore everybody else.
I’m alone now.
Show me where I fit in.
Tell me how I’m strong.

Suddenly, I’m lit.
And my feelings are gone.
I can touch an idea.
Watch it wither and die.
In the retrograde.
Because I was too selfish.

The yaw of the choir, stretches for me.
Calls me forth, claps with each step I take.
Entranced, in a world I’ve grown.
Because I’m alone now.

My friends won’t come.
They aren’t there.
Suddenly, I’m shit.
Tell me how long I’m down.

NEXT: CR∑∑KS That We Are, Part 2 (5-8)