Opening
I need to have this here for others to read because I think it is the strongest opening I have written to go along with the eighty-thousand-plus words I have scattered all over my desk at all times. If it is bad I want to know. If it is good I want to know. If it is boring then I really want to know. If it catches your interest and would make you continue reading after the break, then I very much want to know.
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A week after I murdered my best friend I received his journals in the mail. There were over thirty books filled cover to cover with notes, diagrams, stories, and personal thoughts. It was a shockingly ordinary hobby kept by a man who was anything but ordinary. We had known each other for our entire lives and I still read every word. It took me three weeks to get through it all. This was his final entry:
I know this for certain: that my work will bring at least one great discovery to the world. If it is taken seriously, and truly studied and traced back to its roots and weighed and measured for its impact and sacrifices, then that discovery is guaranteed. It must be scrutinized in order to be understood and, given the nature of what I have done, I have no doubt in my mind that scrutiny will be applied.
If I survive tonight's experiment then I will have two great revelations as a gift to the world, for these matters cannot help but travel hand-in-hand. Other discoveries may follow, such as miracles, for surely it will have been a miracle that will allow my body and mind to endure tonight if such a thing exists. That is part of the experiment and I understand that now. All of my previous entries here have only hinted and prodded at what seems so obvious to me now. Not only is it all connected, but it has always been all connected.
In time, I may be heralded as a hero for my work. I want it to be clear that fame was not my intention. It is more likely that I will be condemned as a monster and, again for the sake of clarity, I want to state that infamy was not my intention either. Even so, monsters can reveal secrets and truths, some darker than others, with the blunt honesty, unrelenting curiousity, and bare intentions of their actions. Monsters are simple, pure things that can be explained and understood with ease and, of course, it is for those same reasons that monsters do not really exist outside of a label. Anything that easy to comprehend ceases to be a thing and retracts into merely a name of a thing that people want to understand when they cannot. Monsters, heroes, Gods, death.
The thing I am certain of proving shares a group with these things. I will inadvertently, and unintentionally, prove or disprove Fate by the time tonight is over. I know that it is strange and ironic that something so colossal and mystic as Fate, that has alluded capture for thousands of years, will be captured and demystified as a side-effect!, a symptom!, of another pursuit entirely. Fate is deserving of its own story of exploration and experimentation, of trials and hardship to pioneer even a landing bay worth of facts to use as a foundation for research to delve deeper into the subject. Perhaps this is Fate's way of communicating, with subtle nods and winks, nudges and pokes that are chalked up to coincidence and subsequently discarded. Perhaps this is a more fitting vehicle for Fate than I first realised.
My pursuit was death and already you, with your years of experience of life, can see the all connections it has sprawling out to other questions, leading to other questions, expanding like an infinitely complex spider's web. My younger self, so many years ago, failed to see those connections with his inexperience and burning hunger for knowledge on only one subject and that subject alone; however, I was young, barely older than an infant, and forgiveness can be measured and cut for anything done by a boy that young. The tunnel vision my child-self inflicted has persisted for too long but now I finally see what I have been missing all along. Death cannot be handled without also disturbing greater questions linked to it, and even greater questions linked to those. Others, those much more intelligent than I, may ascertain further discoveries from my work but I resolve to be certain of my one discovery that will be inevitably made tonight.
My experiments on death were conducted in the same manner that a scientist would manipulate and gauge reactions of chemicals in a lab. Do not reject your first image of what that would be like with death as the subject of investigation because chances are it is correct. The only real difference between myself and the other scientist would be a lab coat being worn as we conducted our investigations. The rest is nearly identical: controlled environments, fair testing parameters, animal testing leading to human trials, documented readings, and extensive case studies. The only thing my work lacked was peer reviewed papers and published results but those, naturally, as you can imagine, were not an option. After tonight, after my final experiment, there will no longer be a reason to hide away from those who will take what I have done seriously. If they do just that, well, I daresay I am beginning to repeat myself.
By now you must have grasped what I have done. If not, the rest of my journals should be available along with this entry. Your initial reaction might be to brand me a monster as I have described above. I implore you to cast such reactions aside because what I have done will not be changed by your morality or feelings about me, and they should not influence how you approach my work. I was objective, thorough, and meticulous with my tests. I ruthlessly followed my ethics and, although I have done terrible things, I know that they have contributed to something that will provide exponentially more good than the harm that I have caused.
In these pages I have proven whether or not Fate exists. That is my gift to you. All you have to do is find it.
There was a letter that was addressed to me along with the books. It made it clear that the journals were not just for me and that I was to pass them along when I was finished with them. I did as my friend wished, just as I had countless times throughout our lives together. I kept the letter and I often read it to myself. I read it so many times that, in an alteration that only the subconscious brain can make, they became the last words of my friend as he died in my arms. He had said no such things after I killed him but there, weeks later, his letter caused that change in my memory and my nightmares:
They will call me a monster. They will call you a hero. Take the credit. Be a hero. It is my gift to you. It is my farewell. It is my apology.
-
-
A week after I murdered my best friend I received his journals in the mail. There were over thirty books filled cover to cover with notes, diagrams, stories, and personal thoughts. It was a shockingly ordinary hobby kept by a man who was anything but ordinary. We had known each other for our entire lives and I still read every word. It took me three weeks to get through it all. This was his final entry:
I know this for certain: that my work will bring at least one great discovery to the world. If it is taken seriously, and truly studied and traced back to its roots and weighed and measured for its impact and sacrifices, then that discovery is guaranteed. It must be scrutinized in order to be understood and, given the nature of what I have done, I have no doubt in my mind that scrutiny will be applied.
If I survive tonight's experiment then I will have two great revelations as a gift to the world, for these matters cannot help but travel hand-in-hand. Other discoveries may follow, such as miracles, for surely it will have been a miracle that will allow my body and mind to endure tonight if such a thing exists. That is part of the experiment and I understand that now. All of my previous entries here have only hinted and prodded at what seems so obvious to me now. Not only is it all connected, but it has always been all connected.
In time, I may be heralded as a hero for my work. I want it to be clear that fame was not my intention. It is more likely that I will be condemned as a monster and, again for the sake of clarity, I want to state that infamy was not my intention either. Even so, monsters can reveal secrets and truths, some darker than others, with the blunt honesty, unrelenting curiousity, and bare intentions of their actions. Monsters are simple, pure things that can be explained and understood with ease and, of course, it is for those same reasons that monsters do not really exist outside of a label. Anything that easy to comprehend ceases to be a thing and retracts into merely a name of a thing that people want to understand when they cannot. Monsters, heroes, Gods, death.
The thing I am certain of proving shares a group with these things. I will inadvertently, and unintentionally, prove or disprove Fate by the time tonight is over. I know that it is strange and ironic that something so colossal and mystic as Fate, that has alluded capture for thousands of years, will be captured and demystified as a side-effect!, a symptom!, of another pursuit entirely. Fate is deserving of its own story of exploration and experimentation, of trials and hardship to pioneer even a landing bay worth of facts to use as a foundation for research to delve deeper into the subject. Perhaps this is Fate's way of communicating, with subtle nods and winks, nudges and pokes that are chalked up to coincidence and subsequently discarded. Perhaps this is a more fitting vehicle for Fate than I first realised.
My pursuit was death and already you, with your years of experience of life, can see the all connections it has sprawling out to other questions, leading to other questions, expanding like an infinitely complex spider's web. My younger self, so many years ago, failed to see those connections with his inexperience and burning hunger for knowledge on only one subject and that subject alone; however, I was young, barely older than an infant, and forgiveness can be measured and cut for anything done by a boy that young. The tunnel vision my child-self inflicted has persisted for too long but now I finally see what I have been missing all along. Death cannot be handled without also disturbing greater questions linked to it, and even greater questions linked to those. Others, those much more intelligent than I, may ascertain further discoveries from my work but I resolve to be certain of my one discovery that will be inevitably made tonight.
My experiments on death were conducted in the same manner that a scientist would manipulate and gauge reactions of chemicals in a lab. Do not reject your first image of what that would be like with death as the subject of investigation because chances are it is correct. The only real difference between myself and the other scientist would be a lab coat being worn as we conducted our investigations. The rest is nearly identical: controlled environments, fair testing parameters, animal testing leading to human trials, documented readings, and extensive case studies. The only thing my work lacked was peer reviewed papers and published results but those, naturally, as you can imagine, were not an option. After tonight, after my final experiment, there will no longer be a reason to hide away from those who will take what I have done seriously. If they do just that, well, I daresay I am beginning to repeat myself.
By now you must have grasped what I have done. If not, the rest of my journals should be available along with this entry. Your initial reaction might be to brand me a monster as I have described above. I implore you to cast such reactions aside because what I have done will not be changed by your morality or feelings about me, and they should not influence how you approach my work. I was objective, thorough, and meticulous with my tests. I ruthlessly followed my ethics and, although I have done terrible things, I know that they have contributed to something that will provide exponentially more good than the harm that I have caused.
In these pages I have proven whether or not Fate exists. That is my gift to you. All you have to do is find it.
There was a letter that was addressed to me along with the books. It made it clear that the journals were not just for me and that I was to pass them along when I was finished with them. I did as my friend wished, just as I had countless times throughout our lives together. I kept the letter and I often read it to myself. I read it so many times that, in an alteration that only the subconscious brain can make, they became the last words of my friend as he died in my arms. He had said no such things after I killed him but there, weeks later, his letter caused that change in my memory and my nightmares:
They will call me a monster. They will call you a hero. Take the credit. Be a hero. It is my gift to you. It is my farewell. It is my apology.
-