I am becoming something else.
Perhaps my greatest comfort through all of this is that I always knew it would end this way.
Recant. They asked Galileo to recant and he did, but I am not Galileo, and I have nothing left to live for, nothing keeping me here. I have learned things. I have learned that, cruel though it sounds, cruel though it is, that day on the bridge happened so that I might be set free. From selfish love. From the world. I was emptied out on that day and readied to be filled with something new.
I am a vessel, or I was, and now my time is done.
They march me around the corner, two men in uniform, not the guards who pace the halls of this place where I've spent the last weeks of my life. These men answer to a higher power, though not as high as mine, or if they do they don't know it. Not yet. Maybe they will. It's not for me to say.
Their hands are rough on my shoulders, practically throwing me through the door and into a smaller hallway leading to an emergency exit. I stumble but I don't fall, and I don't blame them. They're doing their job. I'm doing mine. It's all relative, really.
Dr. Gantry wasn't doing his. I hope he's all right. I hope he took my advice, went home to her, stayed with her. Because this world... this world is on its last breath. Even if I weren't about to leave it I would not be here for very much longer.
I don't know how this story will end. That was not given to me to see. All I know is the end of my own story, and I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm so. Tired.
When we reach the exit they shove me again, open the door and push me through. We emerge into a courtyard, small and dirty with scrubby brown grass here and there, trash and broken glass. Maybe once this was a garden, but with Alaska and Iceland now prime vacation spots nothing's like it was. I look up. Dimly through the haze I see the sun, hanging yellow and heavy in the sky. It looks sallow and infected. It's no comfort, but I don't need any. There's no romantic attachment to it, no thankfulness that after long days and nights in windowless cells I can finally breathe the air. The air is not worth breathing.
We did this. We did it all.
I'll tell you a secret, and it's a shameful one: I want to see Him one more time. I don't know what waits for me on the other side of the bullet; maybe nothing, maybe I'll sleep until I'm called to be judged, because even God's servants go under the lens. I don't know. But I want to see Him one more time before I go, see It one more time, watch that hand reach down out of the clouds and feel the fingers penetrate the ground with a noise like distant thunder. I want that.
I won't get it. We all die alone. Roberta was alone. She drowned in water that was blood. A miracle killed my baby. Bitter? No, I'm not bitter.
I'm tired.
The hands on my shoulders force me to my knees. I'm facing a dull brick wall. I close my eyes and wait because there's nothing else to do but wait for the sound of the hammer being pulled back and then the next sound that I probably won't even hear because that's how fast things can happen.
Click.
And then I raise my eyes to the diseased sky and it. Breaks. Open.
Yes, I murmur, and I don't get to my feet. I'm still waiting. I'm still just a leaf tossed in a great wind and so I wait, and It descends, and then I do hear it, and it's not as loud as I thought it would be, nor does it hurt much.
It doesn't hurt at all, in fact.
Also, there's a lot more grass than there was. And trees. And the sky is a clear, unsullied blue. I remember when the world looked like this, though even that's faded. But I only remember. That's not what it is, not even in New Zealand, not even...
The wall in front of me is different, too.
Hmm.
Apparently I know even less than I thought.
[ooc: Prophet in blue scrubs kneeling in front of the compound wall. He's puzzled, but fairly zen.]
Recant. They asked Galileo to recant and he did, but I am not Galileo, and I have nothing left to live for, nothing keeping me here. I have learned things. I have learned that, cruel though it sounds, cruel though it is, that day on the bridge happened so that I might be set free. From selfish love. From the world. I was emptied out on that day and readied to be filled with something new.
I am a vessel, or I was, and now my time is done.
They march me around the corner, two men in uniform, not the guards who pace the halls of this place where I've spent the last weeks of my life. These men answer to a higher power, though not as high as mine, or if they do they don't know it. Not yet. Maybe they will. It's not for me to say.
Their hands are rough on my shoulders, practically throwing me through the door and into a smaller hallway leading to an emergency exit. I stumble but I don't fall, and I don't blame them. They're doing their job. I'm doing mine. It's all relative, really.
Dr. Gantry wasn't doing his. I hope he's all right. I hope he took my advice, went home to her, stayed with her. Because this world... this world is on its last breath. Even if I weren't about to leave it I would not be here for very much longer.
I don't know how this story will end. That was not given to me to see. All I know is the end of my own story, and I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm so. Tired.
When we reach the exit they shove me again, open the door and push me through. We emerge into a courtyard, small and dirty with scrubby brown grass here and there, trash and broken glass. Maybe once this was a garden, but with Alaska and Iceland now prime vacation spots nothing's like it was. I look up. Dimly through the haze I see the sun, hanging yellow and heavy in the sky. It looks sallow and infected. It's no comfort, but I don't need any. There's no romantic attachment to it, no thankfulness that after long days and nights in windowless cells I can finally breathe the air. The air is not worth breathing.
We did this. We did it all.
I'll tell you a secret, and it's a shameful one: I want to see Him one more time. I don't know what waits for me on the other side of the bullet; maybe nothing, maybe I'll sleep until I'm called to be judged, because even God's servants go under the lens. I don't know. But I want to see Him one more time before I go, see It one more time, watch that hand reach down out of the clouds and feel the fingers penetrate the ground with a noise like distant thunder. I want that.
I won't get it. We all die alone. Roberta was alone. She drowned in water that was blood. A miracle killed my baby. Bitter? No, I'm not bitter.
I'm tired.
The hands on my shoulders force me to my knees. I'm facing a dull brick wall. I close my eyes and wait because there's nothing else to do but wait for the sound of the hammer being pulled back and then the next sound that I probably won't even hear because that's how fast things can happen.
Click.
And then I raise my eyes to the diseased sky and it. Breaks. Open.
Yes, I murmur, and I don't get to my feet. I'm still waiting. I'm still just a leaf tossed in a great wind and so I wait, and It descends, and then I do hear it, and it's not as loud as I thought it would be, nor does it hurt much.
It doesn't hurt at all, in fact.
Also, there's a lot more grass than there was. And trees. And the sky is a clear, unsullied blue. I remember when the world looked like this, though even that's faded. But I only remember. That's not what it is, not even in New Zealand, not even...
The wall in front of me is different, too.
Hmm.
Apparently I know even less than I thought.
[ooc: Prophet in blue scrubs kneeling in front of the compound wall. He's puzzled, but fairly zen.]