Words of a Dying God, Part Iv

...‘But for existence to continue on a deity must always exist, and each will consume all that went before, then remake it, so that all will persist. ‘That is why you die, and why you struggle, and though the process seems ugly and cruel, one of you will evolve through all this hell into a new deity fit to rule.’ After those words the voice stopped speaking, in a stunned state my mind searched and grasped, then by my side I heard a deep breath, my colleague Tommy Bain’s shattered rasp. From his face I could tell that he’d seen it too, and from the terror set deep in his eyes, I knew that he couldn’t comprehend it, he shrieked madly, and away he did fly. I never was to see poor Tommy again, they found his body beneath a large cliff, the dig crew they never found a trace of, but I knew that they too had ended it. Can’t say that I haven’t had the idea, knowing what I know…it just isn’t right, but it also tells me there’s no escape, his words made clear there is no afterlife. No true depths to our art and our beauty, just side-effects our middling stage, no greater purpose, no spiritual realm, and no great wisdom transcendent and sage… Our whole existence is just a rush-job from a god who can’t organize his time, we suffer due to his incompetence— It would be simpler if he was malign. And me the only one who knows this fact, the only one who learned it and went on… Should I have kids to pass this strength to them? Is that my part in this farcical song? Or should I just wash my hands of this mess, should I no longer even pretend. If our existence is this meaningless, is it better that the universe end? Or would another just rise in my place? That would seem to me the most like call, since this god says he started evolution, it’s unlikely that would just let it stall. At least I won’t have to see how it ends, so there’s nothing more that I have to do, except find a job, I quit researching, no longer bother to search for the truth. I regret what I was in my youth.