//------------------------------// // The Book of Joram - I // Story: Along Softly on the Tongue // by HoofBitingActionOverload //------------------------------// You should call me Joram. Everyone else does. I was in Gary, Indiana when the Harbinger of Death called, in the pedantic form of my editor, to invite me to die in Equestria, the newfound land of whimsy and ponies. I was in Gary, Indiana to write an article. The article was to be about the accomplishments of the American steel industry in the twentieth century. It was my last chance, my editor had told me. Last chance. The magazine wasn’t a hospice, she told me. She wouldn’t allow the dying and the lost and the alone to suckle at this teat. Not me. If all I wanted was to die a little while longer, I could do it someplace else, she told me. If I wanted to contribute, if I wanted to be a team player, she told me, I would go to Gary, Indiana and write an article about the accomplishments of the American steel industry in the twentieth century. So that’s where I went. Four hours by plane, huffing deep the smell of leaked jet fuel the whole way. To Gary, Indiana. The plane descended into the airport around noon, bounced off of the cracked tarmac like a diabetic off of a strawberry jelly-filled water bed, and then went quiet. I was the only passenger on the plane. No one traveled to Gary, Indiana anymore, it seemed. And so I was the only passenger who got off the plane, too. I walked out of the plane, through the jet bridge, and into an empty airport. The airport was fifty years old, never renovated, and browning, folded ads for Joseph Schlitz’s snakewater and Lucy Ricardo’s family-safe shenanigans lined the walls. The lights were off, and so the terminals were dark and still and cavernous as the insides of beached sperm whales letting go of their souls on the sands of the New Zealand coast. I found the Gary, Indiana Welcome Center near the exit. It was the only lit room in the building. Writing an article about the accomplishments of the American steel industry in the twentieth century was my last chance, my editor had told me, and so I went inside. Inside was a desk. Behind the desk sat a man that looked like he’d hopped right out of a Catholic coloring book. He was all robes, rosaries, original sin, and libido locked up in crucifixes. But no child had ever been kindly enough to color him in, and so his clothes and skin were bleach white, outlined by big, bold, black ink marks. He nodded to me. I nodded to him. It was an acknowledgement of our mutual humanity. He reached under the desk and pulled out a book. He set the book down on the desktop, and then watched me. I stepped forward and picked up the book. I read its title. A Brief History of Gary, Indiana and Its People by Charo Cabrero. “Thank you,” I said. “May the spirit of Nickephoros Tafadzwa Spears guide you,” he said. Burning, airplane-prime-rib-scented bile rose up in my throat at the mention of that name, but I said nothing. Instead, I began to read from A Brief History of Gary, Indiana and Its People. Charo Cabrera told me that in the Year 1905 of Our Lord, the American steel industry decided that little Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, its then center of operations, was an inadequate home for God. So the American steel industry founded Gary, Indiana. The American steel industry’s planners designed Gary, Indiana to be the glorious crown jewel of an international empire, a testament to the present, future, and no doubt everlasting power and grandeur of American steel. At the christening ceremony for the city, then U.S. Steel Corporation Junior Executive of Regulatory Operations Richard Powers proclaimed, “In a hundred years, this will be a city that would have humbled Alexander the Great two thousand years ago.” Fifty years later, Gary, Indiana had blossomed into a hustling, bustling, proud American city. Men, women, and children walked in confused, excitable throngs on the sidewalks, cars honked and backfired in the streets, trolleys rolled leisurely past wonders of modern architecture, trains click-clacked in and out of the central railway station, never-used yachts floated indulgently in the harbor, and former U.S. Steel Corporation Junior Executive of Regulatory Operations Richard Powers lay in the dirt of the city’s largest cemetery. Every building in the city had been built with American steel. Every man and woman worked for American steel. In the morning, every man and woman woke for American steel. At the dinner table, every family gave thanks to American steel. American steel became God and Earth as one in Gary, Indiana. Then, the brief history told me, disaster struck. Or, more accurately, disaster moseyed along as indifferently as an iceberg in the north Atlantic Ocean on a chilly Sunday evening. I took a break from the brief history of Gary, Indiana and its people then, because this was my last chance, and a last chance needed a human perspective. To give it edge. I lowered the book and asked the man behind the desk, “What can you tell me about the accomplishments of the American steel industry in the twentieth century?” The man cocked his head to the side, and his rosaries jingled and jangled underneath his chin. “I can only tell you this one thing,” he said. “This one thing is the only thing I know about anything, and so it is the only thing I can tell anyone.” “Fire away,” I said, pulling my notepad and pen out of my pocket. “For God so loved the world,” he said, and raised his hands up into the air. “I don’t doubt it.” “For God so loved the world,” he said again. “So much that he sent us Nickephoros Tafadzwa Spears.” “Oh,” I said, and began putting away my notepad and pen. “And Nickephoros Tafadzwa Spears so loved the world that he gave us Equestria.” I turned and walked out of the Gary, Indiana Welcome Center, and then to the airport exit. But before I left, I decided to finish learning the history of the city. I sat down on the floor and opened A Brief History of Gary, Indiana and Its People. Charo Cabrero just before finished telling how Gary, Indiana had been gumdrops, lollipops, and rainbows when disaster struck. After twenty luxuriant years as the world’s number one provider of steel, the American steel industry ran into trouble when foreign competition in steel production increased. Foreign competition was able to offer manufacturers higher quantities at lower prices. U.S. Steel Corporation’s profits dropped. U.S. Steel Corporation laid off workers. Profits still dropped. U.S. Steel Corporation laid off more workers. Profits dropped even more. And so on, Charo Cabrero explained. When that cycle wore itself out, the American steel industry had withered to a pitiful, shell of its formerly glorious self, like the dried and dusty bones of a once-great king lying in a jumbled heap in a hole in the desert. The American steel industry’s desert hole was Gary, Indiana, the city whose fortunes had risen and fallen in dutiful rhythm with its master’s. Finding themselves standing alone in a shallow grave dug by their own arrogance, the leaders of the American steel industry fled back to the three rivers of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to die comfortably. They left behind in Gary, Indiana a legacy of poverty, failure, and lost decadence. Charo Cabrero continued, but I did not. I stood up, leaving A Brief History of Gary, Indiana and Its People on the floor, and walked our of the airport and into the city. __________________________________________________ When people hear of the righteous work I have performed in Equestria, I suspect many will ask themselves and each other, “What was he thinking?” My answer is this: Throughout the entirety of the time I have spent in Equestria, I thought about Gary, Indiana and the accomplishments of the American steel industry in the twentieth century. Editor’s note: This account is an unaltered version of the one found among the author’s, Octavian Wenceslaus's, possessions after his supposed disappearance, which were delivered through the portal by Equestrian authorities to the American government just under three months after the date of the incident, and were released to the public one week ago, on January 7th. The only changes made are clearly marked additions at the end of certain passages, included for the purpose of examining the accuracy of the claims made herein. All else is assumed to be Wenceslaus's original work. __________________________________________________ When I arrived in Gary, Indiana to write my article, I found myself in a sad, dirty, hopeless place. The city’s total population had dropped by half in the past forty years, and more people were leaving every day. One in three homes were unoccupied, and most of those had been declared unfit for human habitation. One in two commercial properties were also unoccupied. On Main Street, I walked past rows upon rows of empty shops. I clambered over fences into stadiums that hadn’t seated a soul in twenty years, and I slipped into movie theatres that hadn’t shown a film since John Wayne was still clobbering Commies in Hawaii country clubs. Some parts of the city, the only life I saw were weeds that had slithered up between cracks in the street. Great, rusting steel mills sat quiet and unmoving at the edge of the city. They rose far above the skyline and could be seen from any spot in the city. Those towers reminded me of pictures I had seen of the sphinx statues that guarded the ancient tombs of Egyptian pharaohs, sentinels that watched over the already-ransacked graves of men whose names no one now remembers. Richard Powers would have cried. I had the time of my life. Gary, Indiana was a work of art. It was humanity’s collective magnum opus. The dirt that covered the streets and the buildings and the people was the bronzed finish of a masterpiece sculpture. The black graffiti scrawled on the walls and street signs were gilded runes engraved over the entrances of sacred Hindu temples. The raspy, tired voices of the people were the singing of wandering musicians, telling of tall tales and folk heroes. I held the very tapestry of life in my hands. As Shakespeare would say, the city tripped softly along my tongue this way, and that way, and every other way, and I savored its tastes. As I walked through a particularly haggard neighborhood, gaping and gawking at the beautifully broken-down city, two young gentleman who smelled strongly of cat urine threatened me with a small knife. I gave them what little I had and wished them a good night, and then continued on my way. After I had walked another block, not ten minutes later, a lovely young woman carrying a frying pan demanded I give her whatever money I had. I apologized, but gleefully said that if she really wanted it, I could point out the cat urine gentlemen that had taken my money, and she could give them a whack with her frying pan. She declined and then took my pants instead. No one bothered me after that. I was pantless and high on devastation, and the people of Gary, Indiana accepted me as one of their own. I explored the streets and alleyways and decrepit storefronts like a reincarnated Marco Polo. I chased a pair of wild rabbits I spotted in a park, then got sprayed by a wonderful little skunk. I suspected at the time that the rabbits and skunk might have been friends. How beautiful might that have been? Coming out of the park, I propositioned a man whom I suspected to be a prostitute, just for the adventure of it, as I’d never considered making love to another man before. But my smell and lack of any money and pants must have displeased him, and he refused my offer. I suggested instead that we should go get a beer. “Hell yeah,” he said. “Hell is exactly right,” I agreed. His name was Ralph. I never took the time to really look at him—I was too busy looking at everything else—so I don’t know if he was old or young, black or white, short or tall, but I could tell that our souls were in alignment, if only for that evening. Instead of leading me to a bar, Ralph picked a nearby house, seemingly at random. We walked in through a side door, found the kitchen, and walked back out with some cans of something that both smelled and tasted awful. I never learned whether it was Ralph’s house or the house of someone he knew or whoever else’s. We sat down on the curb and drank and talked about Ebola. When we finished, Ralph spotted a kid walking by himself a ways down the street and suggested we throw the empty cans at him. So we did. After the kid ran off, I noticed that the sun had started to fall down behind the old steel mills. Beneath the sunset, I saw a Catholic church. Ralph and I went inside and found a few bums who claimed to be priests. It did my heart good to see men doing God’s work in that fantastic shit hole. Then whatever I drank with Ralph while sitting on the curb kicked in. I lost Ralph somewhere in the church, and eventually I left. I don’t remember much of what happened the rest of that night. I think I might have killed Ralph. Or maybe I made love to him. The next thing I knew, the sun had risen back over the other horizon, and I stumbled across my motel. I decided to take a quick break inside and eat some watermelon to recover. Had I known the call that was waiting for me in my room, I would have run screaming in the other direction. Editor’s note: No homicides or missing person reports matching a man with the first name “Ralph” were filed during or after Wenceslaus’s stay in Gary, Indiana. The priest overseeing the Saint Hubert Catholic Church did remember a man demanding to be called “Joram” visiting the church on the night of April 13, but the Bishop insists that “Joram” was alone. All efforts to identify “Ralph” have proven fruitless. __________________________________________________ I found my room, discovered that my keys had been taken along with my pants, and broke in through the window. The room phone was blinking. I picked it up to find that I had three messages from my editor, all demanding that I call her back immediately. I scratched the inside of my ear for a while, and then I called her. “Hello?” she asked. My editor had an old lady’s name, even though she was younger than me. “Hey, Ethel,” I said. “Where the hell have you been?” she asked. “I’ve been trying to reach you for hours.” “In heaven,” I answered. “Or the closest thing to it I’ll ever see.” “Why aren’t you answering your phone?” I patted my bare thighs. “I guess it was in my pants.” “Well, where are they?” “Probably trolloping down John Pierpont Morgan Avenue on the ass of a narcotized eskimo by now.” “Oh, God.” Ethel let out a great, haggard sigh that would have staggered a redwood. “Please tell me you haven’t been drinking.” “Not in the sense that you mean,” I said, and felt pretty smart about that for a while. “We talked about this, remember?” “I think I might have killed someone.” “Don’t tell that to me,” Ethel cried. “Tell that to your lawyer.” “I have a lawyer?” “You don’t remember?” I scratched my ear again. “I chopped him up and ate him, so why am I so damn hungry? I have a watermelon around here somewhere.” “Whatever,” Ethel said, and sighed again. A more tired sort of sigh this time. I don’t think it would have impressed a fern. “Did you at least get the story?” “Not in the sense that you mean,” I said, and felt disappointed in myself for recycling old material. “I hope you die,” Ethel said. “I don’t.” A long pause followed. I dropped the phone on the bed and went to the bathroom to pee. I found my watermelon there. It was floating in the toilet, cracked open down the middle. Its insides had turned yellow and smelled so sickly sweet I had to plug my nose with a floor rug. I dug my hand down into the humid crevice of the watermelon and pulled out a fistful of what looked to be spider eggs. I stared at them in my hand for a long time, clenching and unclenching my knuckles. I pondered what it meant for my destiny if that revolting motel toilet could become the cradle for something so miraculous as newborn life. I didn’t eat any watermelon. Throughout this whole ordeal, I only ever ate one thing (besides the candy bars). And that one thing wasn’t watermelon. I went back to the bed and picked up the phone. “Are you still there?” I asked. And then, without anyone noticing a thing, as quietly as a roomba drowning in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, the Harbinger of Death took possession of Ethel’s body. “You ever hear of a place called Equestria?” the Harbinger of Death asked, through Ethel’s voice. I had heard of a place called Equestria. Everyone in the world had heard the story of the place called Equestria. The story went like this: Two years prior to the events I’ve described here, a theoretical physicist named Nickephoros Tafadzwa Spears (who preferred to be called by his middle name) had an argument with his older brother about the nature of existence. Tafadzwa told his brother that an infinite number of universes might exist beyond our own, and that, if so, travel between universes would one day be possible. Tafadzwa’s brother laughed. Tafadzwa became enraged, so enraged that he built an interdimensional portal in a field in Iowa to prove his brother wrong. When he completed the portal’s construction, he turned it on and stepped inside. He emerged on the other side and found himself suffocating in a cartoon world inhabited by ponies. The ponies informed him that he was in Equestria. Tafadzwa was the first human to walk in Equestria. I would be the seventeenth. But I would be the first to do something else there. Tafadzwa turned right back around and left to brag to his brother. He found that his brother had died while he was gone, but most the rest of the world still lived. The whole breathing world listened intently to Tafadzwa’s story of the honest to God land of sugar and honey that lay waiting behind his portal. Tafadzwa’s portal became the final dip of the ladle into Pandora’s box. The truth of Pandora’s ‘box’ has been twisted and misunderstood by our society, perhaps intentionally, through constant, bogus repetition. In the original myth, Zeus gave Pandora, the first woman, a beautiful jar, not a box at all, as a wedding gift. That jar contained all the evils of the universe, layered from least worst at top to most worst at bottom. Zeus wisely commanded Pandora to never open the jar under any circumstances, because when Pandora reached the most worst at the bottom of the jar, all humanity would be destroyed. But when has any animal that walks on two legs ever done what it’s told? The truth of Pandora’s ‘box’ is that we’re all crowded around the jar, stooped on our knees, desperately plunging our hands down inside like hungry children grasping at old stew. And we’ve been plunging for a long time. We scooped out paganism, then Protestantism, then nationalism, then capitalism, then imperialism, then socialism, then hallucinogens, then psychiatry, then Disco, then corporatization, then agnosticism, then Eastern philosophy, then New Age Mysticism. Now, dirtied fingernails scraping the bottom of the jar, we claw at Equestria, thick and meaty and cold. The first meetings between the Equestrians and humans after Tafadzwa publicized his discovery were hailed as the most important development in human history since the apple dropped on Sir Isaac Newton’s head. Countless lies about the nature of the universe have been exchanged and discovered since that day. Well-meaning people, mesmerized by the hoax of Equestrian society, began a movement to alter ourselves and our world to more closely resemble Equestria. The people of this movement call themselves the Equestria on Earth Organization. Jostled to the front, arms stuck deep down inside, the Equestria on Earth Organization will be the first to lift our doom out of Pandora’s Box. This is the end of us. “Yes,” I answered the Harbinger of Death. “I know of Equestria.” And then the Harbinger of Death explained to me, still in the body of Ethel, that our magazine had acquired the rights to an exclusive story covering the details of Equestrian religious life. Both the American and Equestrian governments had strictly limited civilian travel between dimensions, and no member of the press from either side had been given permission to cross over. Now, one journalist would be given a rare and highly coveted ticket through the portal to Equestria, where he or she would live with the Equestrians for one year, sending back periodic reports on his or her findings to the magazine. It was the opportunity of a lifetime. “That one journalist,” the Harbinger of Death whispered into the telephone receiver, “is you.” “Hot dog,” I said. The Harbinger of Death instructed me to immediately board the next plane to Indianapolis, then board a connecting flight to the field and the portal. “Roger, roger,” I said. “Loud and clear.” And then I passed out on the bed. Editor’s note: Ethel Grears claims that her conversation with Wenceslaus by telephone that morning did not at all resemble the one that appears in this account. In particular, she stresses that Wenceslaus never made any mention of a possible homicide. Wenceslaus also appears to have been confused as to the nature of his assignment in Equestria. According to Grears, his true responsibility was to aid fellow editor and longtime partner Robert Haverly in conducting a weeklong interview of Princess Twilight Sparkle. Religion in Equestria would be just one of many topics discussed, and no mention was ever made of a yearlong stay in Equestria. Greers admitted to us that Wenceslaus was neither qualified nor mentally or emotionally fit to make the journey to Equestria. He was only given the position at the insistence of Robert Haverly, who was a close friend. Haverly wielded significant influence within the magazine's editing staff and argued often for Wenceslaus's remaining at the magazine in spite of his ever-increasingly poor job performance. Strangely, Wenceslaus never makes any mention of Haverly in this account (other than the apparent impersonation), but multiple witnesses have claimed to have seen the two meet in the Indianapolis International Airport later that day. Haverly never boarded their scheduled flight, and has not been seen since his encounter with Wenceslaus. As of the time of this writing, Robert Haverly’s whereabouts remain unknown. __________________________________________________ When I woke up, I gathered my things and left the motel, and then left Gary, Indiana altogether on an airplane that looked like a trash can. I cried all the way. The garbage collectors dropped me off at the Indianapolis International Airport, where I ate human liver for lunch in the back of a closed Thai restaurant with the blinds drawn down over the windows before boarding a second plane. The second plane was a straight shot to Tafadzwa’s portal site, which, I learned then, had become a popular enough tourist spot to warrant its very own airstrip. The same moment as I stepped onto that airplane, completely unnoticed by the whole world, the Harbinger of Death strapped himself into the pilot’s seat and began preparing for take off. The second plane was a small, frightening affair. Only twelve seats. I shivered and shook as I sat down into what I supposed must have been my seat, firm in my conviction that humanity had no place in the sky, and even more firm in my belief that the planet Earth shared that conviction. If a freak hurricane had suddenly developed around our plane, I would have calmly accepted that our planet was simply carrying out its sacredly ordained duty. After all, what are a dozen human lives in the face of God’s will? My seatmate was a man named Gregory. Gregory weighed three hundred pounds and took up two seats all to himself. His arms and legs and chest and the rest of him were all averagely slender, but his gut was so massive that at first I thought he had snuck an entire refrigerator onto the airplane by tucking it underneath his shirt. Unfortunately for Gregory, his gut was all flesh. He had to hold a cane out in front of himself when he walked to keep his body from belly flopping down onto the ground with every step. Whenever he walked, his gut swung back and forth, yanking him one way and then another, so it looked like he was dancing everytime he got up to use the restroom. About a half hour into the flight, Gregory said to me, nearly frothing at the mouth with excitement, “Do you understand where we’re going?” “To get a banana split?” I guessed. “To Equestria,” Gregory said, his eyes lighting up like rocket ships-turned-fireballs. “Our lives will never be the same again.” “They’ll let you in?” I asked. I had been told that only a relative handful of elite and carefully selected men and women had been allowed through the portal so far. Gregory looked neither elite nor the type to be carefully selected for anything by anyone. “The government says I can’t.” Gregory smirked, believing himself to know something the whole rest of the world didn’t. “But our government is supposed to be a government of the people, right? Well, we are the people. I hear there’s already ten thousand of us gathered outside the portal, and more coming everyday. They can’t keep us out forever. We have rights.” I wondered if any of those ten thousand Gregorys were refugees from Gary, Indiana. If so, Shakespeare himself could not have written a greater tragedy. “Pursuit of happiness,” Gregory continued. “Jefferson said so right in the Declaration of Independence. Each of us has the right to find happiness, and that’s our happiness waiting right on the other side of that portal. They can’t keep us out. If they try, do you know what’ll happen?” “The Storming of the Bastille?” Gregory smiled at me, for he mistook me for one of his own. At that moment, he honestly believed we would march straight out of the plane together, arm in arm, gut swinging by gut, and form the Legion of the Ten Thousand and Two Gregorys. “Exactly,” he said. “What do you know about Equestria?” I asked. “Clean air, fresh water, good people.” Gregory’s eyes glazed over. “An honest to God land of sugar and honey, that’s what they say.” “The Equestrians have God?” “They don’t even need God.” I shuddered. “Sounds awful.” Gregory frowned. “How’s that?” “If they don’t have God, how can they understand the value of a human life?” Gregory immediately soured on me, like a bowl of mayonnaise left on the sidewalk on a summer afternoon. “What do you think God knows about the value of a human life?” “Everything, of course.” Gregory turned to face me, and his monster of a gut turned with him, so they could stare me down together. “Then you tell me, smart guy, what’s the value of a human life?” “One hundred twenty-nine dollars,” I answered promptly. “Where the hell did you get that number from?” “The Cobra CA380 is the cheapest handgun in America,” I explained. “It costs on average about one hundred twenty-nine dollars. Since the only pertinent purpose of a handgun is to destroy human life, it stands to reason that a human life is worth one hundred twenty-nine dollars.” Gregory gawked at me. His gut swooned. “And you think that’s a good thing?” “I don’t think anything bad of it.” Gregory shook his head sadly. “That’s why I’m going to Equestria.” “No,” I said. “You’re going because you’re fat and lonely, and you think running away from life is a cure for fatness and loneliness.” Gregory didn’t seem to hear, and he didn’t say much for a while. I picked my nose. “Why are you going?” Gregory finally asked. “I’m on assignment. I’ll be living with the Equestrians for a year, writing down everything I see and hear and smell and taste and touch.” “You’re a journalist?” I nodded. “Are you going to write the truth?” “I’ve never done anything of the sort before,” I said. “I don’t see any reason to start now.” Gregory’s gut rubbernecked all over the seat. “What kind of journalist are you?” “I’m a Gospel writer,” I explained. “Gospels don’t tell facts, they tell principles.” Gregory didn’t understand. When I tried to enlighten him, Gregory patted his stomach and blew his nose. “You’re ignorant,” he said. “You don’t know anymore than I do,” I said. Gregory nodded. “That’s true. We all know it, deep down inside, even if we never realize it.” “What is it that we all know that you’ve realized and I haven’t?” Gregory stared stonily out the window. “You wouldn’t listen.” “I’m listening now.” “Well…” Gregory let out a long breath through his nose. “The first thing I realized was that I don’t matter. I’m not the star of my very own movie. Most people don’t know who I am, and in a hundred years, no one will know who I was. Nothing I say or do now will matter in a hundred, a thousand, a million years from now on this planet.” “Sounds bleak.” “It gets bleaker, because after that, I realized that our planet doesn’t matter, either. It’s not the center of the universe. It’s not the center of anything. It’s one of eight planets, circling one of three hundred billion stars in a galaxy, that’s just one galaxy out of a hundred billion in the observable universe, and those with their own stars, and those with their own planets, and those with their own cats and dogs. And our planet and everyone and everything on it doesn’t matter to any of them. Never will. And that’s just the observable universe. It’s impossible to know how much more we can’t see yet. So nothing that happens here matters to anything.” “That is bleaker.” “Get ready for bleakest,” Gregory warned. “The universe doesn’t matter, either. It might just be one of an infinite number of universes in a neverending cycle of expansion and collapse. It might be one of an infinite number of universes in a multiverse. And even if it is the only one, there isn’t anything meaningful or special about it. It’s just something that happened, that’s happening now, and will eventually stop happening, just like you and me. Nothing that happens anywhere at anytime will ever matter to anything or anyone.” “Bleakest, indeed.” “And that’s when I realized it,” Gregory said. “It?” “There were people in my life who mattered to me,” Gregory said, his voice rumbling off his gut, making him sound like a Gallic warrior howling over the bodies of trampled Roman legionnaires. “I cared about what happened to them, about what they had to say, about they thought of me and the world. Their lives, what they did, mattered to me. Maybe not to the rest of time or the universe, but they mattered then and to me. They really did, regardless of anything else.” “And now?” “And now I realize that the only thing we matter is what we matter to each other.” I corrected him, “And now you’re running away from all that matters to you.” Gregory glared at me over his gut. “And now I’m going where the people understand what matters and when.” I didn’t say anything then. I looked past Gregory and out the window at the rows of golden Iowa cornstalks, going by, going by, going by all the while and none of us noticing. I pulled out my new wallet and laid it on Gregory’s gut. “Listen close to this,” I said. “You think too much. A YMCA membership is the cure to fatness. A puppy is the cure to loneliness. Money’ll buy both. Get a ticket back to wherever you came from, then get the membership and get the puppy, all on me. How’s that sound?” Gregory didn’t speak to me again for the rest of the trip. Editor’s note: Gregory Falsgraf refused to read this account past Wenceslaus’s initial description of him, and so the accuracy of this conversation as written here is suspect. Other passengers on the plane have confirmed that Falsgraf and Wenceslaus sat next to each other, and also that the two engaged in a shouting match nearly the entire flight. Unfortunately, none of the other passengers remember exactly what was said between them. One passenger does, however, distinctly remember Wenceslaus repeatedly shouting the phrase “Liver, liver, chicken dinner!” A phrase tellingly absent from this account. Gregory also claims that Wenceslaus stole his luggage. __________________________________________________ When the plane touched down the tragically, hilariously fat Gregory flopped out of his seat and rolled down the aisle. I considered yelling after him to let him know that he’d forgotten his carry on luggage, but I didn’t want to spoil his mood. The last I ever smelled of Gregory, he was falling out the open airplane doorway. I took some time to look out the window and examine the interdimensional portal. What I saw nearly made me vomit, though I didn’t understand why right away. Gregory had claimed that ten thousand of his kind had gathered outside the portal. The number appeared closer to a hundred thousand. A hundred thousand Gregorys! It astounds the mind even now. At first, I didn’t realize that what I was seeing was people at all. It looked to me like some wretched marine biologist had rounded up every sea slug and starfish living in the Great Barrier Reef and dumped them all in a great pile in a field in Iowa. The beasts slithered and slid over and under each other, in and out of cars and trailers and makeshift tents, and wriggling around campfires. Every now and then, I saw some aquatic gorillas wearing military uniforms march among the camps, looking mean as hell. And glowering over it all was the portal. Prior descriptions had led me to believe I would witness mankind’s all time greatest technological achievement, the result of the most advanced engineering our civilization was yet capable of. What I found looked like a dirty shanty. About the size of a house, its sides were already turning red-brown with rust. A web of whatchamacallit gears and thingamajigger cylinders stuck out at odd, unseemly, possibly-dangerous angles, and a torrent of steam perpetually rolled off its sides and into the air above. A big, toothy gap had been blown through its middle, as if some patriot had driven a truck straight through and out the other side to shift neutral into the Iowa sunset. The gorillas, or peacekeepers as I later learned they called themselves, had erected a barrier all the way around the portal. The seas slugs and starfish crowded right up to the barrier at all times, always pushing closer. The gorillas shoved them back, and the invertebrates shoved forward again in kind, yelling and chanting and jeering, and the armed gorillas fired warning shots over their heads. It was clear to anyone and everyone that the situation would soon explode. The air and the ground felt hot, like somebody had lit blow torches beneath the surface of the earth, and the ground itself would transform into molten lava at any moment. Watching all those sea slugs and starfish heave desperately up against the barrier, I finally realized what it was about the sight that made me so sick. That portal was an escape from accepting responsibility, freedom to flee from humanity’s collective alimony. It was a hundred thousand Gregorys diving for the lifeboat instead of patching the leaks. When I finished vomiting up my shame, I apologized to the stewardess and grabbed Gregory’s carry on luggage. His luggage consisted only of a single satchel. Inside, I found Snickers bars and philosophy textbooks. I put his satchel over my shoulder and got off the plane. As soon as I set foot on the ground, I saw a pair of the armed, uniformed gorillas marching towards me. They were already on me before I had the chance to decide between bolting and ending my own life right then and there. One grabbed me by the shoulder while the other stuck his jaw so close to my face that I could feel his breath on my forehead. “Are you Robert Haverly?” he growled, voice like sandpaper. “Of course,” I said. He looked me hard in the eyes. “Identification?” I produced the necessary materials. I had vigorously washed those materials of human substances in the airplane’s restroom. They sparkled as I took them out of my pocket. The first gorilla swiped them from my hand without looking, and then the second began pushing me forward from behind. “We need to go, Mr. Haverly,” one of them said. “Go where?” “You’ll be placed in custody for your own safety until the portal is finished charging,” the gorilla said, walking forward. “You’ll be sent through as soon as it is.” I tried to open my mouth to protest, but the gorilla behind me jammed my face into the back of the gorilla in front, so we were all pressed tightly together like a trio of Big and Tall men riding a too-small Scrambler. We immediately rushed into the slobbering horde of marine life. Bodies squeezed closely around us, all sweating and shouting and jostling, breathing fire out of their nostrils. Something hard clipped my forehead, and one of the gorillas picked me up and carried me away. Moments later, we were in open air again. I was on the other side of the barrier—gorilla turf. One of them dragged me across the dirt in front of the steaming doomsday device towards a little shack off to the side. He opened the shack door and slung me inside. “Wait here,” he said, walking back out. “Someone will come for you when the portal is ready.” The door closed behind him. I blinked around. I appeared to be in a makeshift holding cell, though luckily on the outside of the cell itself. Behind the bars of the cell, I saw a handful of bloody and beaten starfish. Something red had been spilled all over the floor. The starfish weren’t moving. I stood up and promptly walked back outside. I observed the portal for a moment, then jumped through and over a gap in the nearest barrier. I elbowed in and out of the crowd and made my way towards the camps further out. Editor’s note: Security forces present at the Tafadzwa portal site vehemently deny any assertions that violence occurred in or around the camps prior to the Manson Riots. __________________________________________________ The camps were as despicable and pathetic as the Gregorys living in them. While exploring, I waded through mud, trash, vomit, excrement, and blood. The animals huddled in the flaps and seats of the raggedy tents and broken-down cars were dirty and sad and hopeless. The difference between those camps and Gary, Indiana was the difference between giving up and putting up. I passed by a car with a rusted metal pole sticking through its windshield. When I got closer, I realized that it wasn’t rust on its metal, but dried blood. The blood had turned speckled and brown. That pole had been used to kill before, and it would be used to kill again. I could tell, because it’s my job to find the connections. I moved quickly away. As I walked, a woman sitting on a tree stump in front of a fire that had long since died out called out to me. She said, “Do you know where you are?” I stopped and shrugged. “I’d rather be anywhere else.” She beckoned me closer. “Come here and I’ll tell you the secret.” I came and sat down beside her, and she nodded approvingly. She had crazed, terrified eyes. She smelled of rabies. I leaned away from her. “I can tell,” she said. “You’re not like the rest of them.” “I like to think that I’m an embodiment of everyone.” “Do you know where you are?” she asked again. I shrugged again. “This,” she whispered, leaning close, touching her mouth to my ear, “is where God killed the dinosaurs.” “Excuse me?” She laughed hysterically, and the sound rang through my ears and bounced about in my head. “Not much to look at, is it?” “It’s a lot less than that. What’s this about dinosaurs?” “The asteroid!” she cried. “The one God sent to kill the dinosaurs. You’re standing right smack dab on the spot it hit!” I glanced nervously down at the ground beneath my feet. She nodded wisely. “That’s right. Sixty million years ago, the asteroid impacted here. Boom! Dust and ash! Earthquakes! Volcanoes! Tsunamis! Death! This is the impact crater. We’re standing on it.” I looked around the camp. The ground was gently level for as far as I could see. “You can’t see it now because glaciers ran down here from Canada later, stomped it flat,” she explained. “But if you dig a little ways down, you’ll find it. Geologists used to come here in droves, before they all shoved off to the Yucatan.” “Huh,” I said. “Isn’t it incredible how He prepares the earth for us? How He knows?” “It is something.” ,  She eyed me warily. “Don’t you dare doubt Him. This is where God destroyed three quarters of all life on the planet.” “Why do you think He did that?” “Life displeased Him,” she said, sounding tired and sniffing her armpits. “Ignored Him. Maybe even despised Him, like now. Just like now. And so He’s sent another vehicle of life’s destruction. To the exact same spot! There it stands. Isn’t it incredible how He works? The parallelism of time and destruction?” I nodded. I knew. “And do you see it?” she asked, nearly shouting now, rising up from her seat. “Do you see what God has sent to punish us? To destroy us all?” I glanced up at the interdimensional portal, the doomsday machine, and the crowds throwing themselves at its feet. “Yes,” I said. “I see it.” She sat back down, pleased. “And what are you doing here if you aren’t one of them? Come to witness the machinery of the undoing of humanity?” “I’m a journalist, a writer. I’m being sent through the portal today.” Her eyes narrowed. “Are you going to write the truth?” “I don’t know how to write anything else.” “You might be able to stop it,” she said, eyes widening. “You could make these people understand what’s really happening, the fate that really awaits them on the other side of that portal.” “It’s what I’d planned all along.” “Don’t you remember? God’s angels needed to find only ten righteous men in Sodom, and the whole city and everyone in it would be saved. Only ten righteous men.” “I understand.” She took a deep breath. “Are you him?” “I am the One of Ten,” I confirmed. “Praise the Lord!” she cried. I nodded. “You must not allow yourself to be deceived,” she warned. “Demons, wicked, scheming, cunning demons wait for you on the other side of the portal. They will do all they can to lead humanity astray. It is in their nature to poison souls.” “I’ve actually heard that the Equestrians are very pleasant creatures.” She laughed and shook her head. “Who could a demon deceive if it slithered on the ground or if it ate human flesh or if its eyes burned red?” I looked up and saw the Harbinger of Death himself, dressed in an aquatic gorilla suit, stampeding towards me through the camps from the direction of the portal. No doubt, the other gorillas had finally stopped breaking heads open long enough to notice my absence. More steam than ever was pouring off the portal. A humming throb had suffused the air of the camps. I took in ozone with every breath. The portal was ready. “No,” she continued, “they’ll come to you smiling and offering tea and biscuits and operating charity drives. They’ll appear innocent and friendly, but they’ll hide wickedness in their hearts. Don’t let them deceive you.” That woman turned out to be right. When I entered Equestria, I found nothing but demons. The Harbinger of Death was only a few feet away, and barreling in fast. “Don’t let yourself be consumed,” she said. “I won’t,” I promised. And I didn’t. “I know,” she said. The Harbinger of Death arrived. He wordlessly stooped down and picked me up, then began carrying me back to the portal. We passed by the car with the bloody pole. I grabbed it. It felt weighty and heavy in my hand, weighty and heavy enough to scatter a man’s skull like a hammer would a toasted PopTart. Or maybe even a horse’s. I slipped it inside Gregory’s satchel. I called back to the woman, “I will save humanity!” And I will. I promise you all that I will. The Harbinger of Death easily carried me back through the crowds and over the barriers and up to the portal. The portal was different than when I had left it. The toothy gap in its middle had been filled. The gap had been filled with a storm of neon, glowing snakes. They swirled together, red and green and blue and purple, buzzing and humming, biting each other’s tails and faces, up and down and around and to the side. More steam than ever poured off the portal’s rusting metallic sides. The machine and the ground beneath it shook and rattled violently. Someone kicked me from behind and I fell into the snakes. Editor’s note: The identity of the woman Wenceslaus claims to have spoken to remains unknown. Security forces at the portal site assert that Wenceslaus remained in their custody from the time he disembarked his plane until the time he entered the Tafadzwa portal. They also deny that Wenceslaus was kicked into the portal. According to their spokesperson, he enthusiastically walked inside of his own accord. The pole Wencelsaus describes was confiscated by Equestrian authorities after his arrest, and later delivered to the American government along with this document. Careful forensics testing has found blood of multiple subjects on the surface of the pole, both Equestrian and human. One of those subjects is believed, but not yet confirmed, to be that of Robert Haverly. __________________________________________________ My journey between dimensions was unextraordinary. What was extraordinary was the discovery of my life’s purpose. The purpose of my life is to save humanity—from ourselves, from what we might do with the opportunity to flee, from the monsters waiting for us on this side of the portal. Therefore: The purpose of my life is to kill Princess Twilight Sparkle of Equestria.