VI.

It's a couple hours later now as I'm writing this. After the incidents earlier today in the forest, I was a bit unnerved. I tried to read my history book, but it wasn't working. None of the information would stick and the words seemed to get jumbled in my head - I'd catch myself reading each sentence over and over to process what it meant, having to stop myself from just gliding over the words on autopilot. "In 2976, a catastrophic attempt further - In 2976, a catastrophic event - In 2976..." and on and on and on. It was only stressing me out more and now I've turned my journal open and I've written down what happened today much earlier than I usually would and now I've read it again and again and some of the surrounding days too, all uninteresting. "June 14th, 4018 - Nothing happened today. Peaceful and boring travels..." and then I kept writing for two more pages about all the little minutia that day like anyone would care enough to read it, will care enough to read any of this, will read any of this period. I'm not important. The idea that I'm important is bullshit. What are we even doing here? Waste of time. Just more meaningless death in the name of something we don't even understand. I can't get the images from earlier out of my head. The deer running from me, the dead woods burning, M-Bot's rifle pointed right to its chest, that masked man. It's all flashing and repeating in my eyes over and over and over no matter what I read or write or try and think about. I can't just put them on the page and forget. I haven't gotten any less shaken, in fact I think I've only gotten more shaken in the last few hours. I'm looking around. The sun is setting now. The curtains on each window are closed, and the overhead lights are turned on, a ghastly pale white which lets out an irritating hum. Sefgh and Matt are sitting together across from me, and M-Bot is on the same side as me but off in the corner away from everyone else. The space is big enough that we can whisper to ourselves without it hearing what we're saying. F.P. is in the front driving, which he's been spending a lot of time doing this week. I get the impression he's having trouble breaking into our pre-existing group, and M-Bot and I aren't the most welcoming presences I have to imagine. Just being honest. Sefgh looks almost as stressed as I am. Her short brown hair is messy with hairs sticking out everywhere, she's taken her camo jacket from the hunt off to just a black shirt but hasn't taken her camo pants off yet, and she's nervously tapping her foot and fixatedly pushing up her glasses once or twice a minute. She's always pale, but right now she looks like she hasn't gone outside in months. Her hair and shirt are visibly wet with a cold sweat. Matt looks more like he's not even here. He's staring up at the ceiling absently, not doing anything. In fact, he hasn't done anything since the hunt. None of us have. I can guess what Sefgh's been thinking about, but it's always hard to tell what Matt is thinking about, and frankly I have no fucking clue what M-Bot is thinking about, it should be obvious but somehow it isn't because it always feels like they have some kind of gears turning. Metaphorically speaking. Matt at least changed out of the camo into a sleeveless black shirt and long black pants, though. Almost all of the clothes we packed for this 'journey' are black and largely featureless - you could say it's practical, but really nobody wanted to bring their personhood on this hunt. Even in these conditions Matt is still very pretty, his yellowed-blonde hair contrasting handsomely with his darker skin. I've never thought of Sefgh that way and I think she prefers it like that. She's cute but her presentation, even her name, is distinctly sexless. I've thought every so often about Matt that way but only from a distance. I can't imagine anything like that ever happening and he's probably not gay, anyways, so who really cares. Pretty stupid to even think about that stuff. And don't even ask me about M-Bot, come on. It doesn't even have anything down there. What a weird thing to be writing about right now, though. Fucking stupid honestly. We don't have any human blood on our hands yet but the pressure of it is weighing down on all of us, though I think Sefgh and Matt are processing it differently than I am. For them it's something obvious and inevitable, a task that's horrifying but completely necessary. Sometimes Matt even says he's looking forward to it! Look at me, he says, I can hunt! It's all because of the prophecy, that elaborate chain of events Alzeki never stopped adding to, all those revelations over and over. He's probably right about all of it of course. It's all planned out already. Nothing I do has any chance of affecting the world in any way that wasn't already decided by someone else, something bigger than me. My limbs are useless, my mind is useless. I'm just a tool in someone else's hands, only conscious in a technical sense, along for the ride. Whether or not I actually believe anything Alzeki says has nothing to do with it, whether or not I want to do any of this has nothing to do with it. It's pre-planned, pre-packaged, pre-destined. Nothing else to say about it I guess.

It's about two hours later now, firmly at night. Something is happening. Someone has stopped our vehicle and is knocking against the door. There's--

"I woke up from my sleep and there I was, right in the middle of their traincar. They looked exactly like Maine had described them. I thought it was another dream at first, but it felt so real that I couldn't conceive of it that way... They started talking to each other like I wasn't there, looking through me, not making note of me in any way. 'Who do you think it is?' Matt asked, 'Should we let them in?' Sefgh was looking like hell... shaking and sweating... The knock on the door got louder. 'Screw it, F.P. would probably let them in anyways, let's just get it over with,' Maine was saying as she got up and walked towards the front. There was something that you're telling me was never mentioned, a door between the bulk of the traincar and the front, which I think they must have closed shut at some point when earlier it was open if what you're telling me was written down really was written down."

"All five of them crowded into the front of the traincar and Sefgh went to open the door. A rifle stuck through, and she jumped back with a yelp. Everyone instantly went for their guns, but a booming voice came - 'DROP YOUR WEAPONS.' The rifle was still pointed. Sefgh was shaking like she was about to have a heart attack. I was terrified, too. I didn't know if this man would be able to see me or not. Sefgh, Matt, and F.P. quickly dropped their guns, with Maine and then M-Bot following a second later. They loudly clattered on the ground. The door was slowly pushed open by the man on the other side."

"He looked awful. I don't really know how else to describe it. It looked like he had been living out there his whole life without ever meeting somebody else. He was wearing thick, heavy, baggy camo clothes that seemed to weigh him down. He was tall and imposing, broadly muscular, but with this weird lack of strength... when he walked it was like he was struggling to move. I don't know if I'm describing it right. It's like gravity weighed more heavily on him than on anyone else. He was very scary, though. He had ammunition strapped across both shoulders, one rifle on his back and one in his hands, he was taller than any of us... he had black hair and it was the most long, screwed-up hair I've ever seen, super greasy. Again, it was like he'd been living here his whole life with no human contact, except maybe an arms dealer. He stank, too, not as bad as you'd think though. He wore heavy boots and gloves. His skin was ghostly pale. The weirdest, creepiest thing about him was this mask he wore. It was totally featureless, and looked like it was made of solid steel. ...Yes, featureless. No eyeholes, no designs, no nothing. I think originally it would be basically a mirror, but it obviously hadn't been cleaned in a long time, so it was muddy and filthy - oh, did I mention he was basically covered in mud and dirt? Seriously, he looked like he'd died there a long time ago. Anyways, the mask was broken off on the lower half, so it only covered his upper face. His nose and mouth were exposed, and he had a shaggy beard and screwed-up teeth. I'm giving a lot of detail here because he was such an immediately intense and strange presence that it was especially burnt into my mind. Even when I thought it might still be a dream, seeing him was so visceral that I kind of had to take it as real... my dreams are usually very blurry and indistinct."

"He scans the room for a bit and points his gun down and says something along the lines of, 'I was on patrol, what are you doing here this close to my home?' Except no, he doesn't say home, he says 'base'. Real military man. F.P. stammers out something like 'we're just passing through', Sefgh adds on to it like 'we don't want any trouble'. All this time I'm still just staring at him, and then staring back at everyone around me too, in awe that I'm even here. Why was I getting this vision, I wonder? Why not someone else who would know more about this, about these people? I don't even know who this person I'm talking about is, the person they're meeting. For all I know he never shows up again. Maine is shooting him a bit of a death glare, she just wants to keep going and not have to worry about whatever this is, Matt is staring down at his feet, M-Bot is completely unreadable. Fully opaque."

"What was my dream before this? Well, I don't know, I don't remember it in that much detail. I said already my dreams are usually really blurry and faint and it was the same tonight before this happened, and if I had trouble remembering them normally then I'm going to have an especially hard time remembering them after all this. It was something involving a helicopter, even though they haven't existed in centuries. One was chasing me down with a spotlight. I don't think it meant anything. You never know I guess."

"He stares at everyone for a bit and says, 'you're done travelling for tonight, come with me', or something else similar. I wish I could remember everything more precisely but it's all a bit foggy. He steps in and walks behind everyone, still holding his gun, and says 'get out of the car'. He leads them all out in a straight line, and even though I'm not part of the scene and I'm not in danger I still follow along anyways because I want to see what happens. I've started to think now that even though it's not 'real', like not really happening to me, it must still somehow be 'real', like someone else's experience that I've just been inserted into for some strange reason. Outside, the only thing you can see are the traincar's headlights, which faintly light what's right in front of it. Other than that, it's completely pitch-black. The forest is thick and no moonlight shines through the clouds. I've never seen anything like it... it's like it was darker than dark, like you'd stepped out into the void. The man gives a special tap to his broken mask and it lights up to give a beam of light, like a flashlight."

"'My home isn't far from here', he says, 'you'll be visiting me tonight. We'll have dinner and then you'll go on your way.' Everyone is on edge. 'Why do we have to visit you?' Maine asks. 'How do we know you won't kill us?' M-Bot asks. 'I haven't met another person in this forest in years,' the man says, 'I need it.' Maine is twitchy and impatient and asks, 'And what if we don't visit? You're seriously going to kill us?' The man looks back at them, 'Yes. I will. Come to dinner and let me talk, will you? I haven't had this in so long. I need it.' There's a kind of stunned silence over the group, and the man takes initiative. 'Follow me to the path.'"

"He started walking away, and even terrified and shocked we all just followed. We couldn't see what we were doing or where we were going - just following a lit silhouette in the swallowing darkness. Oh, and it was silent, too. There were no birds, no bugs. No grasshoppers, no wind, no water. Nothing. Even the footsteps were strangely muffled. It didn't feel like a real place on Earth. We were walking for a couple minutes before we got to a clearing in the trees. He led us down a long, hacked-out path, constrictingly tight and overgrown. I thought to myself, 'What was he even doing outside at this time of night? How does he see?' and as if to answer my thoughts he started to ramble on about his mask and its night vision, and how it broke in half in an animal attack but the technology still worked, with some technical stuff about how it let him see through it that went way over my head. It used some kind of technology that doesn't exist anymore. Apparently he was on one of his nightly patrols when he ran into the traincar. He might've just been on a walk, really... not much else to do out there and if he hadn't ran into anyone else there wouldn't be that much of a purpose to having a patrol, would there? I'm not sure anyone else was even in these woods. Again, I don't know all the details of this story that well. Were there?"

"The walk back to his home base from there was about ten minutes long, if I had to guess. At some point I stepped down and heard a crunch - I'd stepped on a bone. I don't think it was a human bone but it's hard for me to tell since I haven't seen many bones. There were a lot of things I didn't understand, honestly. I'm trying to tell everything just how I remember it but I'm sure there are things are missing because I just didn't understand them or know the context to them. I don't know why I was given this vision and not someone else... anyways, he brought everyone around a campfire he had set up. We could see some of the surrounding base in the flickering light - a handmade wooden shack, crates of guns and ammo, an outhouse, a couple of crosses. It looked like there might've been a farm too, but it was hard to tell in the dark. I split off for a bit to look around and it was basically impossible to see anything in detail. It was a nice, wide open space, though very rare here."

"When I got back, everyone was gathered around. The campfire had a pot of food cooking above it, but it wasn't ready yet. Everybody was silent, probably not sure what to say. I wouldn't be sure what to say! It must be the first time in history anyone had been taken hostage just for a casual conversation. How would you react? So the man just starts talking without being prompted. 'Name's Screech. Agent S for short. Got given that name about fifteen years ago fighting in the war. You know what war, right? Was the war.' 'I don't think I do,' Sefgh interrupted. Screech shook his head. 'Well then what the hell are they teaching you kids nowadays huh, was the war, the damn war. Fighting for the damn future of survival. Future of humanity. Future of the world to make sure noone got a buncha chips put in their heads to turn them into slaves, yeah? Some fucker wanted to make that happen, wanted to turn everyone into his slaves by putting chips in their heads, well you know I made sure that didn't happen, picked up my gun and fought for a whole decade, you know what that does to a guy well-' he laughed self-deprecatingly- 'just look here folks, right here, look right here.' I remember a lot of the things he was saying because he was so distinct, but I'm sure I'm getting the specifics wrong. He spoke as unsteadily as you'd expect, tripping over his train of thought."

"'When I got out of there I just wanted to, just wanted to, you know, get as far away from that hell place as I could, that giant city that wanted to swallow everything up, that got turned into a warzone. The city that's right on the edge of the, the Dead Sea, maybe you know about it and you know it's empty, well it wasn't always empty, but the less said about that the better. I don't want to talk about all that. I don't want to talk about what happened there, so let's just say I spent a decade in that hellhole and move on and say I wanted to get far away from there, so I did. They gave me a pension but I didn't want it. I moved here because I never wanted to see a place like that again in my life. I didn't want anyone coming in and taking over and putting something in my brain. So now I'm here, yeah? Now we're here. Been here, must have been a decade too, maybe longer by now. Just spendin' my life here and waiting for it all to be over since it really ended for all intents and purposes back there you know, so now I'm just waiting for it to catch up in the safest place I can get to make sure nothing happens between now and then that'd keep everything from going wrong, you know. Don't want anything going wrong. What about you, huh? Why are you here, what are you, what are you even doing here?' he laughed again. 'Not much of a, well, a destination spot, is it?'"

"Nobody said anything. 'Come on, speak - I want to hear your voices! I haven't heard any voice, any but my own in so long, it's made me gone a little, well, crazy... Tell me your names!' Screech insisted. They all said their names - 'Maine.' 'Sefgh.' 'Matt.' 'F.P.' 'M-Bot.' Such weird names! That's what I thought. Screech listened and smiled widely. 'Ah, it's beautiful, it's beautiful! Keep talking! Where are you from? Why are you here? Tell me!' A bit more silence - people were scared to speak up. Even when he wasn't actively threatening, Screech was a bit disconcerting, though I think anyone would be after being alone for so long, personally. I think that's fair to say. Matt started speaking, a bit shakily at first. 'Well, we're from, uh, a town near the Dead Sea. It might be on the other side of it from that city you were talking about, we've seen it off in the distance from the shore before. Stuff washes up from there like the parts we made M-Bot from. Or, not we, just Sefgh. Sefgh can make that stuff and I can't.' He spoke in a weird accent that I don't really want to replicate, by the way, but anyways. 'We came here because we were sent on a quest by our god.'"

"Screech chuckled a bit at that. 'Oh, kid, god's aren't real, they're not. They wouldn't let this stuff happen.' Sefgh took offense at that. 'Of course they are! Just because bad things happen now, that doesn't mean gods aren't real! Bad things happening now can lead to good things happening later, that are even better than they would be otherwise!' 'Hah, well, hasn't lead to anything good for me! Just living a, well, a dead end out here. War coulda gone on fine without me or taken less time or anything. What the hell was the point of all that, then, huh, what was the point?' You'd think he was agitated from what he was saying, but Screech was grinning widely just talking to someone. 'Well, there must've been some reason for you to be in there specifically! Maybe you killed someone that made a big difference.' 'Hardly! None of the enemy, none of them would've made a difference. They were a mindless single entity that worked in, uh, basically perfect unison. No difference any one person would make.' 'Well someone had to be there! A lot of different people like you. And besides, what makes you think it's over? What makes you think there's nothing left for you, nothing that that war caused? What makes you think you're not still part of the plan?' 'Hah! Must be a shitty plan then. I've been forgotten about, I'm forgotten. My path's at a dead end, nobody is watching me anymore. It's done, alright? I'm not part of any big plan, god's dead, there's no point in any of it. Now I just have to live out my, you know, pointless life, and enjoy it as much as I can, and really that's all anyone can do, right, is try and enjoy it, their pointless lives.' 'But it's not pointless!' Sefgh protested. 'And some of us have even seen our god," Maine pointed out. 'If you saw your god, that's not much of a god at all, now, is it? Gods are unknowable, you can't just see them. Any god you can see is a false god. Get it through your head.' Screech said dismissively. 'I've been through that. Any god you can see is a false god. It's just the truth.'"

"After that, the conversational floodgates had been opened, and they started to talk more casually. Even the very nervous F.P., who I don't think was even talking with the others much normally, opened up and talked. It's like they'd forgotten why they were even there! They kept talking until finally the food was done cooking, and Screech passed around stew to everyone there. Things were calming down now, and my head was starting to swim a little. I felt dizzy and had to sit down. I must've been coming out of the vision. It occurred to me how strange it was that Maine was an animal person. Orange fur with patterns of black fur forming sorts of eyebags, with two lines of black fur on each cheek. Not especially long or fluffy fur, though. Big cat ears, teeth, claws, even cat-like eyes. It's not something I heard about her much in the place where I was growing up."

"Oh, you have? Maybe it's just the place I live doesn't like to talk about it much. It's not something I keep in mind that often, but when you're actually looking at her, or, some kind of vision of her, it's pretty unignorable. I don't think it was any more normal back then, either. Things were pretty weird back then, though. Strange, strange times, huh?"

"Not much of note happened after that. They all ate, then talked a bit more. Screech seemed very satisfied. They stayed like that for a few hours. My recall of this portion of the vision is much weaker, and if there were any essential bits of knowledge in that conversation, I wasn't aware of it. Near the end, I started seeing strange visions, parts of real dreams mixing in, I think. Helicopters flying overhead, faint static coming from the sky, eyes from bushes... Screech as a younger man with an undamaged mask... Animals walking in and out of the scene, wolves and deer and foxes, most of them stopping to look at Maine, the wolves licking her cheek without her even noticing."

"As they walked back I saw one especially vivid and distinct hallucination which I can still see clearly in my mind's eye. It was a giant cross in the distance, glowing bright red, burning your vision. Even with how bright it was, though, it was still a darker blood-red... don't ask me to make that make sense. It's like it short-circuited your eyes and burnt its way right into your brain as loudly as it could. It looked a mile high and absolutely gigantic. Seven figures were hanging from it on nooses, and even with how high up they were I could still tell exactly who they were. From the left side of the cross hung Almendra, Matt, and Sefgh. In the center hung Maine. From the right side of the cross hung M-Bot, Wold, and Cardo. At the very top of the cross was a giant eye, staring right back at me. It was burning and vivid and harsh, awful and unignorable, terrifying and monumental, and only existed for maybe thirty seconds before vanishing. Nobody else noticed it, which makes me think it was just another one of my dreams bleeding into the scene. There weren't any incidents I saw on the way back, the situation was calm by then. I didn't see it to the end, though - I fell back asleep and kept dreaming."

"My dream after that was about a cat I had once. She died a couple years ago, but in the dream she was right back home. She'd found her way back, came up to me purring, and soaked in my attention before vanishing back into the woods."