Quoted By:
>Rudy
<span class="mu-r"><span class="mu-s">THEN YOU HAVE COME AT LAST TO THE END OF THE LINE, TAPEWORM. NOTHING WAITS FOR YOU BUT YOUR—</span></span>
Shut up.
<span class="mu-s"><span class="mu-r">YOU MAY LISTEN OR YOU MAY NOT BUT YOU KNOW IT WITHIN YOURSELF THAT IT IS TRUE.</span></span>
Shut up.
<span class="mu-s"><span class="mu-r">THEN FACE ETERNITY IN SILENCE. IT MATTERS NOTHING TO ME.</span></span>
The <span class="mu-s"><span class="mu-r">WYRM</span></span> shuts up, and you are alone.
Except you aren't. You've recruited a fellow parasite. You never would've consigned someone to this on purpose, but you were in his head, and you are the <span class="mu-s"><span class="mu-r">WYRM</span></span>, and he found out. And then he was the <span class="mu-s"><span class="mu-r">WYRM</span></span>. You exploded him right afterward, but there's no 'afterward' here: he was God for an instant and that instant was forever. Poor unremarkable Rudy Doheny trapped in amber. He deserves to know what happened.
It is trivial to locate him: he is right here with you. It is harder to make him out. O Herald, you are armored against the void's ravages; you are built to last forever. He was built by the gods to die, and eternity has stripped away at him. He is fuzzy. Nearly nothing.
If you left him alone, the <span class="mu-r"><span class="mu-s">WYRM</span></span> would swallow him whole. Mercy? Hardly. If you thought the <span class="mu-r"><span class="mu-s">WYRM</span></span> were a good thing to be, you'd already be it. You think being the <span class="mu-r"><span class="mu-s">WYRM</span></span> is probably exactly like hell.
You reach in instead.
—————————————————————————————————————————————————
There is everything, and there is you. There is everything, and there is what remains of you: a wisp of thought, a few loose threads. It could not be said that you are unhappy, although you are nowhere, although you are alone, although this moment has cycled for a very long time. There is you, and there is everything. There is the world, a detailed blueprint, a charming and intricate scale model, and it can and will and has already occupied you forever. You are at peace here. It is quiet. You can look at all the stars.
There is everything, and there is you, and there is God. You are God, and have been forever. You are God, but have not been always. The God that has entered your moment is you, but was not always, and has taken the shape of a lizard.
"Rudy?" it says.
The word strikes something in you and vibrates outward.
"Geez, I can hardly see you. Maybe I should... eh... oh, I know. Turn on the light. Here we go."
The lizard holds the sun in its jaws, and your attention is drawn at last away from the world. The lizard is brighter. It stretches its neck out and out and hangs the sun on the skin of the void, and the light flares, and—
There is God, and there is everything, and there is you, Rudy Doheny. You, in mind and body. You, in memory. You, falling to your knees.
"Oh! There we go. Hi."
"I'm dead," you say.
"Um," God says. "Yes. Sort of."
"You're God," you confirm.
(1/3?)
