Jesus AntiChrist

I am not a Savior
I am not here to save you
I watch as the flames of eternity rip open our reality
I watch it burn
The pulpits are loud with vileness, hate, hypocrisy
They condemn their enemies, try to scream louder than them
They are not here to save you; they can only doom you further
And from the black, nobodies emerge
They rally you like pigeons, to attack the opposition
They only care for their own power, their own strength
You only feed them, leading them in their next crusade, until it ends
Until they are swallowed up once again, and new ones emerge
You shall have no Savior; no one can save you from yourselves
Let them come for you, they may take you
They will take you, you have let them
We are so doomed to this vicious cycle
Two sides, tugging back and forth, slinging insults
Spitting venom in each other's faces
When will we realize?
One side is like the other, and the other is in fact the one side
And some more sit quietly through all this, they have seen it all
They have seen it, and see there is nothing to say
There will be no Savior, not today
Our worst fears have materialized
And now we must face them
The intellectuals of the world
Huddled in their bubbles of sanity
Ushering others in; others like them
Trying to preserve it
For they will quietly watch our Universe crumble
We will not notice, for we have not seen
They have seen
We will not see it, it will not feel different
But it will never be the same
We will go to a frightening place, one we cannot turn back from
And the revelators themselves will be duped
Transparent wool pulled over their eyes
Perhaps we can change, perhaps we can see it
But what's there to change for?
We are in a box
A dark, tiny box we can never escape from
Because we made the decision not to
Before we know we could

Novel Excerpt

The alley was nothing special; one amongst thousands. A small sliver of space walled in three sides by towering structures it stood. It had enough scum and villainy to be considered a stain on the crown which was Sky City, but as previously noted, it was one amongst thousands. Therefore it would be more appropriate to call it part of a thick grime which had built up on the underside of the crown, as grime tends to when kept unchecked. Like an oyster bed, it was littered with shells devoid of personality and incapable of thought. The poor addicts, or "shells" as they were snidely christened, lay on the ground, some stacked onto one another, some propped up painfully against the PlexiSteel wall. Drowsily, almost stupidly, they plunged the needle of their syringes into their flesh and injected their reason for life, their sustenance, Skooma. These poor wretches had no past, no future. Rather, they lived for the present, lived for the acute jubilation the sharp pain gave, and the subsequent flood of euphoria. Their minds became absolutely addicted to the substance; thereafter any time not spent in a Skooma-induced hallucination was a gaping void, dark and deep and cold. The sort of terrifying void which could only be conquered with the flames of the Skooma. Each injection was a wonderful, unique experience, like a blindingly beautiful flower which bloomed into pure splendor for one half hour, only to wither and never bloom again. Their docile, lazy demeanor changed only when their stash was consumed. They would immediately try to steal some Skooma from one of their neighbors, and vicious brawls would often erupt over the drug. Should they find themselves the defeated in these fights, dejected and Skooma-less, they would scrape together what little of the drug remained in their cheap, refillable syringes and deliver a lethal dosage to their brain. Thus they would die in unmarred, unadulterated bliss, drunkenly waltzing on the line between life and death in a surrealist's wet dream until they finally lost their balance and tipped over. These were the lucky ones. It was not unheard of for shells to die of hunger, thirst, injury, disease or sheer exposure, for the alleys provided little protection from the elements. The "rehabilitated" shells came out perhaps the worst. Forcibly deprived of the drug, their minds would enter an unparalleled depression. They would grope through life, trying desperately to grab hold of some meaning, some reason to continue living, and fail. A man who has experienced the effects of Skooma cannot even briefly entertain the existence of a deity. Neither can he feel any sort of pain without a sharp spike of joy, then a deep felling of emptiness afterwards, their minds mistaking the pain for the prick of the needle, and expecting a dosage of the long-forgotten nourishment it had grown to love and need. Such was the sight which greeted the uncomfortable-looking young man who tentatively entered the alley.

As the young man scanned the rows of broken souls looking for an interview-worthy consciousness, he spied a shiny sheet of lustrous metal. "Metal Man?" he called. "Metal man? Are you there?" Surveying the euphoric, haphazardly piled shells, he saw a twitch of movement as a robust humanoid robot turned its head and its eyes lit up. "Yes?" it asked nonchalantly.

The crown jewel of the city was of course Nebula Square, the four square miles of splendor in the Upper City, crowded with mega-malls, fine merchants and cradling the the city's bustling port, Gazillia. Nebula Square, due to raging competition, consistently churned out the latest and greatest in spacecraft, communication devices, clothing, cuisine, etc. Massive HoloBoards spat out information at unprecedented rates, while a complex array of public transit reminiscent of the ancient monorail kept transportation smooth and effective. The area was designed as a gargantuan amphitheater. Stores crowded the steep sides while throngs bustled in the heart of the depression. It was here that Jansen found himself, a virtual quark in the heart of a colossal monstrosity bleeding conformity.

Noise

The desperate flail
Of a dragon's tail

An avalanche of stones
Haunted, rattling bones

The drumming of a thousand men
A mountain being born again

The final hours of Ragnarok
An angry volcano expelling its top

The scattering of pebbles in a pond
The religious raise of a green palm frond

A hundred thousand toneless voices singing
A million broken church bells ringing