“Question EVERYTHING”. That’s the first rule of the game. Only It isn’t the first rule of the game – the first rule of the game is actually ‘Question NOTHING’! We pretend that the first rule of the game is to question everything because that sounds more empowering. Once you know the rules of the game then nothing can stop you. That’s what I’ve learned anyway! That’s so empowering isn’t it? Only it’s not true, obviously. Nothing actually needs to stop you because you’ve already stopped yourself. Again – obviously! Once you know the rules of the game – and we all do know the rules of the game – then that is where the Great Adventure really begins. Training starts early doesn’t it? Training starts early and then after that it’s what they call continuous education. After that it’s a case of what they call continuous education and continuous assessment – you are always being assessed just to make sure you’re not questioning anything! You’re never too old to learn not to learn, isn’t that it? “Challenge everything”, they say. “Challenge everything and transcend the boundaries that are holding you back” – only not really. Only not really. Only not really. Only not really. Only not really. Only not really. Only not really…
What’s it like when the higher consciousness closes down and you join the stumbling ranks of the Hiletics?’ I wondered. What must that feel like? What’s it like when the darkness closes in on you, obliterating all light? What’s it like to be an ego, I asked myself? What’s it like to be a self? What’s it like? What’s it like? What’s it like? What’s it like? What’s it like? What’s it like? No answer was forthcoming, however.
Outside the cracked and grimy windows of the Survival Dome another desperate and demented day has dawned. The sun, bloated beyond recognition and dark red like congealed blood, is edging its way uneasily up over the horizon, sending tendrils of fiery rope this way and that as it does so. To my mind, it resembles nothing so much as a giant poached egg. A badly poached egg at that – all soggy and misshapen around its watery circumference. It is a shapeless-looking sun, a sorry-looking sun. Ropes of dark fire shoot out in all directions; they reach up into the sky to create a great tangled web. The Earth itself seems to groan as it beholds that great misshapen miscoloured sun. The Earth itself appears to tremble in dread of the day that is about to dawn.
The Lords of Entropy have returned to the world after their long, long exile. They ride horses with the faces of snarling jackals; they laugh with delight as they ride because the world is theirs once again. “What is true is false and what is false is true”, shout the Entropy Lords in their irrepressible manic excitement. They occupy the places of power and make constant incomprehensible proclamations relating to the fate of mankind. And high above us all the sky is a bubbling cauldron of madness – when we look up at this sky fear and horror immediately arise in equal portion and we experience the frightening and disorientating hallucination of falling upwards, falling upwards into the Cauldron of Terror. These are of course all signs, signs that the Final Days are at last approaching…
