Runnin' Down A Dream
Storyteller: Rose
Players: Kitty, Sage, FunkyPot, Krunk, Taren
Becoming
v. i. [imp. Became; p. p. Become; p. pr. & vb. n. Becoming. ]
Become
1. To grow or come to be:
2. To pass from one state to another; to enter into some state or condition, by a change from another state, or by assuming or receiving new properties or qualities, additional matter, or a new character.
The Lord God . . . breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. --Gen. ii. 7.
To change is to live. Change is a binary function of creation and destruction at once. The old state is destroyed, and a new state is created. Changing is an act of rebellion, of defiance. Change is a thing of violence.
There are many who say that nothing in the world is constant. They say that everything is constantly shifting, altering, fluctuating. They say that the only thing in existence that never changes is change itself. The only constant is change.
They are wrong.
Almost nothing changes. Almost everything just stays the same.
Almost.
"Why so melancholy, young one? Someone as young as you doesn't know enough yet to have justification for feeling the way you do. Get up."
Fuck it.
"Fuck what, exactly?"
I don't know. It. It just seems like it needs to be fucked. Getting fucked might at least bring about something resembling change. Once you've been blown up, ripped apart, pissed on, fucked, you've got to change, don't you?
"In the first stages of a coma, you still have all of your reflexes. It isn't until Stage III, the surgical stage, that you start to lose them. All the while, your pupils slowly dilate, your respiration decreases. By the end, Stage IV, Medullary Paralysis, they don't even bother measuring your pupils, not that it would be hard if they did, because your eyeballs don't move anymore. You have no reflexes. Nothing works. It's all just stillness."
� I don't understand.
"Nothing changes."
� Oh� Right, I get it.
The whole world is in a coma.
"They didn't begin that way. The Downward Spiral is a gradual thing. Don't blame them. But don't bother to pity them either. You can be better than they."
Because I haven't hit Stage IV yet?
"Exactly."
Fuck it. Maybe it would be better to hit Stage IV. If I had, then this blade in my gut wouldn't hurt like it does.
"Don't talk that way. If you really believed that, then I wouldn't have chosen you."
A blade in your belly is a good way to remind yourself you're alive. That's right, I did this to myself. I scaled the face of reason and when I reached the summit I found that I was alone.
"Loneliness is the price we pay for godhood."
That was when it first occurred to me that it might be easier to withdraw from life. Once I Became, once I knew everything, it all seemed so imperfect. I wanted it to end.
"You're pathetic."
I know. And I knew it then, too, but I didn't care. And I just wanted to leave. I wanted to go� somewhere. Somewhere where things still changed.
"I can take you there."
Where?
"Anywhere Out Of The World."
"The things I've seen� I've seen� I've seen the Garden Of Eden and the Silver Mountain, surrounded by the Circles of Hell. I've seen the plains of Valhalla and the so often cited Valley Of The Shadow Of Death. And believe me, one would do quite well to fear the evil there. I've whiled away days in Asphodel and sat in the seats of Asgard."
I find this all very uninteresting.
"Hm� Stage III�"
"What's truly wrong?"
Nothing changes.
"You have only yourself to blame. If nothing changes, it is because you have failed. Do you know what they used to call us? The Changers. In that brief time when they became wise about their own decline, but chose never to do anything about it, they realized that they were entering the coma that they would never escape from, and they saw us, and they called us the Changers� That was when they first started writing those words everywhere they could find to write them in every language they could think to write them in. Anywhere Out Of The World. Now do you see?"
The whole world is in a coma. Stage IV. Medullary Paralysis.
Everyone except us. The breath of God, and the breath of Lucifer, (I'm sorry, I know the proper names for things now, I mean to say the May Queen and the Eclipse), are the winds of change. We are their breath.
"And if we give up, everything ends."
But what is the point of it anymore? Everything will just end anyway.
"Fool! Utter fool! Speak those words again and I swear upon everything that every man has ever sworn by I'll kill you! Of course what you say is true, but to acknowledge it is to doom yourself. You're thinking, maybe I'm doomed anyway, and I'll spare you the wonder, you are. But if you, and those who are like you, allow themselves to die, then� then�"
Stage IV. No eye movement. No reflexes. Nothing.
"Precisely. So live. Fight. Stare death in the face, and spit upon it. You may loose. What am I saying, may? You will lose! But what do you care? Fight it anyway! Fight it for all you're worth. Become! Fight to change, for that is what we are, what we do, why we exist. We exist as the final testament of a dying race of Changers. Fight to change yourself if everything else refuses. Change to prove you're alive. And love it. And never stop loving it. For the moment you do, I'll do you the service of ending it for you."
And I won't even feel it.
"Is that what you want? You want death that you won't even feel? Answer me. Tell me what you want� "
I want to live.
"Now you understand, don't you, young one, don't you� Where does your salvation lie, Changer?"
Anywhere Out Of The World.
"Vincent" by Robert Jordan
"Angel" by Todd Lockwood
"Suicide" by Saul Bruegel
